Hackers hit Apple in wake of Facebook attack
Apple said it suffered a cyber attack similar to the one recently carried out against Facebook, but that it repelled the invaders before its data was plundered. The maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macintosh computers said it is working with law enforcement officials to hunt down the hackers, who appeared tied to a series of recent cyber attacks on US technology firms.
The 1 Billion User Trend Map
Facebook recently took home bragging rights to have a user base of over 1 billion users this month. One in seven users has a profile on the world’s largest social network. In celebration of their achievement, Stamen Designs has attempted to diagram the effects of today’s global friendship and how proximity has been an in-direct byproduct of the process.
Google To Acquire Viewdle, Facebook Acqhires Carsabi
Google makes atleast one acquisition a week - this time in the photo and video tagging space. This maybe a value addition and counter to the infamous and recent Instagram acquisition by contender Facebook. Valued at $45 million, the potential acquisition of Viewdle maintains its rumor status until further development. Known for its facial recognition technology in the mobile gaming platform Third Eye and an app called Socialcamera, Viewdle is rumored to be the biggest deal in Ukranian internet history.
Meanwhile, Facebook maintains its current “acqhire” streak, this time acqhiring Carsabi, a car price comparison website. Launched at Y Combinator, Carsabi was named as one of YC Demo Day Winter 2012′s 10 Best Companies. While the plan is to sell the website to a third party, the founders have agreed that the website will continue delivering its services in an effort to maintain its mission statement.
Friendly robot uses Facebook to interact with you
It’s not every day that a robot asks you to be its friend on Facebook. But now a new system developed by Nuno Gato and colleagues at Robosavvy in London allows a humanoid robot to interact with you by accessing your social network profile.
In this demo, a New Scientist reporter meets the robot, called Savvybot, for the first time. Once she accepts its friend request, it uses an online face recognition service to match her appearance to her profile. It then identifies her by name when they look at each other, asking if they can take a photo together and getting her to pose for a webcam. The robot also scans her music interests and dances to a video of one of the bands listed.
Although Savvybot doesn’t use sophisticated artificial intelligence, it’s able to seem smart by using web services and mining online data. The team hopes to develop its voice recognition capabilities to allow it to tell interactive stories that incorporate a person’s answers into the plot.
How Stanford Made Instagram’s Kevin Systrom a Silicon Valley Star
Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of the photo app made Kevin Systrom the latest tech cult hero. It happened only because he chose school of Zuckerberg’s start-up.
Marissa Mayer: Congratulations and Welcome
Marissa Mayer, ex VP at Google, is well known as the first female engineer that Google ever hired. She has been involved in design and engineering decisions since the brands Gmail, Gtalk etc became synonymous with routine. She has also been a panel judge among multiple conferences, among them being TechCrunch Disrupt. She has been named by CNN as one of the 50 most powerful women in business today.
Now Marissa brings her keen eye and fierce analytical ability to Yahoo. Yahoo has been in troubled waters for sometime now and by, becoming the 5th CEO in recent years, investors await to see what spark can Marissa bring to Yahoo. Who knows, we may see more collaboration with Google, in which case, Facebook should keep their eyes glued to the web.
Aussie entrepreneur ‘new Mark Zuckerberg’
Young Aussie entrepreneurs, following in the mouse clicks of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, are set to make millions.
2012 Social Media Statistics by Dice.com
Dice is the leading career site for technology and engineering professionals. With a 21-year track record of meeting the ever-changing needs of technology professionals, companies and recruiters, our specialty focus and exposure to highly skilled professional communities enables employers to reach hard-to-find, experienced and qualified technology and engineering candidates.
13 Social Media Factoids:
1. 85% of tech pros use Facebook (compared to 71% of all internet users) and 41% use Twitter (compared to 15% of all internet users). (Source: Dice 2011 and Nielsen 2011)
2. Brands see a 46% increase in user engagement with FACEBOOK TIMELINE.
3. In January 2012, users spent a monthly average of 405 minutes on Facebook.
4. 30% of Twitter users have an income of more than $100,000. (Source: Compete, Twitter Press Centre and BNN News)
5. Twitter’s audience is more sophisticated in terms of using technology and social media.
6. Twitter handles more search queries per month than Bing and Yahoo combined (24 billion versus 4.1 billion and 9.4 billion respectively). )Source: Compete, Twitter Press Centre and BNN News)
7. YouTube is the #2 search engine (only second to parent company Google).
8. In 2001 YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or almost 140 views for every person on Earth.
9.The Google +1 button is used more than 5 billion times per day.
10. More than 42% of Google+ users are single.
11. 60% of bloggers are aged between 25-44. (Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2011)
12. Professional bloggers upkeep an average of four blogs. (Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2011)
13. Tablets took just two years to reach 40 million users in the U.S. — it took smartphones 7 years to reach this figure. (Source: ComScore and SoMobile)
We ‘Like’ Facebook’s Business | Salesforce.com
WSJ’s Rolfe Winkler visits Mean Street to point the spotlight on Salesforce.com, which is acquiring social-media management start-ups to reach consumers.
Social Media Revolution Parody
We’ve focused on social media alot in the recent past. We thought it would only be fitting to showcase a video, displaying a parody of the entire social media revolution.
Great Takeaway Taglines:
- 27% of Facebook server space is used to save the phrase LOL.
- There are more social media consultants in London than children.
- 60% of under 20s read one book a year. It is called Facebook.
