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Category: Social Media

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay

The line is a reference to a comedic variety show hosted by Drew Carey, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, which was basically an homage to the absurd.

Enter Meta, the Company Formerly Known as Facebook, which some wags have referred to as Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to escape his many problems in the physical world.  Not the least of which is his loss of a younger audience, and every advertiser knows that it’s best to get them when they’re young.  Even Instagram can’t seem to hold on to those younger eyeballs. In Meta, kids can strap on their headsets (and CFKAF is betting that they will) and enter their own virtual worlds – with friends too, if they choose. Although it won’t be the Oculus headset, since FB is killing off the brand, which means, btw, as Techcrunch pointed out, that  it took Zuck roughly 15 seconds to tell his first lie: “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either.”

“Mr. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, entered with virtual and augmented reality hardware at first and more advanced body sensors (or neural implants?) later on, in which people can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, go shopping for virtual goods, collect virtual art, hang out with each other’s virtual avatars and attend virtual work meetings,” wrote The New York Times. Read More...

How to Make Money in Tech Without Starting a Company

How to Make Money in Tech Without Starting a Company

Elon Musk is now worth $230 billion—as much as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, and he has even surpassed Jeff Bezos. But, hey, a billion here, a billion there, why quibble? What was not mentioned in the CNBC piece is Elon Musk’s secret? Taxpayer money. His two companies that helped him to achieve that status – Tesla and SpaceX – “together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support (subsidies),” according to the LA Times.

 

Considering that it’s lawmakers who decide who gets what, many of them have coincidentally done quite well picking stocks, even though we know that insider trading is illegal – at least for the rest of us. Still, congress is required to disclose their stock transactions. According to NPR, the “STOCK Act is a law that was passed and signed in 2012, (that) requires more disclosures by federal lawmakers when they trade, they purchase, they sell stocks. It also criminalizes trading on inside information.” Read More...

Facebook’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Day

Facebook’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Day

Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger and Oculus – all Facebook-owned properties – all went offline Monday, and odd that the outage came the day/morning after the “60 Minutes” interview with former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen.

“The documents, first reported in a series of (Wall Street) Journal stories, revealed that the company’s executives understood the negative impacts of Instagram among younger users and that Facebook’s algorithm enabled the spread of misinformation, among other things,” CNBC reported.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Haugen said, among other things, that Facebook is “tearing our societies apart and is causing ethnic violence around the world.” Read More...

The Heat Is On…Big Tech

The Heat Is On…Big Tech

It may be summer, but we well know that tech – and rust – never rest. Last week, “Former President Donald Trump, who has been banned from most major social media platforms, announced a class-action lawsuit against tech giants Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, along with their respective CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai,” Yahoo reported. “…In court documents, Mr. Trump’s legal team argued that the tech firms amounted to state actors and thus the First Amendment applied to them. Legal experts said similar arguments had repeatedly failed in the courts before,” said the New York Times.

But Palace Intrigue noted a while back that in April, 2012, “Barack Obama himself admitted that the government helped Google and Facebook get off the ground. The government was present at the beginning when both companies were created.”

  Read More...

Audio-Only Platforms: Listen and Learn

Audio-Only Platforms: Listen and Learn

The lockdowns have certainly had a huge impact on the online world. First, Zoom mushroomed from out of nowhere, and when Zoom fatigue seemed to be setting in, there was Clubhouse, taking over the zeitgeist and becoming, as the Daily Caller noted (in Here’s What We Know About Clubhouse, The New App That’s Dominating Social Media), the fifth most popular social media app on the Apple store, trailing behind only Facebook, Messenger, Discord, and WhatsApp.

 

Not to be outdone, Facebook is launching several new audio-only features, including “Soundbites…and an audio-only version of Rooms (called Audio Rooms – think Clubhouse).” as The Sun reports. Read More...

Net Non-Neutrality in the Age of Social

Net Non-Neutrality in the Age of Social

Image by mpmd2009 from Pixabay

Esther Dyson used to hold a high level, invitation-only conference each year in Scottsdale, AZ called PC Forum. The dates were always carved in stone on our calendar. The conference was acquired, but one of the last ones under Dyson’s auspices was at the dawn of the Age of Social, and the theme was Users in Charge. That was over a decade ago, and truth be told, Dyson is and always has been something of an optimist.

This past week, both Twitter and Facebook came under fire for censoring a NY Post article that they (baselessly) claimed was based on ‘hacked material.

Once again, Senate to Subpoena Twitter CEO Over Blocking of Disputed Biden Articles, the Wall Street Journal (et al) reported. Read More...

Facebook: The 2019 Feel-Good Tour

Facebook: The 2019 Feel-Good Tour

Mark Zuckerberg was back on Capitol Hill last week, testifying before Congress about the proposed cryptocurrency, Libra.

“I don’t control Libra” was the central theme of the Facebook  CEO’s testimony,” according to TechCrunch. “The House of Representatives unleashed critiques of his approach to cryptocurrency, privacy, encryption and running a giant corporation during six hours of hearings. Zuckerberg tried to assuage their fears while stoking concerns that if Facebook doesn’t build Libra, the world will end up using China’s version.” Read More...

Online Dating and the Missed Opportunity

Online Dating and the Missed Opportunity

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

App dating is a crap shoot, to be sure. We have friends who have been using the dating apps for years, to no avail, despite the number of apps available and the number of people using them. As of 2017, Tinder alone had over 100M downloads  and 57 million monthly active users (both free and paid).

So where’s the disconnect, literally?

In our opinion, expectations and preconceptions could be part of it. Too much surface information and not enough commonality might be part of it, too. Our friends who use the apps and potentially initially ‘meet’ someone immediately hit LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram et al to cross reference. Read More...

FakesBook (It’s Not At All What You Think)

FakesBook (It’s Not At All What You Think)

If you’re not yet aware of DeepFakes – hyper-realistic manipulations of digital imagery that can alter images so effectively that it’s largely impossible to tell real from fake – time to pay attention. The technology – and the problem – is escalating quickly.

According to Futurism, A Spy Used a Deepfake Photo to Infiltrate LinkedIn Networks. “Many of Jones’ connections told the AP that they were initially suspicious of the profile but accepted anyway.” We personally never accept a LinkedIn invitation from anyone whom we don’t know or haven’t met. The platform is about connecting with people to build your network of contacts for professional or business purposes. Why would you accept an arbitrary invitation? Yet people have argued with us that the more connections you have, the better. No better time than now to disagree. Read More...