Web 2.0 tools and mobile technologies have lowered the barriers not just for people to access the internet but to create and share content. Through open-source, collaborative programs such as wikis, the…
The Convergence Review came close to understanding the nature of user-generated content but not quite.
Flickr/Bruce Clay, Inc
The Australian Federal Government’s Convergence Review, released yesterday, had a mammoth task. It was trying to establish just how to regulate the future standards, conduct, and technical aspects of today…
The latest instalment of the saga of the Kony 2012 movement, “Cover the Night”, launches this evening.
Comedian Aamer Rahman summed up the rise and implosion of the Kony2012 campaign when he said people…
Director James Cameron at the launch of the 3D version of Titanic.
EPA/Franck Robichon
Trending on Twitter this week has been Gen Y shock and awe that Titanic isn’t just the name of a film. Apparently someone has accidentally stumbled onto the fact that the Titanic story was a tad more than…
Censorship has now caught up with new social media and technology in China.
Flickr/bfishadow
This week’s temporary suspension of comments on China’s two largest micro-blogging services Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo highlight the ruling party’s discomfort with social media’s growing popularity…
People have always sent each other letters, but now they can be worth "triple words".
Brandice Schnabel
They are everywhere: people in cafés or supermarket queues, staring at their smartphones with determined concentration, occasionally shuffling yellow tiles of letters to use all of them in a killer move…
Sydneysiders are spotting - and "status updating" - urban cockatoos.
chris jd/Flickr
Loud, large and lovable, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo has become a well known inhabitant of Sydney. It has always been present around the fringes of Sydney and west of the Great Dividing Range, but over…
The Kony campaign is not as accessible as it makes out.
BellaSalsaa
Much has been said about Invisible Children’s video campaign to rally awareness towards the atrocities of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony.
But more important is what Kony 2012 means in our ongoing relationship…
Newman and Bligh face off in real life, but how do they fare online?
AAP/Dave Hunt
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
With every recent election, in Australia as well as elsewhere, parties and politicians are adding further to their arsenal of digital campaigning tools.
In the 2010 federal election campaign, my colleagues…
Pinterest's tasty layout is only part of its appeal.
Pinterest
“I’m still trying to understand the whole thing but there must be something to it. It’s really popular!”
That’s my sister-in-law writing on Facebook in late January about Pinterest – one of the real up…
Kony2012 seemed to be everywhere, but attention has now turned to the makers of the video.
Reyhan Dhuny
There have been enough social media disasters of late to make one thing clear: manipulating sentiment through social networks is next to impossible.
The McDonald’s #McDStories campaign in January was…
Would you have recognised this man before today?
chris shultz
“Kony2012” is trending worldwide on Twitter.
Really, people? Why couldn’t we just stick to making tweets about the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, Angelina Jolie’s leg and sexist hashtags?
Snark aside, I…
Coles is among a number of companies that have misjudged social media campaigns.
AAP/Alan Porrit
My central problem with branded clothing is my reluctance to actually be branded. Why on earth would I pay to advertise someone?
When a Kiwi can make a motza from auctioning her buttock flesh to a strip…
Some 67% of organisations offer no training on social media use.
Phillie Casablanca
Almost half of all businesses and organisations in the private and public sector in Australia and developed Asian countries are now using social media, according to research by KPMG. A new term – “the…
Tweet success and sweet success increasingly go hand in hand.
Scolirk
In the brave new world of contemporary sport-watching, the goalposts have moved. Watching the big game (once a simple matter of grabbing a beer and some chips and settling down in front of the television…
Comments posted by the writer have seen Twitter sued for defamation.
Mosman Library
By Peter Black, Queensland University of Technology
Twitter is being sued for defamation by a Melbourne man who was wrongly identified as the author of a “hate blog” directed at writer and TV personality, Marieke Hardy.
Hardy posted a tweet last year to…
There's no turning the tide when it comes to Twitter.
Rosaura Ochoa
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
The release of Sky News UK’s Twitter guidelines for its journalists – or rather, the Guardian’s not entirely disinterested commentary on those guidelines – has caused a bit of a stir across social media…
Going public is not without its risks, even for internet giants.
Peter DaSilva/EPA
Facebook announced overnight that it’s going to sell US$5 billion of shares in its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO). Company executives filed the official paperwork to get the IPO process underway…
Curtis Stone and Normie Rowe in a Coles ad that has attracted the ire of a fake Chopper Read.
It is a very 21st century story. A Twitter account purporting to be that of noted Australian criminal Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read takes offence to an ad featuring ageing singer Normie Rowe and uses his…
Meeting requests, endless CC lists … is it time to try something new?
Travelin Librarian
Email has moved from being the internet’s first killer app to being a productivity killer. You can make news by claiming to hate it, ban it or kill it. But the problem with email is not the technology…
Ilya Zhitomirskiy, left. To his right is Dan Grippi, one of the four Diaspora founders.
Flickr/campuspartymexico.
Diaspora co-founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy passed away over the weekend.
The 22-year-old was one of four former NYU student developers of Diaspora, an open source social network platform that has been the…
Electronic tools can help advance research into rare diseases through creating virtual registries.
Gautheron
Pretty soon, not being involved in social media will be just as implausible as not having a telephone. If my 80-year-old dad is on Facebook and women over 55 are the fastest growing demographic on the…
We need to make sure quality is more important than quantity in our online engagement.
Flickr/joshfassbind.com
Social media provokes some of the most voluminous and heated responses in two key areas of contemporary society – democracy and privacy. Promoting the first and threatening the second, social media is…
The major social network sites have recently been touting improved privacy settings to allow users to customise post audiences. Google+ Circles, Facebook lists, and now Unthink’s branches are engineering…
Unthink is positioning itself as a force of "emancipation".
Unthink.com
On October 25, Unthink invited public beta users to put aside their YASNS (Yet Another Social Network Site) fatigue. Since then, it claims to have attracted more than 100,000 registered users.
The site…
Many of us live our lives through our online identities using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. But what happens when we die?
Uncomfortably for some, our digital lives have the potential…
It’s hard to know what to think about Google these days. Financially, the company is booming, but its reputation has suffered following the lukewarm reception for Google+, and an embarrassing outburst…
The scorecard for Google+ to date shows pluses and minuses.
Birgerking.
Features are not friends. That’s the simple message to Google+ from 40 University of Queensland students after using the system since its invite-only launch in July.
To say the service’s fortunes to date…
Have the #occupy protestors been gagged?
AFP/Timothy A. Clary
In the age of social media, if we’re able to get online, engage with a few tools and connect our ideas to others who sympathise, we’re able to initiate social change. Or that’s the theory.
The world begins…
Barack Obama's web campaign helped him win the presidency. Parties should learn from it.
Flickr/Scorpions and Centaurs
The increasing spread of information and communication technology has changed just about every aspect of Australian society – except democracy.
The opportunities to engage citizens in the democratic process…
What we tweet, and when we tweet it, gives insight into global mood patterns.
joelaz
I know my mood over the course of a day and so, it seems, does Twitter.
Over the years there’s been a lot of work on mood cycles. Much of it has been based on neurochemicals such as serotonin and dopamine…
Zuckerberg's big pitch is in, and it could make Facebook millions.
AFP/Kimihiro Hoshino
The world is currently embroiled in on- and offline discussions about changes that are affecting the lives of millions.
The subject is not climate change, the global financial crisis, political upheaval…
The numbers in Manhattan streets are far outnumbered by those on social media.
Don Emmert/AFP
On Saturday, hundreds of protestors congregated in the Wall Street area of New York at the start of a protest dubbed #OccupyWallStreet.
The aim? To “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens…
It's getting harder to know where home starts and the office ends.
webtreats
This week, the American National Labour Review Board ruled to reinstate five workers fired for complaining about a co-worker on Facebook.
The board decided writing about work on Facebook was equivalent…
Is it time for the world's dictators to "friend" online communications? (Headdesk)
AAP
In the euphoria following the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, Wael Ghonim, the so-called “hero” of the revolution proclaimed:
“Technology played a great role here. You know, it helped keeping…
A battle is raging over search and serendipity online.
AndYaDontStop
The latest salvo in the internet attention wars has come in the form of figures from StatCounter.
A relatively small content driving service called StumbleUpon drove more than 50% of all social media…
The UN is protecting your right to express yourself in social media.
Flickr/-lucky cat-
General Comment No. 34 on Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights may sound like something from a bureaucratic nightmare, but it drags your right to freedom of expression into the digital…
Social media is helping, not hindering, police efforts in the UK.
AAP
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
There’s a colourful and evocative term among regular users of social media: “headdesking”.
It’s what you do when somebody says or does something so stupid that your instant reaction is to smack your head…
The suspension of Google+ accounts has raised questions about the company's aims.
yuichio.sakuraba
The phrase “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” was coined by American computer programmer Eric S. Raymond to distinguish two different approaches to the development of software.
The Bazaar was likened to the…
Can social media temper growing public antipathy towards political parties?
Mandel Ngan/AFP
On Tuesday, the ACT government held Australia’s first virtual community cabinet using Twitter. Four ministers faced a barrage of tweets in an hour long question and answer session held with the electorate…
Some users have been automatically suspended from all Google services.
halilgokdal
A fresh storm has blown into Google’s new Google+ service. The company has been suspending accounts because they contravene Google’s Community Standards – ostensibly to stop fake or spam accounts being…
Organising the information gathered during crises is key to better responses.
Lindsay Hallam/AFP
With new technology comes new ways of communicating with one another in times of crisis. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook allow important information to be shared widely and instantaneously.
But…
The way we communicate is changing and Al Qaeda have been ahead of the curve AFP PHOTO/DoD
The nature of influence is changing, yet Governments, particularly in Australia have yet to absorb it. Influence is no longer wielded by pronouncements through traditional media sources. New media has…
Not sharing your password is one of the basic rules for online safety.
Michael Reynolds/EPA
On July 4, a hacker took control of one of the Twitter accounts of US broadcaster FoxNews.com and sent out several tweets announcing President Obama had been shot.
Because it was a national holiday and…
Women should be allowed to have fun, without the media judging them.
AAP/Jack Tran
Wilding, a word seldom used outside of sociology, describes compounded acts of immorality. Of teenagers, apparently, running amok. In packs usually, with rage and ribaldry in their eyes.
I was thinking…
Health promotion has a lot of catching up to do on social media.
Steve Kay
Smokers who quit with the assistance of a text messaging service are nearly twice as likely to be smoke-free six months later than smokers with no support, according to a study published this week in The…
Google+ faces an uphill struggle to win hearts and minds.
Google
Google is hoping that the saying “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again” will work out for them with Google+.
Launched as a private beta version on Tuesday, Google+ is the search giant’s latest…
Your Facebook snaps now come with a hidden catch.
rishibando
Around 2 million photographs are uploaded to Facebook each day. As of this week, every new image will be processed by automatic face recognition software, designed to identify the people in the photographs…
Knowing me, knowing you: there is nothing we can't view.
tonechootero/Flickr
Advanced surveillance and social media might seem like strange bedfellows. Until you look a bit closer, that is.
Technologies developed for surveillance applications are typically designed with robustness…
Are privacy concerns irrational in the era of Facebook and Twitter?
qubitsu
It’s hard to discuss public surveillance without immediately being asked about privacy issues. As technologists working on computer-based surveillance, it’s tempting to say this is outside our area of…
Far from "outsourcing your brain", social media allows you to build different relationships.
AAP/Tracy Nearmy
The executive director of the venerable New York Times has come out fighting against Facebook and other social media.
Bill Keller has joined the conga line of commentators decrying the end of friendships…
Where we are says a lot about who we are.
tulja/Flickr
PRIVACY – Your location is arguably more personal than your genetic profile; even identical twins can’t be in the same place at the same time. In terms of value, it’s on a par with your medical records…
Facebook is a key tool for the modern revolutionary.
AAP
Facebook, with more than 500 million members, has now reached superpower status. If Facebook were a country, its supporters often say, its population would rank behind only China and India.
But there…
The works of a great writer precipitated the astonishing events in Egypt in February.
EPA/Misam Saleh
We are living in extraordinary times. People are using social media to campaign for freedom from their governments, but their ideas are built on a much more powerful medium: literature.
Protests have…
Do you trust Facebook as much as you would your best friend?
Karen Bleier/AFP
Unless you’ve been chained to a fax machine for the past seven years, you’ll have noticed that Facebook is immensely popular.
Users numbered 641 million by February of this year.
Making and maintaining…
