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Antisocial Media

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 Jordan Valinsky 3/25 10:30am

Antisocial Media

Bad Lt

Some Jerk FDNY Lt. Thought Passover Was a Good Time to Call Bloomberg ‘King Jew’ on Twitter

Perhaps the FDNY should incorporate social media etiquette into its intense training sessions. The department and its well-connected aspirants have been responsible for a rash of racist tweets recently. This time it involves 34-year-old EMS Lieutenant Timothy Dluhos who recently went tirade involving racist, anti-semitic and anti-Asian remarks on his since deleted Twitter account.

The New York Post revealed that Dluhos’ Twitter account was a hotbed for nasty remarks, including one instance where he joked about giving up racial remarks for Lent and then added “Jesus that didn’t [last] long…F-ken chinks cant drive.” Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 3/22 5:50pm

Antisocial Media

Screen Shot 2013-03-22 at 4.29.53 PM

@WorstFastAgency Gave Us Some Pretty Terrible Advice

If you’ve ever sought professional advice from someone who puts “social media guru” or “marketing ninja” in their Twitter bio, you know just how little some experts add to the discussion. “Everyone is offering best-practice advice, optimization strategies, etc. It’s about time someone started offering up the very opposite,” Scooter Ramirez said, in an email to Betabeat.

Mr. Ramirez is not his real name, a fact which he felt compelled to remind us, but rather the pseudonymous handle of the cofounder of @WorstFastAgency, a jokey site that promises, “Bad advice for $1. Within 12 hours or less.” Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 10/17/12 5:59pm

Antisocial Media

Twitter office hours

Twitter Hosts NYC Office Hours to Make Nice with Newsroom Developers Incensed Over API Crackdown

Tech companies weren’t the only ones up in arms after Twitter walled up its API. As Nieman Lab noted back in August, when the company said they just want to “deliver a consistent Twitter experience,” developers for newsrooms like the Washington Post and news apps like Storify and Instapaper had a collective panic attack. For services like the Post‘s @MentionMachine, which tracks presidential candidates on Twitter, developers were forced to rework the front end in order to match Twitter’s style of tweet embeds.

To clear the air–and perhaps to encourage newsroom tech teams to keep developing on its platform (as if social media dependent-traffic hounds had a choice anymore!)–Twitter is hosting “Office Hours” in New York City next week. In an email announcing the event, the company said the session was prompted by a flood of questions and concerns from news developers. Read More

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 Nitasha Tiku 5:05pm

Antisocial Media

(Photo: IFTTT)

Twitter’s Walled Garden Will Leave IFTTT Recipes Out in the Cold

The latest victim of the Great Twitter Purge of 2012? IFTTT. We just received an email from CEO Linden Tibbets indicating that “Twitter Triggers” will stop functioning next week. IFTTT (short for “If this, then that”) is a glorious, time-saving little startup that lets users set up recipes to link services and apps. (One of the most popular recipes is getting an SMS message if it rains.) Read More

By Steve Huff 9/17/12 9:44am

Antisocial Media

Takes on a new meaning here. (Photo: Pc1news.com)

Our Sad Future Online: Fake Likes, Fake Friends, Fake Fans

If you think people act fake online now, just wait: troubling research seems to indicate that in just two years’ time, up to 15 percent of our social media interaction will be truly fake. This means fake “likes” on Facebook pages and Twitter accounts padded with thousands of followers with obviously machine-generated names and nonsensical tweets will become a common feature of our social media experience.

As TechCrunch explains, however, the advent of paid social networking stroke jobs has given birth to sleuthing services to help us separate the merely glib from digitally-generated affection: Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 8/07/12 1:22pm

Antisocial Media

(Photo: YouTube)

Before He Was Mayor, Michael Bloomberg Actually Liked Social Media

On Mayor Bloomberg’s weekly radio address last month, he asked his cohost a pointed question, “How do you govern when there’s an instant referendum on everything, before you get a chance to build a constituency, before you get a chance to do a pilot?” It’s a refrain we’ve heard from El Bloombito before. In March, he made similar remarks, telling a crowd in Singapore, “Social media is going to make it even more difficult to make long-term investments,” in cities.

It’s a remarkably abrasive attitude from a mayor who has made sprucing up the city’s social media presence a priority during his last term, not to mention his gleeful bid to become Silicon Alley’s primary benefactor. As it turns out, however, the Mayor wasn’t always so disdainful about the wisdom of the crowd or the democratizing wave of the information age.  Read More