By Steve Huff 10/01/12 5:28pm

Antisocial Media

Screengrab

App.net Thinks of the Poors, Lowers Yearly Membership Price, Adds Monthly Plan

App.net has generously created a $5 per month plan and lopped $14 off its yearly membership fee. That means people with $36 to spare on a Twitter lookalike can now snag their very own App.net handle and bragging rights to spending $36. Or $60, if you opt for the $5 monthly plan.

As The Next Web notes, members who ponied up the original (and infamous) $50 yearly fee won’t receive a refund, just extra months on their current plan. Read More

By Steve Huff 8/24/12 5:08pm

True Crime

Don't do this.

Empire State Building Shooting: There’s No ‘Crime Scene Filter’ on Instagram

Around 9 a.m. Friday 53-year-old Jeffrey Johnson, a former accessories designer with Hazan Imports, shot and killed a 41-year-old former co-worker. Reports from the scene indicate the shooter was confronted by police outside the Empire State Building and was killed when he opened fire. At least nine others were injured during the shootout.

Every smartphone owner in the vicinity began tweeting about the drama, many uploading photos taken on the fly–to Twitter and, perhaps more strangely, Instagram. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 6/08/12 5:00pm

XX in Tech

This girl is your future demo. (flickr.com/littledebbie11)

Bad News, Bros: Woman Are the Tech Demo That Matters

Just because wisdom is conventional doesn’t mean it’s right, and just because dudes 18 to 25 are considered the prized tech demographic doesn’t mean it’s true. The Atlantic dug up a recent talk by Intel researcher Genevieve Bell, and it turns out that women are pretty much the customers you want to have on lock. And people wonder why Pinterest has a great big Scrooge McDuck-style cache of venture capital cash.

Ms. Bell has shared several interesting nuggets, including that women in Western countries use the Internet 17 percent more per month; they spend more time talking on their mobile phones (hold your stereotyped jokes, please); and they’re the biggest users of every social networking site that’s not LinkedIn. Also, “Women are the vast majority owners of all internet enabled devices–readers, healthcare devices, GPS.” Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/21/12 7:09am

Social Mediocrity

There are approximately zero flattering pictures of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the Internet. (picasaweb.google.com)

Microsoft Launches New Social Network That Looks Exactly Like Google+

Looks like Steve Ballmer has a new product to hype. While the rest of us were recovering from our post-IPO hangovers, Microsoft decided that the weekend after Facebook went public was the perfect time to discreetly launch a new social network. It’s called So.cl, and no, we have no idea how you’re supposed to pronounce that. (Oh wait, apparently it’s “social.” So… it’s a new social network called “social.” Clever!) Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/15/12 10:34am

Facebook

Making friends: Clockwise from left, Kallie Hoots, Maima Hartl, Veta Behrends, Trinidad ransen, Taisha Tryon and Donette Morrency

Like for Sale: Invasion of the Fugazi Facebook Friends

“The only way to have a friend,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “is to be one.”

This was pre-Internet.

These days, friends, fans, followers, likes and other signs of affection are available for purchase, and they’re dirt cheap. On a recent balmy afternoon, we whipped out a credit card and used it to purchase 250 Facebook fans for our tech site, Betabeat, from the Uruguay-based Bulkfans.com. The price? $30. Better, the site guaranteed they were “targeted USA citizens.” We were initially wary of giving this company our credit card number, but the order page linked to a prominent ecommerce site, so we went for it. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 9/01/11 1:46pm

Social Strat

uncram

Uncram: Why Say It In 140 Characters When You Can Post a Multimedia ‘Diary’?

Uncram, a buzzed about New York startup launched this week with a flattering proposition: Your thoughts, ideas, and insights are just too multi-faceted to be limited to the blurb-and-link, blurb-and-link format, aren’t they? Shouldn’t the world experience the full splendor of your story-telling instead of standard tweet or status update?

To give social mediates a little more breathing room, CEO Ariel Porath created an extender that functions like a souped-up Deck.ly. Rather than just allowing users room for more text, it also lets you add photos, videos, topics, maps, and links “to get your story across.” Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 8/11/11 1:03pm

Anti-Social Networking

jessica-lawrence

No Wonder NYTM’s Jessica Lawrence Is So Into Twitter, It Got Her a Boyfriend

New social networks try to sell potential members in different ways. More privacy than Facebook! More intimacy than Twitter! Less self-promoter-y than LinkedIn! But what they should be selling you on are what they can do for your offline life.

Take for example, New York Tech Meetup managing director Jessica Lawrence. Although privy to every local wantrepreneur trying to solve social networking needs you didn’t even know you cared about (and possibly don’t), Ms. Lawrence focuses her time on just one: Twitter. That’s because within six months, Twitter helped her find a job, a boyfriend, and an apartment to move into with her new love. (Hrrm, maybe we’ve been tweeting wrong?) Read More

By Ben Popper 7/19/11 10:43am

Net Neutral

netneutrality

It’s Time For Social Network Neutrality


Social Network Neutrality

So what does this have to do with social networks like Facebook or Twitter?

Distributors, owners of “the pipes,” will always have an incentive to maximize profit by way of price discrimination, or, if they choose to produce their own content, to prioritize their own goods ahead of or instead Read More