Posts Tagged social media

Facebook recognizes civil unions and domestic partnerships

Facebook took a big step this week in their decision to allow people to identify as being “in a civil union” or “in a domestic partnership.” ZDNet offers their take in “The country of Facebook recognizes civil unions” as well as a note on the limitations of the new feature:

Functionally the change is minor to unimportant, from a societal standpoint it moves Facebook alongside some 35 plus countries in recognizing, in some form, non-traditional relationships.

Is it appropriate to talk about Facebook in country scale terms of influence? With 600,000,000 users, its population is only behind those of the physical populations of China and India, and is nearly twice that of the United States. That said, the two new options ...

Facebook took a big step this week in their decision to allow people to identify as being “in a civil union” or “in a domestic partnership.” ZDNet offers their take in “The country of Facebook recognizes ...

Social Media and the End of Gender?

In my other life, I work as a social media consultant and spend ridiculous amounts of time consuming information about how social media transforms the way we communicate with others. It’s undeniably a powerful tool, has become one of our international grassroots eyes and ears (see: Egypt and Iran) and allows many of us to find new friends around the corner.

So I was pretty psyched to see this TED talk by media researcher and expert, Johanna Blakley, about the end of gender and social media. While I think she makes idealistic points, I’m not convinced by her argument that social media currently signifies (or will in the future) the irrelevance of gender in online spaces.

In my other life, I work as a social media consultant and spend ridiculous amounts of time consuming information about how social media transforms the way we communicate with others. It’s undeniably a powerful tool, has become ...

Girl Scouts Research Institute releases new findings on girls and social media

Last night, the Girl Scouts Research Institute celebrated its tenth anniversary with the release of Who’s That Girl? a new study about girls and social media. I’ve written about the GSRI and the wonderful work that they do before, and I’m so glad that this study has been done. Here are a few quick numbers for you. In a study of about 1000 girls between the ages of 14 and 17:

In person, girls say they come across as smart (82%), funny (80%), kind (76%) and outgoing (55%) as well as fun, cool, a good influence and socially confident.

Online, the words girls most frequently use to describe themselves are fun, funny and social. ...

Last night, the Girl Scouts Research Institute celebrated its tenth anniversary with the release of Who’s That Girl? a new study about girls and social media. I’ve written about the GSRI and the ...

facebook

Facebook’s “stalker” application.

“Stalking” seems to have become the stand-in word for checking someone out on Facebook. I have been thinking a lot about how it says so much about how we feel about viewing other people’s information on Facebook. Information on Facebook is volunteered information and Facebook has several privacy settings (albeit hard to use sometimes), but when someone looks at someone else’s Facebook profile we call it “stalking.” But stalking is a serious offense where you follow, intimidate and harass someone, something that can happen online or in the real world. The constant use of the word “stalking” for things that don’t constitute as stalking is problematic because it downplays how serious stalking actually is.

Since I am in the camp that ...

“Stalking” seems to have become the stand-in word for checking someone out on Facebook. I have been thinking a lot about how it says so much about how we feel about viewing other people’s information on Facebook. ...

Congrats to Gabi, MTV’s new Twitter Jockey!

You might have already heard, but MTV’s first Twitter Jockey is a young, fat and fabulous woman of color! Gabi Gregg, 23,  was crowned by MTV on Sunday after a nationwide contest. In the Detroit’s native role as TJ, she will report on pop culture via MTV’s twitter account, blog, Facebook and the website. This is a huge event that marks the influence of new media and how legacy media is making changes in recognition of the power of social networking.

So who is this badass woman of color? Gabi is the founder of the blog Young, Fat and Fabulous. Check out her bio that has the backstory of this amazing project:

In October 2008, I decided ...

You might have already heard, but MTV’s first Twitter Jockey is a young, fat and fabulous woman of color! Gabi Gregg, 23,  was crowned by MTV on Sunday after a nationwide contest. In the ...

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