Category: Random Social
Quit the Denial – Social Farter
Great messaging from the Canadian Ministry of Health & Longterm Care with its Quit The Denial campaign against social smoking.
The Social Farter one is obviously my fave.
“If you only fart with friends, you’re not a farter. You’re just a social farter and that makes it OK.”
There’s also The Social Nibbler which isn’t as funny IMO.
Vining Nemo with Twitter’s Vine App
Just read this article on DailyDot about Vining winter storm Nemo.
Is this a sign that the use of Instagram to record and share events is on its way out? I mean, just 3 months ago Instagram usage went through the roof when super storm Sandy hit the east coast.
Having adjourned from the office for the day, I am now safe at home to ride it out. #boston #nemo #viewfromm… vine.co/v/bnE13bhdx1H
— Christiana Ellis (@christianaellis) February 8, 2013
The Vine app is only a few weeks old and likely has a fraction of the 100 million plus on Instagram but I suspect this might change once Twitter starts to properly promote it to is 200 million monthly active users
Speaking for myself , a few months ago I used to post 2-4 new pictures on Instagram per week. But I’ve dropped that to less than one per week and 3 “Vines” this week.
The storm is only just getting started and I have no doubt that Instagram traffic will surge and it might surpass the amount of pictures from Sandy.
I’ll be interested in watching Vine’s.
Are you taking a break from Facebook?
The NYT just ran this story based on the PEW study titled “Coming and Going on Facebook”
Some of the key findings are quite interesting.
- 61% of current Facebook users say that at one time or another in the past they have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.
- 28% of Facebook users say the site has become less important to them than it was a year ago. And 34% of current users say the amount of time they are spending on Facebook has decreased over the past year.
- Some 38% of Facebook users ages 18-29 expect to spend less time using the site in 2013.
I definitely feel a Facebook fatigue online & the younger demographic is something we should be paying attention too since their the ones that adopted the platform first.
Is this social media fatigue or is it a question of too much selection? We now live in a world where every website or new app is trying to be its own social network and finding more and more ways to keep them engaged outside of social networks.
Should Facebook be worried?
You can read the full report here.
The story of how Comodo in NYC got started
I absolutely love the story behind Comodo in NYC.
Tamy and Felipe started an ambitious project which was to host a dinner party every night week for a year in their NYC apartment and blogging about the experience.
At first they invited only their friends & family but obviously ran our of guests to invite so they opened up to make dinner for strangers and fans that were following the project on their blog and on social media.
Unfortunately the NYC Department of Health took notice and shut them down which seemed like the end of that but Tamy and Felipe really wanted to keep going and just decided to open a restaurant in SOHO.
They put their project on Kickstarter and got successfully funded in its first week.
I’ve added it to my Foursquare list of places I must check out next time I’m in NYC.
Casey Neistat’s Guide to keeping Instagram great
Instagram is great but a platform is only as good as its users. As Casey says, Instagram is not about the pictures, it’s about the sharing which allows everybody to peer into the lives of interesting people.
A brilliant example is difference between Rick Ross’s Instagram versus that of Justin Bieber. While RR’s feed is a visual story of his fascinating life the Biebs is too busy taking pictures of himself all the time… there is no story!
Here’s Casey Neistat‘s Rules for keeping Instagram great.
- Find your theme and share it.
- Easy with the hashtags, nobody cares (I’m guilty here!)
- Don’t tag people in their own pictures.
- Asking people to follow you is not ok, ever.
- Easy on the tilt shift. (oops!)
- The cropping tool is there, use it!
- Your baby is cute but nobody needs to see 10 pictures.
Casey’s closing comments are critical to keeping Instagram great. A social networks lifespans is pretty short, they come and go but they only exists as long as we keep it awesome so lets work together to do so.
