How Facebook and Twitter Are Helping the Homeless - Technology. Homeless people have Facebook friends, too. According to a new study from University of Dayton sociologist and criminologist Art Jipson, homeless people are increasingly connected to each other and to non-homeless people through social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, accessed through cell phones. Jipson found, through interviews with a relatively small sample of homeless people in the Dayton area, that the homeless are using the sites for their social networking aspects, but also for day-to-day practicalities: finding places to sleep, sources of food and access to services.
Given the relative cheapness of pay-as-you-go cell phones (especially compared with housing costs), it's not surprising to find that an increasing amount of homeless people are using cell phones to access the internet. A study by USC researcher Eric Rice released in December found that 62 percent of homeless youth have cell phones. Top image: Tom K! / Shutterstock.com. The Reason "Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25" Struck Such A Nerve.
Catherine Sloan's recent blog post on Nextgen Journal, Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25, has generated hundreds of comments in just a few days, the overwhelming majority of them negative. There is, however, a more important point to be made than simply whether someone who grows up with a particular kind of technology is more suited to manage it. The fact is that technological innovation is coming faster and faster, and has now reached a point where it is actually noticeable across generations. The generation gap is widening simply because the speed of technology is increasing. Think about it: If you have teenagers today, they are far more different from you than you were from your parents when you were a teenager. There are many reasons for the accelerating rate at which technology is driving change, from the exponentially compounding effects of Moore's Law to the even faster combinatorial rate at which social networks increase.
[Image: Flickr user World Bank Photo] Digital Strategy: 4 Psychology Tips to Improve Brand Messaging. What is good brand messaging? Sitting in brainstorms I often hear terms such as voice, tone, style, none of which are incorrect - when we build our digital strategy campaigns and / or social media plans, each of the three has a part to play and certainly cannot be wrong. But should we be doing more, can the message be made stronger? For my part I believe the answer is yes; in digital and especially in social we need to embrace the fact that our audiences are people and brand messages need to be tailored to them. Whilst this is stating the obvious, the methods and challenges of tailoring message are manifold, but if we are going to get creative in improving message, I believe a route that deserves investigation is psychology.
The importance of message There are many ways that message can be wrapped up to purvey its importance, but put simply: It's what we do! For every altruistic statement, gesture and ambivalent overtone, as a species we do not 'communicate' so much as 'message'. Tapping the Ocean of Twitter Information. Twitter, like many products, is made more relevant and powerful the more users it has and the more active those users become.
With over 500 million members sending over 340 million tweets a day, Twitter has become, for many, the go-to destination for news, trends and opinion. While some simply watch as the Twitter machine grows, others choose to mine the information from those hundreds of millions of tweets to gather valuable data that they can use to gauge and predict. On Tuesday, the Twitter analytics tool Topsy announced a pro version of their product for brand to better analyze search terms, hashtags and trends over time. Topsy is the only company given access to Twitter’s firehose, the full stream of data from Twitter, and with that information has been able to record years of tweets for users to mine. While Topsy certainly seems to be at the forefront of Twitter analytics, others have used the tweet info in other creative ways.
Connect: Authored by: Daniel Levine See complete profile. Facebook Influence Can Help You Get Into An L.A. Nightclub For Free. Facebook Psychology [Infographic] How exactly is Facebook and Internet addiction affecting our minds? Or is it something you've even thought about? Chances are it hasn't even crossed your mind that constantly checking for new notifications or spending hours a day on the Internet is actually an addiction in the making.
Every time you receive a notification on Facebook it could mean a new professional, social, or even sexual opportunity. Once you answer the little red box signaling a notification, it results in a hit of dopamine. The same dopamine that recharges our addictive compulsion and is similar to people who have addictions to abusive substances such as heroin, meth, or crack. However, as you probably know, these notifications are hard to resist. On average, most people are spending around 8.5 hours looking at a computer screen. Don’t let Internet addiction take over your life. Check out the infographic below presented by Best Master's in Psychology to learn more about internet addiction. Connect: Authored by: Facebook Better Get Mobile Quick. 102M People Accessed Solely From Mobile In June, Up 23% Since March.
There’s a staggering new statistic in Facebook’s 10-Q SEC document today: 102 million people accessed Facebook solely from mobile in June, a massive 23% increase over the 83 million mobile-only users in March. 18.7% of its 543 million monthly mobile users don’t even visit its desktop site. That means if it can’t make its mobile advertising generate a lot more money within the next year, revenue could plummet like its stock price, down 6.2% today to $21.71. Another dead-serious new stat is that Facebook only grew 10% to 168 million in the US this last year, compared to the global average of 29%. There were bright spots in today’s 10-Q, essentially a deeper version of Facebook’s earnings report. Facebook only spent $24 million to acquire Tagtile, Glancee, Lightbox, and Karma Another positive was that Facebook’s monthly users in Brazil grew 146% this year to 54 million and India was up 84% to 59 million. For years Facebook has tried to minimize the presence of ads on its site.
Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With ‘Curation’ The Tablet Takeover Is Ahead Of Schedule. Back in July, market researchers NPD predicted that global tablet sales would leap above traditional laptop sales by the year 2016--a bold assertion, given that the laptop's been with us for decades and tablets are fresh on the scene. To achieve this growth, NPD guessed 121 million tablets would be sold in 2012. More recently Gartner's figures showed how much of a stranglehold Apple has over the existing market. They predict that Apple will end 2012 with a 61.4% market share and 73 million units sold, up from 40 million units (and a bigger 66% market share) for 2011. And even though recent court documents show that Samsung's U.S. tablet sales are tiny compared to Apple's, Gartner predicts that the Android tablet market (which Samsung dominates) will rise to 31.9% share in 2012 and 37.9 million units over just 17.3 million sold in 2011.
Note that Gartner's figures total to nearly 111 million units just from iOS and Android tablet sales. And all of this means one thing. Popularity of Tablets Rising With Kids [STUDY] Are your kids eager to get their hands on a tablet device? Your kids may love their video games, but a recent survey shows the popularity of tablets is surging faster than video game consoles. Although families love gadgets of all types — the survey also showed that households with kids ages 4-14 own an average of 10 different devices, with kids using an average of five of those devices. This new survey released by market research company, The NPD Group titled Kids and Consumer Electronics: 2012 Edition, shows new trends and stats for families and their mobile devices.
Video game console usage rates for children ages 4-14 are still higher than tablets, but this past year saw a strong increase in tablet usage among that age group: with a 13% increase in usage rate in 2012 vs. only 3% in 2011. Tablet usage is most popular among younger children — perhaps no surprise considering how many videos there are on YouTube of babies playing with tablets. What do you think of this survey's data? How to Remain Human In a Technology Flattened World. The way we work, shop, meet and collaborate has changed forever.
We now possess the technology that makes the need to meet face to face in the traditional business sense a thing of the past. Equipped with text messaging, instant messaging, video messaging, and a host of web based tools for project and client management and collaboration, it’s possible to create an efficient business run from just about anywhere you can obtain an Internet connection. However, all this efficiency comes with a price. Without frequent, genuine and rich interaction with the people in your life working towards shared outcomes something very meaningful is lost. Hugs and handshakes are what make us human and they are in many ways a part of what makes doing what we do worth it. The human mindset First and foremost as we interact across time and space we have to remember that these are human beings we are interacting with. The human mindset in the virtual world calls for an obsession with basic politeness.
How Women Lead Differently, And Why It Matters. I think it's time women have a candid conversation about power. It's a conversation that will impact men and needs to include them. Together, we've reached a population of 7 billion; in another 38 years, we'll rise to 9 billion. Women make up 52 percent of the global whole and control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending. Our decisions have a measurable impact on local businesses, regional economies, and the transnational marketplace.
How we choose to conceive and exert power as a group has the potential to define the 21st century. In recent years, we've seen calls for accountability, fairness, and openness galvanize revolutionary movements and thinking. Many of us are living in an age of virtual access and virtual freedom, but we can't ignore that there's a tension between the instant connectivity that technology makes possible for all people and the reality of economic and social inequities that continue to alienate and disadvantage most people. The Racial Divide on ... Sneakers - Emily Chertoff.
What the history of footwear reveals about a cultural divide -- and the appropriation of African American style. Everybody wears them sometimes: to run, to bum around the house, to move furniture. Some people wear them as a fashion statement. Others have been killed for them. There have been murders over Air Jordans in black communities for years -- yes, Air Jordans in particular. Sneaker-related violence is so infamous among African Americans that in December 2011, when Nike introduced an update to that model, a widespread hoax on the Internet had it that an 18-year-old named Tyreek Amir Jacobs was murdered while shopping for a pair.
Meanwhile, mostly white hipsters, rockers, and other subculture types perennially buy new Converse every fall. It's comparatively rare to see them in Jordans or Dunks, and it's virtually unheard of that they're subject to sneaker-related violence. Jordans and Chucks come from the same originary sneaker, a canvas plimsoll from the mid-19th century. Only 9% of Wikipedia Editors Are Women [INFOGRAPHIC] While studies show that men and women use Wikipedia evenly, 91% of the collaborative encyclopedia's editors are male. In a knowledge experiment that intends to be completely open, accessible and unbiased, a lack of female perspective is an issue. This number may not come as a total shock. The real question is, why the imbalance? Is there something about Wikipedia culture that discourages women from editing? Whatever the reasons, the stats below — compiled by Knock Twice — speak for themselves.
Can Data Help Us Close the Technology Gender Gap? Projects that expand women's access to technology and improve quality of life empower women around the world. Yet despite the progress that's been made, about 300 million women are still part of the "mobile gender gap," a figure that's calculated based on women's access to mobile technology in a given location compared with their male counterparts.
The roadblock to further progress in fixing that gap is that there's just not enough data about women, which is problematic because information is crucial to informing smart public policy. "In a range of policy areas, it's critically important to have good data, because good data means good policy," U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer told Mashable. Verveer believes that the mobile gender gap is one area of women's issues in particular which could benefit — and has benefitted — from extensive gender-specific research. Once that data became available, they were followed by initiatives to fix the problem.
Woman set to officiate NFL game for first time. Why the Amish Population Is Exploding - Neighborhoods. The Amish—known for their horse-and-buggy way of life—may seem like they would be overwhelmed by the rushing changes in technology and culture. But according to a new census, the Amish are growing faster than ever. There are nearly 251,000 Amish people in America and Canada, according to Ohio State University researchers. That's more than double the estimated population in 1989 of about 100,000.
Researchers estimate the population will double again to half a million within about 21 years. Much of the growth has to do with the fact that more Amish children are staying with the religion and starting their own high-fertility families. The Amish live in small groups of 20 or 30 families known as settlements, and Donnermeyer's team has shown the number of these settlements to be growing quickly. As the number of settlements has grown, so has their geographic reach. But the strongest growth is on the east coast. But it's not just lower prices causing this geographic scattering.
The Wisdom of Crowds. Fascinating Chart Shows How Rich And Poor Are Spending Money. A Hidden Casualty of the Housing Crisis: Public Schools - Housing. There are many casualties of the horrible housing market, from underwater families to weak car sales. Here's another one: our public school system. This month, the number of government workers in the United States continued its long decline. But on the local level, something interesting has changed. For the first few years of the recovery, public sector employees of all stripes — teachers, EMS workers, police, etc. — were getting pink slips. That's not been the case in the last few months.
Here's employment in public education, dating back to 2009. Now here's the rest of local government hiring. It's possible that school districts believe they're simply overstaffed. Up through 2009, property taxes have been growing consistently for at least 20 years, and public school hiring had grown alongside them. Photo credit: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock This post originally appeared on The Atlantic.
Foreclosures Have Caused a Lot of Problems – Crime Isn't One of Them - Neighborhoods. 10 | The Case For Keeping Libraries Alive. America's Leading Creative Class Counties - Jobs & Economy. Why Great Ideas Get Rejected. Three Personality Types That Can Harm Your Business. Tie My Shoes, Please: How Persuasion Works : Shots - Health Blog.