The great thing about The Onion is the large proportion of truth in their ridiculous stories. And unless something changes, the America of the future will be lead by the anti-social, Luddites, or both.
From The Onion
Tag Archives: facebook
Future Presidents Already Unelectable
Posted by apt46 on April 23, 2012
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So It Begins
Posted by apt46 on April 10, 2012
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Negative Facebookers Have Low Self-Esteem
Posted by apt46 on March 27, 2012
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This makes a lot of sense in hindsight, but people whose status updates on Facebook often sound like this, probably have low self-esteem:
“Some people are just such liars!”
“The only heaven I’ll know is if my friends remember me when I die.”
“‘In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.’ — F. Scott Fitzgerald”
“Finally getting over this cold. Maybe I’ll actually live through it.”
“People who criticize you behind your back are not your friends, they’re a waste of good air.”
It is known that people with low-self esteem are pessimists who complain more than normal, have negative views on life, are very cautious, and seek approval from others. Because of that last trait, researchers thought that maybe such people censored themselves on Facebook and tried to present a more likable image. Armed with a testable hypothesis and maybe some grant money, they obtained almost 1800 status updates from volunteers and also had them fill out a self-esteem questionnaire. Then they had another group of people rate the status messages based on how positive or negative they were. The status ratings were analyzed against their authors’ self-esteem and it turned out the lower the self-esteem, the more negative the statuses. So if they do censor themselves, they’re not doing a good job — which should come as no surprise to people with poor self-image, since they aren’t good at anything, and are also ugly.
More interestingly, this creates a feedback loop: the people rating the negative statuses didn’t want to get to know the people writing them. Researchers even asked friends of the Debbie Downers if they liked the negative updates, to see if maybe they did just out of empathy for their friend: nope. Therefore, people with low self-esteem tend to think life sucks, which causes people to not want to hang out with them, which causes them to be lonely and think life sucks even more.
Moral of the story: if you want people’s approval, negativity should be very much the exception, not the rule. Also, no one likes you.
From Psychological Science, via NPR
‘So What’ Button For Facebook
Posted by apt46 on February 21, 2012
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Facebook, Meet The Wild West
Posted by apt46 on February 15, 2012
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Facebook has brought back the entertaining olden days when outlaws used to mouth off to sheriffs powerless to arrest them. The sheriff in Jefferson County, Alabama (where Birmingham is), posted this picture of a fugitive onto their Facebook page, as their “Creep of the Week”:
Dustin somehow got wind of the situation and decided to enter into discourse with the sheriff’s office:
Shortly after all this, US Marshals arrested Dustin in Ohio. They probably found out he was there by asking Facebook where he was logging in from, because Dustin has apparently never seen any crime drama ever.
From FAIL Blog
If Social Media Websites Were Magazines
Posted by apt46 on November 22, 2011
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Tauntr made these mock-ups in response to reddit creating a digital magazine (PDF) version of it’s website.
From Tauntr
Coleslaw With A B
Posted by apt46 on November 10, 2011
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Boleslaw is a real Slavic name: a few Polish kings were named that. Coincidentally, so is Wenceslaus, from the carol. BotatoSalad, unfortunately, is not.
From FAIL blog
Don Draper Presenting The Facebook Timeline
Posted by apt46 on September 29, 2011
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If you’re a fan of Mad Men, there’s a new, clever video cut of the scene when Don Draper presents his idea to Kodak for an advertising campaign for one of the first slide projectors, the Kodak Carousel. But instead of the Carousel, in this video he’s presenting the new Facebook Timeline, which is basically a curriculum vitae of your personal life, and is a lot like a long slideshow. Too bad Facebook didn’t think of launching the feature like this.
There doesn’t seem to be a version of the video that can be embedded, so you have to go to YouTube to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAcyJhsamcQ
From YouTube, via Laughing Squid
Google+ Isn’t Doing So Well
Posted by apt46 on September 26, 2011
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In a lot of ways, it’s seems to be following the pattern set by Google Buzz and Google Wave: a lot of build-up, following by a mad rush-in by the early adopters, followed by a slow death as late adopters don’t materialize, and early adopters get bored and move on to the next new shiny thing. According to Yahoo! Finance, people in the know — like Linked-In execs and the CEO of Dropbox’s competitor, Box.net — don’t really see Google+ going anywhere.
And over the past couple of weeks, Facebook has been overhauling its website:
- To one up Google on the one feature they did better than Facebook, Google Circles, they made their friend lists not only more visible, but automatic! Now you don’t have to even figure out which circles your friend Alan is in: Facebook will do it for you.
- They added one-way Twitter-like subscriptions (which Google+ also has) and the Twitter-like news-ticker.
- They added the timeline feature, which lets you pour in even more personal data into Facebook and is therefore a win/win: you get more of your life story in one place, you get to spend more time on Facebook stalking people’s life stories, and Facebook gets even more information about you, so they can show you even better tailored ads while you’re spending all this extra time on Facebook.
- They made it really easy to automatically post what you’re listening to and watching, so your friends can spend even more time on Facebook.
The over-arching theme: user engagement – to prevent mass exodus. (If you’re looking for a chuckle, the overhaul was announced at Facebook’s F8 conference, where SNL’s Andy Samberg did a great impersonation of Zuckerberg, who made it really awkward at the end.)
A few months ago, Google+ was the new toy with some cool features; now, the honeymoon’s over and the ex’s new haircut looks really good. In the first month, it looks like only about 1 in 10 Google+ members actually visited the site. Judging from the numerous anecdotes comparing it to a deserted wild west town, that figure sounds about right. And in November, Google+ is opening up to developers who will hopefully make some sort of tumbleweed game.
In the end, Facebook will win because it is focused on doing one thing, and doing it well: connecting you to your friends. Apple is focused on making computer-things you love, and they’re bigger than Google. Google used to be focused on search, and no one beats it at that. No one beats it on web-mail either, and their news reader is also hard to beat. But they’re trying to be everything to everyone, and they can’t win big battles with their tightly-focused, smart competitors. Microsoft certainly didn’t, and if Google is something, it’s the new Microsoft.
In the meantime, Diaspora* — the open-source, distributed social networking platform — will be shortly released as a beta, after about a year and a half of development thanks to some hefty Kickstarter funds.
Update, Oct 10 2011: Google+ lost 60% of its active users
From Yahoo! Finance