Author Archives: Alicia Cohn

HuffPost Bans Anonymous Comments, But Will It Work?

August 23rd, 2013

The Huffington Post announced this week that anonymous commenters will no longer be allowed as of September.

One small step for HuffPo; one giant leap for the Internet?

HuffPo reportedly gets 25,000 comments every hour, and like pretty much any popular website that allows comments, most of them are not well-reasoned arguments and civil to the writer or other commenters.

Big App Obstacle: Teens Want Privacy

August 22nd, 2013

Not an easy sell: Teenage app consumers wary of privacy leaks.

 

App-makers beware: Teenagers are eager consumers, but the choice to download or not to download is often based on privacy concerns.

More than 50 percent of teenagers have downloaded an app to their smart-device, according to a new study conducted last year and released Thursday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project. But about half of those users also say that they’ve decided not to install an app after realizing they would have to share personal information in order to use it. That holds true for both boys and girls in the study, even though the guys were more active app-downloaders.

And another quarter of these teen users has uninstalled an app upon learning it was collecting personal information.

Teens Groping for Privacy Advice in Facebook Age

August 16th, 2013

Today’s teens think nothing of sharing personal information online, but that doesn’t mean they’re oblivious to concerns about online privacy.

But don’t rush to target teenagers with yet another guide to dodging the NSA’s online spying habits (or just general invasiveness online). Teenagers prefer to rely on their own skill at finding and understanding privacy settings on their preferred social networking sites in order to keep their information safe, according to a new report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

“In terms of the privacy settings on their Facebook profiles, the majority of teens set their profile to either fully or partially private—regardless of whether or not they have sought out advice on how to manage their privacy online,” the report says.

Bustle: A Man’s View of What Women Want

August 15th, 2013

Ladies, it turns out we’ve been reading content for men.

It was news to me to read in new post that popular websites like Politico, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Mashable and Gawker are men’s sites. Fortunately, in the same paragraph — written by Bryan Goldberg, who founded Bleacher Report (another site for men!) — I learned that at last, there is a website for women and it’s called Bustle.

Goldberg announced the new venture on Wednesday by dissing women’s magazines like Glamour, Cosmo, and Vogue for having a minimal digital presence. Understandably, those women who have been reading Grantland and TheVerge–oblivious to the fact that such content is not “for” us–were confused and a little annoyed by Goldberg’s assumption that women have nothing to read on the Internet.

Mindreader: Google Searching For What You Need

August 5th, 2013

My phone was keeping me updated on the winning streak of the Kansas City Royals last week, not because I am a baseball fan but because I did one cursory search for my hometown team last week while signed into Google.

And you thought people freaked out when they read about stores monitoring the purchases of their customers.

Think about how eerie it can be when a coupon prints out along with your receipt that matches something regularly on your grocery list. Now predictive search apps are taking that kind of automated deduction into real time.

Programs like Google Now aim to be “robotic personal assistants, anticipating what you need before you ask for it,” explained a piece on predictive search in the New York Times the other day.

Most of our email in-boxes and electronic calendars are filled with details of our short- and long-term plans. When you use Google across all your devices, as I do, that provides a powerful means for Google to track what you’re doing next.

Facebook Unshackled: Cracking a Closed Platform

August 1st, 2013

No longer is the content on Facebook shackled to the platform itself. Facebook set public posts free this week for embedding on other websites.

In other words, Facebook executives finally realized they need to be a little more like Twitter when it comes to spreading their content around online. Twitter approved embeddable tweets in 2010, and ever since, tweets (that look like tweets) have been appearing in blog posts and articles that would otherwise merely have quoted what the Twitter poster said without including the visually branded “tweet” context.

This visual branding is incredibly useful to Twitter’s appearance of “everywhere-ness.” If every article you click on has a tweet in it, it doesn’t take long before you think everyone is on Twitter and you’d better be, too. Twitter has become an increasingly familiar part of everyday life.

Google Glass: The Celebrity Factor

July 31st, 2013

Google Glass is quickly becoming the celebrity must-have accessory of the season, and as every cultural consumer knows, celebrities making headlines for using your gadget is the kind of free promotion most brands can only dream of.

Now everyone can watch Newt Gingrich’s trip to the zoo or David Bryan playing the keyboard at a Bon Jovi concert through the eyes of the ones experiencing it. The video itself is not very exciting: it turns out one man’s trip to the zoo looks a lot like any other’s and walking around backstage on someone’s face is just as disorienting as trying to tour your friend’s apartment via Skype. But the magic combination of celebrity plus product generates headlines.

And these latest headlines are a big improvement on the SNL skit where Fred Armisen gets a crick in his neck trying to control Glass with head movements.

Online Abuse: Pressure Mounts on Twitter

July 30th, 2013

Twitter is at the center of another debate about freedom of speech.

“It is time Twitter took a zero tolerance policy on abuse,” reads a very popular petition started in the U.K. this week. “Women standing up to abuse should not fear having their accounts cancelled because Twitter fail to see the issue at hand.”

The petition is a response to the recent trolling of Caroline Criado-Perez, a freelance writer and feminist activist credited with helping to lead a successful campaign to put Jane Austen on the ten-pound note issued by the Bank of England.

 

The Rising Favorite-ism of Twitter

July 29th, 2013

Playing favorites is becoming a trend on Twitter, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported last week on why many users are now hitting favorite instead of retweet. Unfortunately, the article left the many of us who barely notice the “favorite” option is there even more confused. Still, better late than never, Journal. Buzzfeed published [...]

Plane Videos Start Taking Off

July 1st, 2013

Sitting on a plane mid-flight used to mean resigning ourselves to SkyMall or, you know, that paper thing called a book. If you wanted to be social, you had to bring people with you or risk speaking to your seatmate, which could either end happily or with a three hour conversation about someone’s grandchildren, taxes, and/or intricate hobby.

Well, no more. The newest social media craze seems to be taking Vine videos on airplanes.

Search “vine.co plane” on Twitter and #takeoff or #flight on the Vine app to easily find a slew of airplane-set videos, and it’s easily apparent that not all of them were taken when electronic devices were approved.