Most Facebook Users Have Taken a Break From the Site, Survey Finds Stoyan Nenov/ReutersOnly 12 percent of Facebook users said the site had become more important to them over the last year. Facebook is the most popular social network in America — roughly two-thirds of adults in the country use it on a regular basis. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get sick of it. A new survey by the Pew Research Center‘s Internet and American Life Project, conducted in December, found that 61 percent of current Facebook users admitted that they had voluntarily taken breaks from the site, for as many as several weeks at a time. The main reasons for their social media sabbaticals were not having enough time to dedicate to pruning their profiles, an overall decrease in their interest in the site, and the general sentiment that Facebook was a major waste of time. About 4 percent cited privacy and security concerns as contributing to their departure. “These data show that people are trying to make new calibrations in their life to accommodate new social tools,” said Mr.
On the Leakiness of Surveillance Culture, the Corporate Gaze, and What That Has To Do With the New Aesthetic When David Rowe put a smart meter in his home, it wasn’t so that he could spy on Amy, his teenage daughter. But that’s what happened anyway. 800KM from home, with the same idle curiosity that has me popping open my Twitter feed when there’s a lull in activity, he decided to check on his Fluksometer. photo credit: Sam Breach It’s a cute story, but it illustrates a crucial point: surveillance culture is leaky. So far, I’ve been telling you the story about this kind of surveillance that companies who market these services want you to hear. From here, we get the fantasy that with the right mixture of surveillance and analysis, you too can make terrifyingly accurate predictions about your customer’s/children’s/terrorism suspect’s behaviour. photo credit: pgegreenenergy The truth is illustrated by an infographic halfway through Wired’s scathing overview of Klout. Any sane marketing organization would look at these results and conclude that Klout’s metrics are utterly flawed. Got here.
Can You Trust a Facebook Profile? Do people display their actual or idealised personalities on social networking sites? There are now over 700 million people around the world with profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. In the US 75% of those between 18 and 24 who have access to the internet use social networking sites. And over the past four years, across all adult age-groups, their use has quadrupled. But do these profiles tell us anything about people’s real-life personalities? Actual versus idealised personality To find out psychologists recruited 236 US and German students who use social networking sites and had them complete personality measures (Back et al., 2010). These measured first their actual personalities on what psychologists call the ‘Big 5′ personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience). Then independent observers were shown their real social networking profiles and asked to rate participants’ personalities. Lying online?
Retailers Track Consumers With Facial Recognition Technology As They Shop Time to go shopping in a ski mask? Fashion retailers and others are unleashing surveillance systems equipped with NeoFace, a face detection and comparison engine, allowing them to track customers’ visits, behaviors, and characteristics, thus building a record of where you have been, and presumably the ability to predict your actions: 0Share 2Share consumer culture, Data, Facial Recognition, Futurism, Information, Privacy, retail stores, shopping, Surveillance, Technology, Video Exclusive Excerpt From Jonah Berger's Disruptive New Book "Contagious" (Please Don't Tell) In Fast Company’s April issue, we’ll profile Jonah Berger, the 32-year-old Wharton professor who has become one of the world’s foremost experts on what goes viral and why. It’s easy to find examples of products or ideas that have spread and become popular, but as he writes, “it’s much harder to actually get something to catch on. Even with all the money poured into marketing and advertising, few products become popular.” Among the brownstones and vintage shops on St. It’s marked by a large red hot-dog-shaped sign with the words “eat me” written in what looks like mustard. You’ll notice an old-school rotary dial phone hanging on the inside of the booth, the type that has a finger wheel with little holes for you to dial each number. To your astonishment, someone answers. A reservation? But today is your lucky day, apparently: They can take you. New York City is flush with bars. Everything about Please Don’t Tell suggests that you’ve been let into a very special secret.
How Your Movements Are Being Tracked, Probably Without Your Knowledge August 31, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. In May, Utah lawmakers were surprised to learn that the US Drug Enforcement Agency had worked out a plan with local sheriffs to pack the state's main interstate highway, I-15, with Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that could track any vehicle passing through. The plan ended up getting shelved, but that did not present a huge problem for the DEA because as it turns out, large stretches of highway in Texas and California already use the readers. So do towns all over America. The group not only tracks the spread of the cameras but gives people the tools to contest their installation, or at least bring it up with their representatives. AlterNet spoke with Carl Messineo, legal director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, about the spread of ALPRs, why the technology is becoming increasingly centralized, and what you can do to have a say in their proliferation.
What your Facebook 'likes' really say about you - tech - 11 March 2013 We are already aware that our every move online is tracked, aggregated and analysed. But you couldn't have known how much Facebook can learn about you from the smallest of social interactions – a "like". Researchers from the University of Cambridge designed a simple machine-learning system to predict Facebook users' personal information and traits based solely on which pages they had liked. "We were completely surprised by the accuracy of the predictions," says Michal Kosinski, lead author on the paper in PNAS (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1218772110). Kosinski and his colleagues built the system by scanning likes for a sample of 58,000 volunteers, and matching them up with other profile details such as age, gender and relationship status. He also matched up those likes with the results of personality and intelligence tests the volunteers had taken. Super sorter The system can distinguish between the profiles of black and white Facebook users, getting it right 95 per cent of the time. Online locker
Guerrilla surveillance camera destruction hits the U.S. It started in Berlin: Anarchists, donning black bloc attire, hit the streets at night in pairs, small groups or alone to smash and dismantle the CCTV surveillance cameras adorning the city streets. They posted videos and photos of their exploits online and called the guerrilla project Camover. The German collective gave a playful interview to Vice U.K. in which they explained that they are “a diverse group of people: Shoplifters eluding capitalism who don’t want to be monitored, passengers who don’t want to followed step by step and anarchists fighting everything that wants to control us.” Camover have also recently announced a competition encouraging others to get involved. The anti-surveillance project quickly spread throughout Germany, to Finland, Greece and hit the U.S. When asked by Vice “aren’t you just wasting taxpayers’ money, since the government will inevitably re-install any CCTV you take out?” Watch Camover at work in Berlin:
Facebook likes can reveal private personality traits, according to study It's no secret that Facebook is a goldmine for advertisers seeking to target specific demographics — but it may surprise you to discover just how much of your personality is revealed by simple activities there. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Microsoft Research have been quietly (and innocuously) collecting data on Facebook user likes and personality traits using applications like "MyPersonality" on Facebook, and now they're showing how the data can be used. Simply by tracking what things you've liked on Facebook, the researchers say they're able to determine things like your sex, ethnicity, political leanings, and religion with accuracies over 80 percent. The findings were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, based on data that you can dig into yourself on a public wiki.
Tip for Julian: Don’t Eat at Popeyes image courtesy zigazou76 If Julian Assange ever escapes from the Peruvian embassy he may not want – as a fugitive on the run – to eat at Popeyes. And, if he absolutely must have chicken-and-sausage jambalaya, then he better think about paying in cash. Wali Enterprises, a leading Popeyes franchisee, will be rolling out a new video surveillance system – Envysion Insight – to all of their locations. Already used by dozens of fast food restaurants, Envision Insight allows cash registers to be integrated with video monitoring systems. Now, instead of scanning thousands of hours of CCTV footage, security staff (or the interested police officer) can simply enter a receipt number to call-up a specific section of archived video.
The Conversation Prism: Making Sense of Social Media Surprise. Not all social media is the same. Brian Solis and JESS3 break new ground with an illustrative taxonomy that unravels some of the mystery concerning the use of social media. Each category around the “wheel” represents a different type of conversation. As one moves around the wheel, other helpful distinctions become apparent. The taxonomy also marks a key milestone in the evolution of social media. Here are some thoughts on how to use The Conversation Prism: Marketing. Enterprise Strategy. Finance. Information Technology. Human Resources. The Conversation Prism provides a welcome tool as social media moves into its second stage of development.
High-Tech NYPD Unit Tracks Criminals Through Facebook and Instagram Photos - On the Inside View Full Caption DNAinfo NEW YORK CITY — Socializing online is landing criminals in custody. Police are searching for suspects' photos on Instagram and Facebook, then running them through the NYPD’s new Facial Recognition Unit to put a face to a name, DNAinfo New York has learned. Detectives are now breaking cases across the city thanks to the futuristic technology that marries mug shots of known criminals with pictures gleaned from social media, surveillance cameras and anywhere else cops can find images. “It is the one time something you see on a television show is actually working in the real world,” said one top police official who went from a tech skeptic to a fan. The official explained how the new technology worked after a recent street robbery where a woman reported her jewelry stolen by her gal pal’s boyfriend. “We did not have his name, but we found a photo and the Facial Recognition Unit got a hit,” the NYPD official said. Facial recognition, however, is not foolproof.
Social Envy - Study Finds Facebook Causes Depression And Isolation BERLIN - Social networks like Facebook make many things easier. You can find out right away if Alex got the job or not, and you can not only read about Marie’s vacation, but you can also see all those pictures of her on the beach, too. There’s also a downside to this. The question, of course, poses itself: are lonely people more drawn to social networks – or does constant surfing result in loneliness over time? While it wasn’t able to answer the question conclusively, a joint research study conducted by Berlin’s Humboldt University and the Darmstadt’s Technical University did however reveal that spending time on social networks could lead to negative feelings. The German researchers, led by Dr. People who communicate relatively infrequently but read the posts of friends and click through their pictures tend to be less satisfied with their own life, according to the researchers. The never-ending “envy spiral”