It’s official – Facebook, once the only social platform worth knowing about, has stepped off the podium, dropping to fourth place below Reddit in the US’s most popular websites.
I get it. Having been a Facebooker for the last decade I’ve found I’m using it less and less, and using social discussion site Reddit more.
Whereas Facebook leaves me comparing my life to my friends’ – not to mention the fact it can’t be trusted to look after my data – Reddit is great for interesting ideas and pictures and I usually feel pretty upbeat after scrolling.
The info has come from web traffic analysis site Alexa, which found that overall Google is still top dog, followed by YouTube and now Reddit, then Faceyb.
Although surveys say that Facebook wasn’t impacted by the Cambridge Analytica scandal it looks like it might have to face the fact it’s not as popular as it once was.
Germany banned from social media during World Cup
German football team boss Joachim Low has banned several of his star players from certain ‘distractions’ during this year’s World Cup – including, probably to the horror of the players, sex and social media.
Given that an increasing number of people would rather give up sex than their phone, I’m not sure which they’re going to find harder…
Interestingly they’re not banned from boozing though, as it’s meant to promote team-building – although I’m not sure social media is worse for sports than a hangover.
Ohio officer fired for racist social media posts
It’s easy to forget when you’re putting something on your personal social media that it might have an impact on your job – but then again it’s also pretty surprising in this day and age that people still don’t think before they tweet.
One such case this week is of a police officer in Ohio who was fired after apparently making racist comments on social media.
He used some very not-okay words on social about the interim police chief at a college, according to reports.
He’s said he regrets the posts and called them “off-duty, alcohol-related speech” and didn’t consider them racist.
Clearly other people did though, and whether he agrees or not the damage is done, proving there’s a long way to go in terms of education – both on and offline.
Facebook user auctions social media data
What do you think your social media data’s worth? Given all the ruckus around Cambridge Analytica and Facebook recently it’d be understandable to think you could get a princely sum for your personals.
Oli Frost, a British writer and developer, decided to put this to the test and listed his personal Facebook data on eBay earlier this week – including likes, posts and comments, his friends list, event invitations and family information.
“Everyone else’s making money off it, so why shouldn’t I? Sell it to advertisers or whatever you want,” he said.
The bidding started at 99 cents and ended up at $300 before it was closed down by eBay for violating Facebook’s terms of service.
Frost wasn’t too happy, saying: “My mistake, I was under the impression I owned my personal data”.
He was planning on donating the earnings to EFF – the Electronic Frontier Foundation – and the only thing he’d asked was that people didn’t steal his identity ‘and open a sweatshop’.
ONO – are the centralized social networks about to be disrupted?
A new decentralized social media platform attracted over 50,000 users in just five days during its beta launch, showing that the people are ready for change.
Across two weeks, two million pieces of content were shared across ONO, which prioritises high-quality social content over clickbait.
It clearly works as 65 per cent of users came back for more, and could be a really interesting challenger to the typical ad-guzzling social platforms.
The platform is built on blockchain technology and users are rewarded with the ONOT cryptocurrency token for sharing good content – sounds pretty interesting to me.
Community creates wheel change
A heart-warming story from the world of social takes us to Pittsburgh this week after a nine-year-old autistic boy had his bike stolen.
Despite the sad start to this story, the local community rallied together on its Facebook page and everyone contributed $10 to buy the boy a new one, raising $165 in total.