Nielson Media has finally answered one of the pressing mysteries of the age: Why we defriend people on Facebook. Surprisingly, the top reason isn’t overusing played-out memes. The most likely answer: because someone offended us. That data comes courtesy of a study of 1,865 adult users of social media, conducted from March 31st to April 14th. It found that as in real life, behaviors like having creepy friends, insisting on saying terrible things, or simply being a depressing downer play a huge role in choosing with whom we socialize.
By a wide margin, the top reason for removing someone as a friend, cited by 55% of respondents, was “offensive comments”. What, precisely, is meant by “offensive” is unexplained; “political comments” (14%) are considered a distinct reason apart from generally offensive comments. This suggests that the offenses referred to are more personal in nature, unsurprising to anyone fortunate enough to witness a very embarrassing argument conducted for all to see on a Facebook user’s wall.
Not knowing someone well was the second most common reason for de-friending someone, cited by 41% of respondents, and “trying to sell me something” came in at a very close third place, with 39%. Other reasons include “depressing comments” (23%), “lack of interaction” (20%) Breakups and divorce (11%). “Update profile too often” and “they added too many people” are tied with 6% of respondents citing them, a lesson to anyone who thinks that the rest of us are as enthralled by constant declarations of true love, or their children’s latest potty training update as they are.
In addition to de-friending habits, the study also shows that men and women use social media in subtly different ways. Both men and women primarily use such services to keep in touch with family, reconnect with old friends and find new ones. However, men showed a higher likelihood of using social media for professional networking and dating, with a corresponding tendency to approve friend requests if the requesting user is attractive. Women on the other hand had a higher tendency to cite creative expression and positive reinforcement as primary reasons for using social media. Interestingly, the data suggests much higher commonalities among women. The top reasons for approving friend requests or for removing someone as a friend were cited more by women than by men.
[Source: Nielson]
Congratulations if you have the opportunity to explore the new Google Plus. Here are some less-known tips and hints to get you around the site:
1) Google Plus allows text formatting in the Huddle (status-updates) and comments
Bold – Use asterisk symbol on both sides of the word to bold it
Example: *Google Plus Huddle* = Google Plus Huddle
Italics – Use underscore on either side of the word to Italicise it
Example: _Google Plus Stream_ = Google Plus Stream
Strikethrough- Use hyphen on either side of the word to strike it
Example: -Google Plus Hangout- = Google Plus Hangout
2) You can add photos videos or links to the posts by dragging links directly to the share box
3) Circles are like Following people on Twitter. Your updates are sent to them only if they follow you
4) You can tag people on posts by adding a ‘+’ or ‘@’ symbol in front of their name
5) You can send private messages to people by just sharing the post with one person
6) You can disable commenting and re-sharing for each of your posts. To prevent people from sharing your post, click the arrow at the top-right of the post and choose “Disable Reshare”
7) Click on the timestamp of the post to get the permalink of that particular post
8) Clicking the +1 button on a post is the same as “Like” on Facebook. Clicking the +1 button again will remove your +1
9) Using +1 on a Google Plus post will not list the post on your +1 page. Using +1 on other websites will.
10) Shortcuts for Google Plus
- Space – Scroll down
- Shift Space – Scroll up
- J – View next stream item/post
- K – View previous stream item
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After trying out twidroyd for less than a day, I don’t use it anymore cos the interface sucks. The app got disabled by Twitter today.
Dear Samuel Liew (@samliew),
Regardless of how you access Twitter, we are dedicated to making Twitter better, faster and more reliable for you. As part of this effort, we ask applications that work with Twitter to abide by a simple set of rules that we believe are in the interests of our users, and the health and vitality of the Twitter platform as a whole. We often take actions to enforce these rules.
We are sending this email today because we suspended twidroyd for violating our policies.
Every day, we suspend more than one hundred applications that are in violation of our policies. Generally, these apps are used by a small number of users. We are taking the unusual step of sending out this letter because today’s suspension may affect a larger number of users.
We are committed to helping you continue to use Twitter during the disruption of this application. You can download Twitter for Android and other official Twitter apps here. You can also try our mobile web site or apps from other third-party developers.
We appreciate your continued support of Twitter and regret any inconvenience to you.
Twitter Support Team – @support
support.twitter.com
Update: Download Squad just reported on it:
Users of popular Twitter clients UberTwitter and Twidroyd found that they couldn’t log into Twitter today, and a post in the Twitter help center explains why: UberTwitter and Twidroyd have been suspended for violating Twitter’s policies. TechCrunch followed up with Twitter on the suspensions and discovered that the suspended apps were violating Twitter’s privacy, trademark and monetization rules.
Twitter spokesperson Carolyn Penner told TechCrunch, “Violations include, but aren’t limited to, a privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users’ Tweets in order to make money.”
Both UberTwitter and Twidroyd were recently purchased by UberMedia, a company that has been buying up Twitter clients (Echofon and TweetDeck are other recent purchases) and adding them to its Twitter ad network. The trademark issues probably arose because of the “Twitter” in UberTwitter’s name, but whatever UberMedia did to provoke Twitter’s ire is more likely an issue with paid tweets or tweeting ads on behalf of users. Twitter has made in-stream ad networks a strict no-no under its API terms. It will be interesting to see what specific violation it found in UberMedia’s case, but so far it hasn’t been revealed.
Despite what some detractors say, torrents have plenty of legitimate uses — one of which is helping organizations distribute digital content at little or no cost. That’s especially important for a non-profit like Khan Academy, which is why its partnership with BitTorrent Inc. makes perfect sense.
Khan Academy is a provider of free, online educational videos. A wide range of subjects are covered, including physics, biology, trigonometry, calculus, and economics. The academy’s vault currently includes more than 2,000 videos, and all are now accessible via BitTorrent apps. Founder Salman Khan told TorrentFreak, “BitTorrent is a great platform to help us fulfill our mission of providing world-class education to anyone, anywhere.”
If you’ve got either uTorrent or BitTorrent installed, just install the Khan Academy app and get studying! Best of all, you’ll also be helping out by seeding content and giving back to the community while you watch.
Source: Khan Academy and BitTorrent partner to deliver P2P educational video
The internet is full of BitTorrent search engines, but what if you’re just trying to decide what your weekend movie should be? TorrentButler presents new releases in a visually attractive fasion, linking to standard and high definition torrents for each.
The problem with most torrent sites is that they don’t offer a lot of ways to just browse around the catalog. If you want to download something, you have to know what you’re looking for. If you just want to just see what’s out there, web site TorrentButler is a web site that is, essentially, just a giant mosaic of movie posters. You can filter them by popularity, genre, or date released, and search through them if you get an idea of what you’re looking for. Clicking on a poster will link you to that movie’s page, which contains a movie trailer, description, and links to a number of high and standard definition torrents.
Apart from the convenience of being able to actually browse new releases, this site is gorgeous—almost like XBMC for the web (notice the fanart-like view for the movie page to the left). Even if you’re not a BitTorrenter, this site is pretty sweet for browsing new releases and deciding on your weekend movie—much better than making the trek out to Blockbuster. Hit the link to check it out.
TorrentButler
Source: lifehacker.com
Some kinds of internet history is not cleared from the browser, like DNS cache and Flash cookies. Save this code as a “.bat” extension, and run it when you want to clear your history:
echo off
ipconfig /flushdns
RMDIR “%appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects” /s /q
