Tuesday, January 14

SOCIAL MEDIA

Top Strategies When Using Facebook Live and Videos for Your Business
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Top Strategies When Using Facebook Live and Videos for Your Business

Are you tired of creating Facebook posts that nobody sees? (Painful isn't it!?) Then you NEED to be using video on Facebook - it's 'crackalackin'! Facebook Live is hot to trot! There is no doubt Facebook loves it. You may have even seen ads for Facebook Live around the place. Why do you want to use Facebook Live? Like I said, Facebook loves Facebook Live and they're going to reward you for going Live on Facebook by pushing your livestream out into people's newsfeeds. People are likely to watch your Live stream videos three times longer than just a normal video post. That's a very important metric to Facebook who sees that longer viewing means it is an engaging video therefore we're going to show it into more people's newsfeeds. That is going to improve your reach and your engagement...
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How fake accounts constantly manipulate what you see on social media – and what you can do about it
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SOCIAL MEDIA

How fake accounts constantly manipulate what you see on social media – and what you can do about it

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram started out as a way to connect with friends, family and people of interest. But anyone on social media these days knows it’s increasingly a divisive landscape. Undoubtedly you’ve heard reports that hackers and even foreign governments are using social media to manipulate and attack you. You may wonder how that is possible. As a professor of computer science who researches social media and security, I can explain – and offer some ideas for what you can do about it. Bots and sock puppets Social media platforms don’t simply feed you the posts from the accounts you follow. They use algorithms to curate what you see based in part on “likes” or “votes.” A post is shown to some users, and the more those people react – positively or neg...
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We’re measuring online conversation to track the social and mental health issues surfacing during the coronavirus pandemic
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SOCIAL MEDIA

We’re measuring online conversation to track the social and mental health issues surfacing during the coronavirus pandemic

The big idea Social media posts and news reports are rich sources of data about people’s attitudes and behaviors. Using artificial intelligence techniques, it’s possible to sift through billions of words to discern trends in a population’s well-being, or social quality. Performing this analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing the damage the pandemic is doing to the social and psychological well-being of the U.S. At the AI Institute of the University of South Carolina, my colleagues and I have processed more than 700 million social media posts since the beginning of March and more than 700,000 news articles about the COVID-19 pandemic. We are monitoring these information sources to capture the evolving human experience in the U.S. during the pandemic. We have found troubling indi...
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Social media fuels wave of coronavirus misinformation as users focus on popularity, not accuracy
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COVID-19, SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media fuels wave of coronavirus misinformation as users focus on popularity, not accuracy

Over the past few weeks, misinformation about the new coronavirus pandemic has been spreading across social media at an alarming rate. One video that went viral claimed breathing hot air from a hair dryer could treat COVID-19. A Twitter post touted injecting vitamin C to the bloodstream to treat the viral disease. Other threads hyped unfounded claims that vaping organic oregano oil is effective against the virus, as is using colloidal silver. The sheer number of false and sometimes dangerous claims is worrying, as is the way people are unintentionally spreading them in ever wider circles. In the face of this previously unknown virus, millions of people have been turning to social media platforms in an attempt to stay informed about the latest developments and connected to friends and fam...
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Social media companies are taking steps to tamp down coronavirus misinformation – but they can do more
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COVID-19, SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media companies are taking steps to tamp down coronavirus misinformation – but they can do more

As we practice social distancing, our embrace of social media gets only tighter. The major social media platforms have emerged as the critical information purveyors for influencing the choices people make during the expanding pandemic. There’s also reason for worry: the World Health Organization is concerned about an “infodemic,” a glut of accurate and inaccurate information about COVID-19. The social media companies have been pilloried in recent years for practicing “surveillance capitalism” and being a societal menace. The pandemic could be their moment of redemption. How are they rising to this challenge? Surprisingly, Facebook, which had earned the reputation of being the least trusted tech company in recent years, has led with the strongest, most consistent actions during the unfold...
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Even after blocking an ex on Facebook, the platform promotes painful reminders
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Even after blocking an ex on Facebook, the platform promotes painful reminders

Anthony Pinter, a Ph.D. student in information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently completed a study on people’s experiences with upsetting and unexpected reminders of an ex on Facebook. His team’s findings are examples of algorithmic cruelty – instances in which algorithms are designed to do something and do it well, but end up backfiring because they can’t fully grasp the nuances of human relationships and behavior. How has social media made breakups more difficult? Anthony Pinter: Breaking up with a loved one has always meant making difficult choices: who gets the couch, who gets the fridge, who gets the cat. Anthony Pinter. Author provided                                ...
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How To Use Social Media For Branding Like A Celebrity
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BUSINESS, SOCIAL MEDIA

How To Use Social Media For Branding Like A Celebrity

Being a celebrity is a never ending task. The fame and fortune that come with this status require constant effort to maintain. As a celebrity, it is very important to maintain one's brand. The brand is what makes people keep talking about you and thus making you a celebrity. As such, a celebrity should maintain their brand. One of the tools that they can use to accomplish this is social media. There are many platforms for celebrity branding. They include YouTube, Facebook Groups and LinkedIn Groups. Read on to learn how to become a celebrity in your niche with the assistance of social media. They use social media accounts to treat their fans like friends To build their brands, celebrities using social media to get closer to their friends. The celebrities use their accounts to speak to th...
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Malicious bots and trolls spread vaccine misinformation – now social media companies are fighting back
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SOCIAL MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY

Malicious bots and trolls spread vaccine misinformation – now social media companies are fighting back

Social media have become one of the preeminent ways of disseminating accurate information about vaccines. However, a lot of the vaccine information propagated across social media in the United States has been inaccurate or misleading. At a time when vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise, vaccine misinformation has become a cause of concern to public health officials. At least half of parents of young children report having encountered negative messages about vaccines on social media. Alexander Dummer/Unsplash, CC BY A 2018 study showed that a lot of anti-vaccine information is generated by malicious automated programs – known as bots – and online trolls. In a striking parallel with the 2016 presidential campaign and the 2018 midterm elections, some vaccine misinformation on America...
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Why do so many people fall for fake profiles online?

The first step in conducting online propaganda efforts and misinformation campaigns is almost always a fake social media profile. Phony profiles for nonexistent people worm their way into the social networks of real people, where they can spread their falsehoods. But neither social media companies nor technological innovations offer reliable ways to identify and remove social media profiles that don’t represent actual authentic people. It might sound positive that over six months in late 2017 and early 2018, Facebook detected and suspended some 1.3 billion fake accounts. But an estimated 3 to 4 percent of accounts that remain, or approximately 66 million to 88 million profiles, are also fake but haven’t yet been detected. Likewise, estimates are that 9 to 15 percent of Twitter’s 336 mil...
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Instagram to remove ‘like’ counts for some US users
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Instagram to remove ‘like’ counts for some US users

Amid humane tech movement, company is testing out functionality to make the social media platform feel less competitive. Facebook Inc.'s Instagram plans to remove the number of "likes" visible on posts for some users in the U.S. to decrease competitive pressure among people on the photo-sharing service. Instagram has been hiding like counts in some markets since April, beginning in Canada, and later expanding to Japan and Brazil. The U.S. is one of Instagram's largest markets with more than 106 million users, according to data analyst EMarketer. "What we're hoping to do is depressurize Instagram a little bit, and make it a bit less of a competition," Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told Bloomberg after announcing the new test at a conference in San Francisco spons...
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