The Daily Dot delivers news about social media communities such as Reddit, Facebook and Youtube the way a local newspaper might deliver news about a city.
posted by reenum on Aug 24, 2011 - 10 comments

Digital news is broken. Actually, news itself is broken. Almost all news organizations have abandoned reporting in favor of editorial; have cultivated reader opinion in place of responsibility; and have traded ethical standards for misdirection and whatever consensus defines as forgivable. And this is before you even lay eyes on what passes for news design on a monitor or device screen these days. Suggestions for clarifying online news sites from Andy Rutledge. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jul 18, 2011 - 20 comments

The Wall Street Journal's What They Know blog is charged with determining what information marketers are capable of learning about internet users through tracking technology. This weekend, they took aim at Facebook, after their investigation discovered that many popular apps on the social-networking site, including those by Zynga, have been transmitting identifying information in the form of User ID's to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, even if a user has enabled strict privacy settings. Additional analysis. Response post on Facebook's Developer Blog. Forbes' blogger Kashmir Hill asks if the WSJ is overreacting, and Techcrunch notes that the severity and risks of UID transferral are still being debated.
posted by zarq on Oct 18, 2010 - 56 comments

[TheFaceBook]: It comes in the genre of LiveJournal, MySpace, and Friendster - except with a focus on digitally connecting pre-existing friendships on college campuses rather than finding new friends worldwide. Subsequently, it has thus far avoided the stigmas I’ve seen attached to its predecessors by non-users. Its use has skyrocketed: about 15% of my campus has signed up since this past winter. All of it through word-of-mouth. One of the neat tricks it does is show a visualization of your friends on the network in a spider webbed vectored graphic connecting them based on their mutual friendships. It’s also proven very useful in tracking down those “where do I know him/her?” names through a prominently displayed list showing up to two-degrees of separation to the mystery person. Oh, and you can send text messages to cell phones through it. Did I mention it also reminds you of birthdays?
posted by trinarian on Mar 19, 2005 - 29 comments