YouTube Celebrates 10 Years

On 2015/04/23   /   IT Matters, Social Media   /   19 Comments
YouTube Celebrates 10 Years

Many argue that YouTube is one most time consuming sites ever invented on the Internet, though many Facebook users might disagree. In February of 2005, 3 former PayPal employees decided to start up a video sharing service and they uploaded the first video on April 23, 2005. Here we are 10 years later.

In 2006, many people were not sure it was going to survive due to all the copyright infringement lawsuits but then later that year (Nov 2006) Google acquired them for 1.65 Billion USD. This seemed like another ridiculous dot com valuation yet it definitely looks like a deal now.

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Newest Apps for Your Deepest, Darkest Secrets

On 2015/04/21   /   IT Matters, Social Media   /   20 Comments
Newest Apps for Your Deepest, Darkest Secrets

While social media has become a platform for individuals to have their own public personas, there are also different online platforms these days that allow users to share and post without revealing their true selves. Different “anonymous apps” such as Whisper, Yik Yak and Secret allow users to remain nameless while posting some of their thoughts (deep, dark, and otherwise), secrets, ideas or revelations that they’d rather not be traced back to them. Here’s a quick review of the different features these three apps possess.

 

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Google Mobilegeddon live April 21

On 2015/04/16   /   IT Matters, Social Media   /   12 Comments
Google Mobilegeddon live April 21

I have been preaching quite heavily especially in the past couple years to either have a separate mobile friendly website (m.domain.com) or even better yet a responsive website. A responsive website “responds” to the width of the screen viewing it to display all of the elements in a more friendly fashion. This is done by stacking elements, shrinking images or removing them, and displaying a mobile/touch friendly menu. That way your website looks good on desktop computers, tablets, and also smartphones. Many websites on the Internet are still not mobile friendly which is frustrating for the user experience, sometimes almost unusable. On many sites, the inbound traffic is now over 50% accessed by mobile devices. If they can’t easily find what they are looking for, they leave (bounce) away from the website and look at a different one. In the past this only affected overall usability however Google is now unleashing a major algorithm update taking effect on April 21st which many in the industry have nicknamed Mobilegeddon.

Google’s secret sauce will now take into effect the mobile-friendliness of a website, whether it has a separate m.domain.com or is responsive. Google has made it clear that it will now have a significant impact in their search results. The idea is that people will be happier with their Google search results if Google sends them to websites that are not only relevant but easier to navigate on the particular device they are viewing it. Otherwise people would “blame” Google for giving them search results that aren’t as good.

TESTING

How can you test your website to see if it is mobile friendly? Use this Google tool:

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What happens to our Facebook account when we pass away?

On 2015/03/26   /   IT Matters, Social Media   /   36 Comments
What happens to our Facebook account when we pass away?

While it’s never easy for any of us to ponder our own demise, we live in an age wherein many of us have an “online counterpart” of our real lives – our social media profiles.

Have you ever wondered about what happens to your Facebook profile when you die? Does it remain online forever, or does Facebook simply delete your account? Wait, how would they know for sure about someone’s death?

Like I said, it’s a thought that might make a lot of us uncomfortable, but it’s something we nevertheless have to come to grips with just in case something unfortunate happens to us.

Facebook has apparently already considered such a scenario, and has a system that can turn your page into a “memorial page” in case of death. They also recently introduced a new “legacy contact” feature.

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Beware of frauds on your friends lists

On 2015/03/12   /   IT Matters, Security & Privacy, Social Media   /   31 Comments
Beware of frauds on your friends lists

Billions of people are on social media these days. For those with bad intentions, that’s a worldwide pool of potential prey for them to victimize. We’ve all come across a “fake” account at one point in our lives. Though most of these are created by people who simply have too much time on their hands, other fraudulent accounts are created to serve far more malicious purposes.

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Top 10 developing countries that use social media the most

On 2014/06/19   /   IT Matters, Social Media   /   67 Comments
Top 10 developing countries that use social media the most

Did you know that developing nations are among those who make up the majority of the top social media users in the world? At the same time it is important to note that the majority of these countries’ populations are actually non-Internet users, with many still preferring to communicate via standard phones that allow text messaging and calling.

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