Customer Service in the Twitter Age

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How does customer service in the age of social media — especially Twitter — differ from customer service at any other time in consumer history? Here’s a little story.

My wife and I decided to buy a desk for my birthday that was coming up, …continue reading

Community Conflict: Causes and Cures

community-conflict-causes

When you’re in charge of making sure that a group of people — any people — get along, it’s easy to wonder if a community conflict is inevitable. And it doesn’t matter if that group of people is an online forum, a classroom, a Facebook …continue reading

How Soon is Too Soon for Social Media?

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How soon is too soon when it comes to carrying on with business as usual in the wake of a massive tragedy? It was mere days ago that the horrific and unanswered events of the Boston Marathon bombing rocked the headlines and there wasn’t a …continue reading

Fear of Being Alone: Social Media in Entertainment

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I remember this special, magical time in my youth spent with my Sega Master System, where I would need nothing but a controller and my little composition book. My mother had started this trend of writing down notes about the various games I was playing …continue reading

Edit Privacy Settings for Facebook Photo Albums

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How do you edit privacy settings for Facebook photo albums?

Over the past few years, Facebook has gotten a lot of — in many cases, well-deserved — flak for fiddling with users’ privacy settings without warning. And even though we all need to …continue reading

Facebook: How to Delete Friends Tutorial

delete-friend-facebook

Why would you ever want to know how to delete friends on Facebook? Friends are wonderful, aren’t they? Almost always, yes.

Facebook is a great way for long-lost friends to reacquaint themselves and for families to remain in touch in between the annual reunions. So …continue reading

How to Avoid Identity Theft on Social Networks

Identity Theft

On LockerGnome.net, Tyler Hoang asks:

I’ve got a friend who is thinking about joining his first social network, but he’s scared of identity theft. I couldn’t help him out that much because I’ve never had my identity stolen before. How do you guys …continue reading

Will Adding Music to My YouTube Channel Get Me into Trouble?

How does adding music effect my YouTube Channel?

Peter O’Underfire writes:

I would like to put music on YouTube. However, I don’t want to get in trouble and have my account suspended. Am I allowed to upload videos with music on YouTube, just as long as I don’t monetize it? I would like …continue reading

Is Buying YouTube Views Worth It?

Buying YouTube Views - Worth it?

At LockerGnome.net, Lizc asks:

Can you really buy YouTube views?

The short answer is yes.

There are a myriad of ways that you can buy YouTube views. You can pay someone to utilize nefarious methods (think spam) to escalate views on videos uploaded …continue reading

Why Chrome and Firefox’s Adoption of WebRTC is a Good Thing

Firefox and Google

Google and Mozilla have been seen as competitors for several years in the browser space. Despite both of their browsers being built almost entirely on open source code with the help of active and supporting communities, the two browsers have been trading blows for market …continue reading

Why Should You Use Google+?

Google Plus

Jarrett Lyon writes:

I know that you’re into Google+ and was wondering if you would be willing explain how to efficiently use the service. I’m pretty well tied into Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, yet have no idea how to use Google+ considering it isn’t as …continue reading

How to Find out if Your Twitter Followers Are Real or Fake

TwitterAudit

Are the majority of your Twitter followers real? It’s hard to tell these days as bot makers work very hard to make their automated accounts seem like average users. Unfortunately, it’s all a ruse and eventually those bots will spam you or sneak in some …continue reading

Would You Pay $1 to Message Anyone on Facebook?

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Facebook recently posted this statement: “Imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.” Last year, Facebook made this statement: “a rumor on the Internet caught our …continue reading

How to Use Social Media to Improve Your Marriage

Ryan and Angela

Marriage takes a lot of work. No matter how desperately in love the couple was on the day they gave their vows, the fact is that two humans living together takes patience and compromise on both sides. The flames of passion may dim, and the …continue reading

Social Media Kills Creativity? Not Quite

CreativeLego

Looking at search results, it seems to be believed that social media kills creativity. In fact, I said goodbye to social media myself not so long ago. Yet this decision was grounded mostly in the realization that it didn’t expand my horizon as much …continue reading

Social Networking Sites for Diabetics

Resized diabetic syringe

A hundred years ago, if you were diagnosed with diabetes, it was basically like being handed a death sentence. Today, with the arrival of new drugs and treatments, this is no longer the case. In addition, diabetics no longer finds themselves at the mercy of …continue reading

Why Companies Should Not Hire Based on Klout Scores

Laptop

Klout scores have started to find their way into job postings by otherwise reputable companies attempting to find individuals to help run their online communities. This sounds, on the surface, like the company is making an effort to find someone who is willing to back …continue reading

California Employers Banned from Requiring Social Network Credentials

California Employers and Universities Banned from Asking for Social Media Credentials

In what can only be described as a win for privacy advocates in California, Governor Jerry Brown signed two bills into law that effectively ban the request of social media usernames and passwords by employers and universities. These laws will go into effect on January …continue reading

Is It Too Late for MySpace?

MySpace

MySpace has released a video detailing its latest redesign, which intends to bring folks back to the social network that was largely abandoned with the rise of Facebook. MySpace, which was widely known for giving users the freedom to design and decorate their individual profile …continue reading

Anything You Tweet Can Be Held Against You

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Social media has created some interesting challenges for those of us who choose to use it. In fact, it is hard for many of us to remember what life was like prior to the cellphone or a time when we were unable to keep up …continue reading

The Day I Let My Kid Have a Facebook Account

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Facebook, to be honest, is something I ruefully enjoy. In fact, about a year or two ago, I cancelled Facebook and only came back after several months when I felt it was “safe.” Clustering just my friends and family together, it eventually amassed to a …continue reading

A Plea to Klout

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I’ve written about the gamification of influence before, and my main premise remains the same: gamifying influence dismantles trust systems. Some platforms, like connect.me, have actually attempted to create a system of trust based entirely on gamification. Klout has taken a …continue reading

Goodbye, Social Media; I’m Leaving You

Google+

This is story that has been told many times already, yet this is not a rant. I’m not saying that social media is useless, or a futile attempt to facilitate communication. On the contrary. Social Media is, above all else, a vehicle for inspiration, motivation, …continue reading

Not-so-friendly Requests: Adware on Facebook

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“Mom? Why do you ha… where are all these ads coming from on your Facebook wall?” I asked as I sat down next to my mother with my laptop rested on my lap beside her. She glanced up from her laptop and gave a sidelong …continue reading

Amazon Enters the Content Creation World with Living Classics Game

Amazon Game Studios

Amazon has made an announcement that is sure to make folks at their competitor’s offices take notice. With the announcement of a new division within Amazon (Amazon Game Studios), the retail giant has entered into the content creation world with a new game …continue reading

Is the World Ready for Virtual Reality?

NATTC NAS Pensacola

Virtual reality may finally be heading to the gaming world after decades of failed attempts and lackluster consumer adoption thanks to the Rift project by Oculus. The virtual reality headset has the backing of industry-leading names like Valve and Unity at a weight and price …continue reading

Confessions of a Retired Comment Moderator

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Guest blogger Elliot Guest writes:

If you take nothing more away from this article, let it be this: The comment system as we know it is simply a sum of its parts. Those parts that interact together are what we call commenters.

…continue reading

Why Internet Boycotts Usually Fail

Boycott

My Google+ stream was flooded with calls to boycott Apple this weekend. But I’ve seen countless calls to shut down companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi, JC Penny, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and numerous other multinational corporations that are hardly phased by these loud calls …continue reading

How to Stop Annoying Google+ Event Email Notifications

Google Settings

Google announced a new feature to Google+ during the Google I/O keynote on Wednesday: Events. This is a clever addition to the Google+ service that allows you to schedule events that invitees can add to their Google Calendars and share photos with the rest of …continue reading

What’s the Best Computer for Your Parents?

computer-parents

This post doesn’t apply to all parents, obviously. But if you’ve been living out of the house for a couple of decades or more, you might find this situation familiar. (Or, if you’re younger, you might substitute “grandparents” for “parents.”)

Computers and parents don’t always …continue reading