By Jordan Valinsky 5/01 1:48pm

Kickstart It

Welcome to New York. (Photo: YouTube)

Thrillist Has Hired Jannic Nielssen​, That Kid With the Kickstarter-Like Resume

Here’s a lesson for all the soon-to-be college graduates out there looking for work: get off your ass and create some ~viral content~. It just might work! Take Jannic Nielssen, a rather lively young professional who launched a Kickstarter-esque campaign, fit with an elevator pitch promoting his skills, that he created to get him a job.

Mr. Nielssen was looking to get his foot in the door in either social media or advertising (who isn’t?), but needed an employment offer letter by May 1, or else the half-Jamaican, half-Norwegian citizen faced deportation due to his visa expiring. Read More

By Jordan Valinsky 4/10 4:05pm

Antisocial Media

Interoffice text. (Photo: Hashgram)

So Much for the ‘New Nice’: People Online Are Increasingly Dicks to Each Other

People are increasingly acting like complete assholes to each other online, according to a new study conducted by corporate training firm VitalSmarts. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said they believe people’s rude behavior on social media is getting worse, and that they themselves have “no qualms” about acting like a jerk online.

Meanwhile, 19 percent of survey takers said they have blocked, unsubscribed or unfriended a person after an online argument, while one in five of the 3,000 people who responded said they have reduced IRL contact following an e-brawl. Read More

By Ryan Holiday 12:00pm

Off the Media

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The Real Thing: Don’t Listen to Coke, Social Media Works . . . At Least As Well As Regular Media

Last week, Coca-Cola put out a study declaring that online buzz has no impact on sales. And of course, that announcement drove everyone on the Internet to start buzzing about it.

AdAge, MediaBistro, Motley Fool, Business Insider and dozens of others all weighed in on Coke’s study, which “finds online buzz has no measurable impact on short-term sales”–driving thousands of tweets, likes and comments between them. (By “weighing in,” I mean they repeated the same few facts derived from the same presentation originally reported by AdAge in its “Buzzkill: Coca-Cola Finds No Sales Lift from Online Chatter” story.) Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 3/14 5:13pm

Hack Hack Hack Hack It Apart

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Reuters Producer Matthew Keys Indicted for Allegedly Conspiring with Anonymous [UPDATED]

Power-Twitterer and Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys has been indicted by the Justice Department. He stands accused of “conspiring with members of the hacker group ‘Anonymous’ to hack into and alter a Tribune Company website.”

A journalist handing over his ex-employer’s log-in info to Anonymous, combined with the fact that the vandalized “Tribune Company website” happens to have been the homepage of the Los Angeles Times, is so juicy that overworked assistants all over Hollywood are probably cobbling together pitches to turn Keys into the next Bradley Manning.

Before Reuters, Mr. Keys worked as a web producer for the Tribune Company-owned TV station KTXL FOX 40, in California. The DOJ says that in December 2010, after being “terminated” by Fox 40, he: Read More

By Jessica Roy 1/23 9:14am

Gram It

(Photo: Instagram / Benjimanfood)

NYC Chefs Hate Your Food Instagrams as Much as Everyone Else

Food pics have long been the poster child of photo apps like Instagram. Crammed between the selfies and the screencaps of inspirational quotes, photos of food porn have become so ubiquitous that most of us scroll right by them without a second thought. But NYC chefs–particularly those steadfastly mounted upon Michelin-starred high horses–are beginning to foment a revolution against the Instagramming masses. Read More

By Jessica Roy 1/22 8:22am

Linkages

Utopia? (Photo: Office Snapshots)

Booting Up: Oh, to Be a Googler

The Roosevelt Island campus is still in progress, but Cornell NYC Tech officially had its first day of classes yesterday at 20,000 feet of donated space at Google’s Chelsea HQ. Oh you fancy huh? [New York Times]

Now you can apply for a job at Google with just one click–as long as you have an actually updated and functional Google+ profile. So… nevermind. [The Next Web]

People are still getting fired for their social media presences so maybe keep that in mind next time you comment on a BuzzFeed article, Curtis Dee, manager at the Olive Garden. [New York Times]

How does Google keep its employees so happy? Its HR team, called People operations, uses data and social scientists to figure out which perks employees respond to the best. Yeah? Well… at Betabeat we have free coffee… [Slate]

You can no longer purchase gun-related promotions on Groupon, at least for now. [Business Insider]

By Jessica Roy 1/09 3:06pm

Social Strat

(Photo: Madisonhoteldc.com)

Treat Yo’ Self: For Just a $47,000 Hotel Reservation, You Too Can Get a ‘Social Media Butler’ to Tweet for You

Wondering where to dump that stray $50k you have lying around so that you can spend the presidential inauguration swagging out in some palatial, gold-plated estate? Look no further than D.C.’s Madison Hotel, which is offering an elite “Inaugural Town and Country” package to visitors of the capital for whom a night at the Four Seasons just ain’t cuttin’ it. Read More

By Myles Tanzer 11/19/12 12:15pm

Election 2012

Everybody likes this (Photo: Facebook.com)

Obama’s Social Media Strategist Tells Tumblr How to Win an Election

It’s about two weeks later and we’re still reeling from the Presidential election. Luckily, we got our campaign fix today because Tumblr and The Daily Beast spoke to Laura Olin, one of the Obama campaign’s top social media strategists.

Ms. Olin was responsible for scheduling the victory posts to all Obama’s social networks. Most notably, she posted the now-famous photo of a hugging Mr. and Mrs. Obama with the simple caption “four more years.” The post has amassed more than 800,000 retweets and is the most liked Facebook photo of all time.

But like all important moments in history, the much loved post almost never happened, Ms. Olin explains: Read More

By Jessica Roy 11/15/12 1:24pm

Twitter War

(Screencap: Twitter)

Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict

After announcing their intention to attack Hamas on Twitter, the Israeli Defense Force began military operations in Gaza yesterday. The Alqassam Brigades, Hamas’s military arm, also has a Twitter account, and the two have been engaging in a sparring match on the platform that elevates typically meaningless Twitter tiffs into the stuff of WWIII nightmares.

Aside from updating their followers on the death toll and the status of military strikes, both accounts have tweeted photos of children (warning: both links are graphic) injured or killed in the conflict. The IDF is letting no social media channel go untouched. They’ve been uploading photos of their operations to Flickr and Pinterest and publishing status updates to their official Facebook page. They also just started a Tumblr account that is littered with pro-Israel propaganda, including a photo showing a cartoon of an Israeli family in the crosshairs of a Hamas target with the message “Israeli civilians are Hamas’s target.” Read More