The Girl With A Mac Blog

Most Popular Facebook Status Updates

Posted Dec 22, 2009. Filed under Web, Social Networking, Facebook. Leave a comment?

During 2009, nearly 13 billion status updates were posted by Facebook’s 350 million active users. Recently, Facebook has released “Top Status trends of 2009,” showing exactly what is on people’s minds.

The most popular? Automatic status updates related to Xynga’s Farmville. The game continuously prompts users to post status updates involving everything from a lost cow up for adoption to the player’s recent level up.

Next on the list is FML. If you’ve ever been to http://www.fmylife.com/ you know exactly what this status means. If you’ve never been, you need to go now. It’s hysterical, and possibly my favorite site. Anyways, although kind of funny it’s sad that the first real status update on the list is such a negative one. Really the top three real status updates are negative (FML, Swine Flu, Celebrity Deaths).

However, number five and beyond are slightly more positive including family, sports and Lady Gaga.

Image from Betanews

It’s great to see the general consensus of Facebook users, however is this a move copied from Twitter? I’m thinking it is.

And The Dictionary Word Of The Year Is.. Unfriend?

Posted Nov 17, 2009. Filed under Web, Culture, Social Networking, Facebook. Leave a comment?

That’s right, social networking had become such a tremendous force in our lives the “unfriend” has been named the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year.

Oxford tracks how the English language is changing yearly. Researchers choose the Word of the Year “to reflect the ethos of the year and its lasting potential as a word of cultural significance and use.

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” said Christine Lindberg, a language researcher for Oxford’s U.S. dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”

Oxford defines unfriend (which is a verb) as removing someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Unfriend beat out several other technology related words for the honor. Other considerations were “hashtag” (the hash sign added to a word or phrase that lets Twitter users search for tweets similarly tagged), “netbook” (a small portable laptop computer designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet),”intexticated” (when people are distracted by texting while driving) and “sexting” (the sending of sexually explicit text messages and pictures by cellphone).

Before reading this on Google, I had no idea that dictionaries awarded such a thing as the title of Word of the Year. But I am glad that I’ve come across this because I now know what intexticated means, and it may be my new favorite word. Thank you for adding absolutely ridiculous words to the dictionary, now when writing a paper for my Cinema and Violence class I will now know how to spell sexting. What would I do without that knowledge?

Have A Facebook Addiction? Five Jobs Just For You

Posted Nov 16, 2009. Filed under Web, Culture, Social Networking, Facebook. Leave a comment?

Are you like me, obsessively checking Facebook every five minutes or so? You know how it is, looking at pictures of people you haven’t talked to in forever, keeping your virtual farm thriving and avoiding that message in your inbox from a family member you haven’t seen in years. Well, CNN may have found the perfect job for us and other avid Facebookers.

Facebook and other social media sites, such as MySpace, are usually given a bad rep amongst us college kids. We’ve all heard how a friend of a friend wasn’t hired by [insert whichever impressive company name you feel fits here] because of a couple of drunken Facebook photos. Or we have a friend who is constantly tweeting while at work, so much so that even you wonder how they get any work done. Well, recently I’ve come across this CNN article written by Rachel Zupek, “Five jobs for Facebook addicts,” which has made me feel a little bit better for all of the hours wasted on the social networking site. The good news is that many jobs in online marketing and other areas see social media expertise as a necessity.

So, what are the top five jobs for Facebook addicts?

1. Recruiter
2. Strategist
3. Enterprise architect
4. User operations analyst
5. Director of social media

1. The recruiter needs no explanation. You’ll be dealing with a bunch of college students that are constantly on social networking sites, you should probably be able to keep up with them. You should also be perky, nobody likes that angry recruiter. You know what I’m talking about.

2. The strategist will help companies figure out how to interact with social sites and their online communities. According to Zupek, your responsibilities will include “interacting with users, growing brand awareness, creating buzz, increasing traffic and providing valuable information.”

3. The enterprise architect involves completely redoing a company’s content management strategy and internal networks.

4. The user operations analyst interact with online communities, answer queries, investigate problems and keep track of user habits. I take it these are the guys in charge of Twitter damage control.

5. And finally, the director of social media organizes company blogging, viral marketing, podcasting, etc. Zupek adds, “these folks should be wary of new technologies and be all over blogs, RSS, have Facebook and Twitter accounts, and know the difference between his or her employees playing and researching on MySpace and YouTube.” I meet all the criteria, and if you’re reading Mr. Jobs, I would be perfect for Apple’s director of social media.

Zupek recommends searching job boards and the Internet for “social media,” “interactive marketing,” “new media” or “branding manager” in order to start your search for the perfect, Facebook happy job.

It’s great to see that companies are adapting to my peers and I. A generation that is constantly using social media will find these jobs appealing. And seriously, Mr. Jobs, I’m your girl.

Pancakes & Facebook Equals Innocence

Posted Nov 12, 2009. Filed under Web, Social Networking, Facebook. Leave a comment?

Generation Y has grown up on-line. It’s not unusual for a 19-year-old to constantly update his Facebook status or send out a couple of tweets to his Twitter followers daily. What is unusual is that Facebook has helped prove the innocence of one such 19-year-old, who was arrested after a robbery took place in the Brooklyn public housing complex where he lives.

Rodney Bradford was arrested and held for 12 days after two people were robbed in his housing complex on October 17^th. Bradford, along with his father and stepmother, claimed the 19-year-old was innocent and at his father’s apartment in Harlem when the robbery took place.

What actually proved Bradford’s innocence? His Facebook status update asking his girlfriend where is pancakes were, which was updated a minute before the crime took place. Charges were dropped after Facebook verified that the update had been posted from a computer in his father’s apartment building?

This story seems so unbelievable. It seems odd that Facebook, the same site that all my friends use to take care of their fake farms and open up their virtual restraunts, can also be used as a legitimate alibi. Can you imagine what would have happened if Amy Fisher had updated her Facebook status a minute before Mary Jo Buttafuoco was shot in the face?

LinkedIn & Twitter: Partners..? What?

Posted Nov 10, 2009. Filed under Web, Twitter, Social Networking. Leave a comment?

LinkedIn Corp. and Twitter Inc announced late yesterday that they have formed a partnership that lets users instantly post status updates on both of the social networking sites. The two companies plan to implement the new features over the next couple of days.

LinkedIn, has over 50 million members, with a focus on professionals. LinkedIn is a professional social networking site allowing members to connect with new clients, jobs and information. Twitter, on the other hand, is a microblogging service (allowing users to connect using 140 character tweets) with more than 58 million unique visitors monthly.

On his LinkedIn blog, Allen Blue (co-founder) writes, “The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.”

There is one thing that initially bothered me about this. I don’t know if I really want to combine my professional relationships on LinkedIn with my old high school/college (and other various) friends on Twitter. I obviously don’t talk to the two groups the same way, and up until now I could tweet whatever I wanted (this really doesn’t apply to me so much on Twitter because my account is public, but if LinkedIn collaborated with Facebook it’d be tragic). However, my logic remains the same. I don’t know if I want my colleagues knowing every little detail about my mundane life. And then I read a little bit further in Blue’s blog. Luckily the companies thought about this too, and there is a way to set it up on Twitter so that only tweets containing the #in hashtag will be shared with LinkedIn.

With that out of the way, I wish you many years of happiness Twitter and LinkedIn.