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Instagram and LinkedIn Add Tagging

May 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Facebook is adding Hashtags. LinkedIn has added @tagging and now Instagram has followed suit. It seems the largest social networks are paying attention to the preferred features on Twitter and are incorporating them in a terrific show of follow-the-leader.

Here is the skinny:  In an update to their mobile apps, Instagram has added Facebook-like tagging to uploaded images. They are calling the feature Photos Of You.

To get started, grab the update and then open Instagram and upload a new image. Apply whatever filters you want and then proceed to the description and sharing screen. You’ll see  a new button to Add People. Tap that and you will go back to a screen displaying your image, only this time you can tap specific areas of the image and choose to tag that area with someone’s name, just like on Facebook. Once you’re finished, you can add a caption, map it, and choose to share to Facebook, Email, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickror Foursquare, just as before.

Tag, you're it! Instagram adds People Tagging

You can drag tags around and tap to remove them. Note that in order to tag someone, you need to search using their username. Hopefully Instagram will improve this feature to be more user friendly, as it would be more natural to search by name.

Once you save your image, it will appear within the Instagram feed with a small person icon in the lower left corner that you can tap to see tags.

Also note that all Instagram users are initially set to Automatically have tagged photos added to your profile. If you want to approve photos first, go to your profile and tap on the new Photos Of You icon, then tap the settings icon in the upper right. I’m sure many will be upset that Instagram has chosen to make this setting automatic rather than manual by default, and that the setting is buried within your photo gallery and not with other app settings and options.

The udpate is available for both iOS and Android users.

Screen shot 2013-05-03 at 11.50.19 AMMeanwhile, LinkedIn now lets you @mention companies and connections as the site continues to place a greater emphasis on followers and influencers.

I’ve also heard that Klout is (finally) going to start leveraging more of the activity and influence found on LinkedIn into their algorithm.

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Digital Media, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Professional Networking, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

WSJ Editor’s Aurora Comment: Think Before You Tweet

July 26, 2012 By 3 Comments

This has been a strange couple of weeks for Twitterers.

First, we had the idiotic PR mistake from a British Boutique who didn’t bother to Google “Aurora” before saying the trending topic must be about a dress they sell instead of the massacre of innocent people.

Then, we had an Olympic hopeful expelled from competing in the Games for making an equally stupid racist Tweet about her fellow competitors.

And, now, someone who most certainly should have known better, a Wall Street Journal editor topped them all with a terrible Tweet about the three men who died shielding their girlfriends from gunfire during the tragic Aurora shooting.

James Taranto, who writes the “Best of the Web Today” column and is a member of The Journal‘s editorial board, Tweeted:

As you can imagine, the reaction was not favorable for the seasoned journalist.

“Wow. Apparently, you have no soul,” Twitter user @dennholt wrote in reply.

“you sir are disgusting. How dare you!!!,” tweeted @txLSUgirl.

Mr. Taranto responded with an article entitled Heroes of Aurora: A mea culpa for an errant Tweet. In the article, Taranto explains that he and his colleagues had been discussing the stories coming out of the Aurora tragedy and “We intended this to be thought-provoking, but to judge by the response, very few people received it that way. The vast majority found it offensive and insulting.”

He then goes to to explain that his intention behind the Tweet was to inspire these women “who owe their lives to their men” to “live good, full, happy lives.” Sort of the “earn this” moment from Saving Private Ryan.

Now, I can understand the sentiment, truly I can. And, I’m quite sure not a day will go by in these womens’ lives where they don’t think back with gratitude and grief over the sacrifice their boyfriends made.

But, the communication of that “earn it” concept failed miserably, made even worse by the fact that a journalist – a professional communicator – said it.

And, it got me thinking. In this day and age, we’ve all said things online at one point or another that have come back to bite us. I know I have. But, it’s stories like these that only serve to remind us: words matter. What we say and how we say it matters. And, not just when we are promoting a product or crafting a story around a brand. Every day, every thing we say has an impact on someone, somewhere.

I can still – to this day – get choked up over the words of bullies from my childhood or beam with pride over the first time my mom and dad told me how proud they are of me. Words matter.

Today, when our thoughts are broadcast to the world the moment they occur to us, we should take greater pains to take a moment and think about what we are saying. We should take the time to think about how it will be received by others.

The folks at Chick-Fil-A have seen the power of their words in the past few days as boycotts break out across the country. An Olympic athlete had her dream of competing crushed because she didn’t consider how important her words are. A PR pro in the UK was likely fired for not researching the context of her words before using them. And, an editor’s intention was completely lost when he failed to find the right phrasing for the idea he wanted to express.

Words matter, y’all. So, take the time to value them and respect the power they wield.

With that, I leave you with a quote from Margaret Thatcher taken from the movie Iron Lady:

Filed Under: Digital Media, PR Blunders, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Athlete Expelled From Games For Racist Tweet

July 26, 2012 By 1 Comment

Voula Papachristou has been expelled from the Greek Olympic Team for a racist twitter comment, according to the Associated Press.

The website Keep Talking Greece translated the offensive tweet by Papachristou (@papaxristoutj):

“With so many Africans in Greece… At least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!!!”

Papachristou tweeted an apology in English on Wednesday:

The Greek Olympic Committee released a statement, confirming the expulsion of the track and field athlete who had been set to compete in the triple jump. Per the BBC, the committee stated that Papachristou has been “placed outside the Olympic team for statements contrary to the values and ideas of the Olympic movement.”

Filed Under: Digital Media, PR Blunders, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Bad News for Digg – Valuation drops from $160m to $500k

July 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

It’s a sad day for Digg, the once super cool social bookmark site has dropped from a valuation of more than $160 million to the bargain basement price of $500,000. The buyer is New York technology development firm Betaworks, which is attempting to revive the news-sharing site that was outmaneuvered by Facebook and Twitter.

I’m not entirely surprised by this drop in value for the site. Back in 2006, Digg was the place to get news before anyone else; it was the first site I looked at in the mornings to see what happened while I was sleeping. And, I wasn’t the only one. Enough of us went there daily to help land Digg founder Kevin Rose  on the cover of BusinessWeek in 2006 with a $60 million valuation.

But, now I hardly ever go to the site anymore and yesterday, Digg confirmed it sold its brand, website and technology to Betaworks. The price is a pittance for a company that once raised $45 million from prominent investors including Facebook investor Greylock Partners, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in just one week.
According to insiders, Digg received higher offers from bidders that included technology and publishing companies and start-ups but ultimately decided Betaworks had the best plan for reviving its brand.

Founded in 2004, Digg was once one of the most promising start-ups in Silicon Valley. Digg users would post links on the site’s home page, then others would vote on their choices, determining the prominence of the stories they posted.

“They were one of the first social media sites,” says Kristina Lerman, an assistant research professor at the University of Southern California who has studied Digg and other social-news sharing sites. “They introduced social components like having friends and followers.”

The site quickly rose to prominence, in part due to founder Kevin Rose, a former cable television talk show host, whose charm helped sell the concept to Internet tastemakers. In the fall of 2008, Digg raised nearly $29 million in venture capital from Greylock Partners, Highland Capital Partners and other financiers in an investment valuing the company at around $164 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

Over the years, the company was rumored to be in negotiations to sell itself several times, including to Google in 2008 for a reported $200 million. The deal was never completed.

But the audience started to drift away in early 2010 when services such as Facebook and Twitter exploded in popularity, as users preferred getting article recommendations from their friends or people they followed. I know I stopped going to the site for news around 2009, pretty much the same time Twitter established itself as the source for instant news having given us the very first reports of Captain Sully’s brave water landing and Michael Jackson’s death.

A series of redesigns not well-received by users also hurt the company. A site relaunch in the summer of 2010 triggered a backlash, with most users saying they preferred the old Digg. By the end of 2010, Digg’s audience had fallen by more than half, according to ComScore.

Newer social-news website Reddit. also stole some of Digg’s thunder. Last December, Reddit drew more visitors than Digg for the first time, according to comScore, and since then it has maintained that lead.

In March of last year, Rose resigned from the company. He is now a venture capitalist with Google Ventures.

Betaworks intends to fold Digg into News.me Inc., a digital media start-up that Betaworks launched in April 2011. News.me sends users links to news articles that their connections on Twitter and Facebook are reading and talking about. News.me, which uses an iPad and iPhone app and daily email newsletter, has about 10 employees.

None of Digg’s remaining employees will join Betaworks as part of the acquisition. Chief Executive Matt Williams will join venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Betaworks CEO John Borthwick will become Digg’s new chief.

Sad day for a once super cool site. But, it will be interesting to see what Betaworks has in mind for Digg. I will keep y’all posted.

Filed Under: Digital Media, Journalism, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to Follow Today’s Apple Announcement Live 1pm EST / 10am PT

June 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Want to watch Apple’s keynote speech at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference live? The company’s keynote speech, live from San Francisco, begins at 10 a.m. PT, or 1p.m. ET. iOS 6 and all of its goodies are likely on the schedule, as well as the first public demonstration of OS X Mountain Lion, the new Mac operating system announced this past February; Apple could also show off an entirely new line of MacBook laptop, with a dazzling Retina display screen, rumored to be sized somewhere in between the Pro and the Air.

Of course, the event sold out months ago, but you can follow along because several news outlets that will be in the audience will be live-blogging the news, including:

- Engadget
- The Verge
- Wired
- Ars Technica
- 9to5Mac
- MacRumors
- Macworld
- CNet

Engadget and The Verge tend to have the best tech event live blogs, with professional photographers with super-nice cameras uploading photographs of the presentation in real time. Their employees also seem to be very fast typists.

Following the event, Apple will post a video recap on its Events page.

 

Filed Under: Consumer Products, Digital Media, Public Relations, Youth Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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