You want to believe that Facebook message is private. It’s supposed to be between you and your recipient. But even private Facebook messages are subject to hacking. Facebook tries to ensure privacy.
Facebook introduces a new feature called Secret Conversations. You can scramble and self-destruct your messages. The social media conglomerate didn’t give an exact date. But a press statement said Secret Conversations will be available later this summer. You need the latest Facebook Messenger for your smart device. That smart device needs to have the utmost security. It’s probably better to get a phone with fingerprint security. Choose a Facebook friend, with a green dot. That’s how you know the person is available to chat. Tap their name and choose Secret Conversation. The recipient will designate their encrypted device. Your message appears in a black box instead of a blue one. That’s how you will separate Secret Conversation from Facebook Messenger. Facebook gets an identity key that confirms your real identity. Secret Conversation can hold word messages, likes, emoji, and photos. It can’t hold videos (at least not now). You choose when to self-destruct a message. You can choose five seconds, like they do in Mission Impossible. Or you can choose a whole year.
I hope Secret Conversation is successful for another reason. Lately, hackers and spammers posing as Facebook friends and family have been sending messages. When I click on, they’re trying to sell me stuff or get me in a ‘home based business’. It took a while. I shortly noticed the real friends didn’t talk like the posers do. I wonder if they would have broken through Secret Conversation. Would encryption be strong enough to tell a real friend from an imposture? If Facebook didn’t notice already, summer is half over. They said Secret Conversation would be released later that summer. Shouldn’t they hurry with that?
Leslie Jones, star of the new Ghostbusters and Saturday Night Live, signed off Twitter due to many abusive tweets that came her way. Some are so racist and sexually offensive I won’t dare quote them. Jones fought back. She reported some of her abusers. But the more she did that, the more vicious the tweets got. Not only did Jones sign off, she called for action. She calls for stronger guidelines to crack down on hate speech. She urged fellow Twitters to report hate speech. In her final tweets Jones said, “I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this. So hurt right now.” Some Twitter users were found out and suspended permanently. A Twitter spokesperson vows his company will do more to fight Twitter abuse. One suspended Twitter user is Breitbart editor and conservative commentator?Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos denied any abuse.??Milo Y. claims his suspension was politically based. He criticized Twitter. Yinnopoulos said he was targeted because he was a conservative. He even hinted he’s part of a left-wing witch hunt.
It shouldn’t take a celebrity to remind us about proper social media etiquette. Twitter should not be a place to spit venomous hatred. And cowards hide behind fake names and pictures to spew it. That’s the real tragedy here. I’d like to see one of those abusers confront Jones face to face. But we have to be careful when we say, ‘curb hate speech’. Milo Y. may have a point. Let’s not turn hate speech into a witch hunt. How can we crack down on abusive tweets without interfering with free speech? I’ve seen some of the tweets Jones got. Some are really vile and perverse. That has no place on Twitter. But if someone doesn’t like Ghostbusters, and posts a constructive criticism about the movie, that should not be censored. Let’s be respectable about it. Will this case make Twitter a safer place? Or is this an attempt to stifle our First Amendment rights?
The 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers are mostly made up of Millennials (young adults born between 1981-1999). Many Cavalier fans are Millennials. This means great social media moments, especially during the celebration. We weren’t disappointed. Lebron took several selfies with fans and his family. Tweets flowed. Cleveland star Kevin Love tweeted, “Long live the king” (referring to king James). The Cavaliers front office tweeted, “First of 33 teams to ever overcome a 3-1 deficit.” Snapchat photos show the Cavaliers passing the NBA trophy around on the flight home. Celebrities joined the social media fun. Cleveland legend Drew Carey showed off a $5,000 Las Vegas betting ticket. Under the picture he said, “Let’s go Cavs!” Basketball legend Magic Johnson congratulated James with a tweet. He congratulated James for bring a world title to his home state of Ohio (this is big of Johnson. He’s a Michigan resident. Do you know the rivalry between these two states?!) President Obama tweeted his congratulations to the Cavaliers. Even space celebrated. NASA sent out pictures taken from outer space. This picture showed Cleveland lit up in celebration the night they won the championship.
Sports and social media are going hand in hand. We should expect this in the future. Imagine being a kid in the stands that night. Imagine you take a selfie with Lebron, Kevin Love, and your other NBA heroes. You have a story to tell your friends. You have a story to tell future generations. You have pictures to back it. Imagine being on that team. You get countless congratulations from people you’ll probably never meet. We complain about the evil social media can cause. Unfortunately, there is a lot of evil social media can cause. But there’s a lot of good social media causes. This celebration is a good cause. This is how social media should be. Who will win it all in 2017?
Early this morning, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made an astounding announcement concerning his company. Twitter acquired Magic Pony Technology. What is Magic Pony Technology? Why does this matter?
Magic Pony Technology is a London based company. They specialize in machine tool learning and video improvement. This acquisition isn’t a cheap one. Some speculate they bought Magic Pony for $150 million. Magic Pony said they will help Twitter improve visual experiences. Jack Dorsey says Magic Pony will enhance Twitter’s live video experience. Twitter needs to. Consumers complain about Twitter’s live video availability. They’ve even been the subject of some jokes. They’re also competing with You Tube, Facebook and Snapchat for video streaming. It seems Twitter needs Magic Pony more than Magic Pony needs Twitter. This year, they demonstrated machine learning research. They demonstrated upgrades of low resolution videos by using regular graphics cards. The Magic Pony community doesn’t consists of couch potatoes in their mother’s basement. All eleven have PhD’s in computer science,?computer neuroscience, and computer vision. Magic Pony co-founder Rob Bishop uses GPUs (graphics processing unit) and deep learning to improve graphics quality. Bishop is confident his company can improve picture quality on low resolution cameras. They want Twitter videos to be less blurry.
That’s how Magic Pony got that name. A magic pony is something nobody believes until they see it. Twitter better hope it happens. Magic Pony better make it happen. More people are switching from writing post to streaming them. The deep leaning process shows me Magic Pony puts considerable effort in their work. I believe Twitter did a lot of research and combing before acquiring a video improvement partner. At least I hope so. I normally don’t like mergers. But in this case, this isn’t a merger. This is a partnership. Will Magic Pony help Twitter’s video streaming woes? Can they?
The emoji is the new way of expressing oneself. Some are even more powerful than words. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. Social media and advertisers understand this. Twitter and the emoji come together in advertising.
Twitter announces emoji based advertising. We expect this move around July 17. That’s World Emoji Day. Advertisers will use this cartoon emotional icon to target consumers. These consumers often tweet with the emoji. Do you like baseball? Chances are you tweet baseball based cartoons, and maybe symbols of your favorite team (My favorite team is the Boston Red Sox). You’ll be getting a baseball based emoji real soon. You’ll be getting plenty of them. Do you like seafood? Do you tweet seafood emojis? You’ll be hearing from seafood restaurant chains emoji style. The emoji really took off in 2014. In the last two years, over 110 billion emojis have been tweeted. That’s billion with a B! In 2015, Oxford Dictionary declared ’emoji’ the word of the year. A Twitter ad manager said, “”Emojis have become a ubiquitous way for people, publishers, and brands to express their feelings.”
Yesterday, I talked about a spam case. People, and tech companies, felt so bombarded by one man’s span that the man now faces prison time. We don’t have to worry about that here…for now. Advertisers are doing the smart thing. Don’t think this will be limited to Twitter. I’m almost certain other social media sites will follow suit. I use the emoji on Facebook and You Tube often. You can bet countless others do so. But there is a flip side. What goes up must come down. If it goes up in a fast rate, it will come down at a faster rate. The emoji got very hot very quickly. In the future, it will get very cold very quickly. Look at previous trends. That’s my concern here. If I were a Twitter ad executive, I would milk emoji advertising for all I could now. However, I would have enough common sense to know the emoji will fall away soon. How much longer do you think the emoji will last?
Yes, even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has accounts in other social media outlets. Two of them, Twitter and Pinetrest, were hacked this past weekend.
An organization called OurMine Team claimed responsibility. Nobody has verified how the hacks took place. But it’s widely believed Linkedin massive password dump a few weeks ago. In May 2016, millions of passwords and other pieces of user information were somehow leaked. Linkedin contacted the hacked users and instructed them to reset their passwords. It’s easy to use the same password for different accounts, from emails to social media. Apparently, it’s easy for Mark Zuckerberg to use the same passwords. Twitter suspended Zuckerberg’s account almost immediately. They publicly announced that decision. ?It’s back up now. I don’t know how entertaining it’s going to be. He hasn’t used Twitter since early 2012. OurMine Team claimed Zuckerberg’s Instagram accounts were hacked. They were not. His Instagram account is intact. So is his Google accounts. A Facebook representative announced no Facebook account has been hacked.
Why am I telling you this? Mark Zuckerberg got hacked. Why should you even care? If you haven’t changed your Linkedin password, do it now! You don’t think Zuckerberg’s was the only one that was hacked, do you? It’s a good time to take stock on all your password accounts. If they’re too easy, like ‘qwerty’ or ‘password’ or ‘1234567’, then change them. Change them into something difficult and something that only you can remember. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the greatest tech giants of all-time. Think of all this man’s accolades. Yet, he got hacked. So if it can happen to him, don’t think it can’t happen to you. Some may say, “Well, he has credible information and wealth and power. Of course somebody is going to target him.” My answer to that is: Do you own a credit/debit card? Do you own an email account? Do you own a social media account of any kind? Do you live in the United States of America or other industrialized nation? Do you have easy access to a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone? If you answer yes to two or more of these questions, then you have credible information, wealth and power as well. Don’t you think you can be targeted as well?
