Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg married his long-term girlfriend Priscilla Chan last weekend in the back yard of their home. My first thought was “how lovely for them”, but it seems most people’s first thought was “I wonder what the pre-nup says”.

Donald Trump can be expected to head straight for this crass territory, and immediately obliged. But AM reported this morning that after an overnight plunge in Facebook’s post-IPO value, “investors are starting to ask for details about any pre nuptial agreement and what Mark Zuckerberg’s changed status might mean for the company’s long term value and stability.”

I wonder how Priscilla is enjoying her honeymoon, knowing the entire investment world is speculating on how much she could take her beloved for if she decides to cut and run.

Continue reading "You’d think she was a plant to destroy Facebook" »

The best thing about Facebook’s decision to add an “organ donor” status to their pages is that it might help prevent the family veto on the essential process. The worst thing is that it’s not available to Australian users – yet.

By clicking into the Life Event section of their Timeline, Facebook users in the United Kingdom and United States can now alert their family and friends to their decision to donate their organs. Important note: clicking the status option won’t make it legitimate, users still need to register their decision to donate with their own state.

Facebook has high hopes for this tiny change to its page. Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s COO said it is part of using Facebook to “build tools that help people transform the way we all solve worldwide social problems.”

Continue reading "Click “Like” and donate your organs to medicine" »

I woke up yesterday morning to horrific news. My favourite iPhone application of all time, the time-wasting fun-machine photo social network Instagram, had been snaffled up by Facebook for a frankly mind-boggling sum.

Apparently a picture is not worth a thousand words, it is worth $1 billion.

Oh Instagram, why did it have to come to this? After wiping away my tears, the enormity of the purchase sank in. Here was a company of 13 employees being valued at more than the New York Times.

Continue reading "Another billion reasons to hate Mark Zuckerberg" »

SOCIAL TV. Have you ever heard such an obnoxious buzz phrase?

The words alone make me feel exhausted.

And yet the last few years have spawned a number of social TV apps like Fango and GetGlue, that are designed to give audiences a place where they can get together and bitch about TV shows and movies. So, like, Twitter?

Continue reading "I’d rather watch this than use your stupid TV apps" »

Social media has relieved us of many humdrum and antiquated things. Address books, actually meeting up with friends, speaking on the telephone and handwriting invitations.

Yet the more we use it, the more it feels right to blame sites like Facebook for increased feelings of social ill will. It’s started to make us feel bad.

As Forbes columnist Anussay Hossain puts it, we’ve turned into a bunch of “public glory addicts”. And the results are far from attractive.

Continue reading "OMG. A social media site that’s not about your ego!" »

Well, what did anyone expect? Facebook removes harmless pics of Aussie mums breastfeeding, and what, we’re surprised? Gee, who’d a thunk that a massive corporation that exists to profit from banner ads wouldn’t share our values?

Facebook’s moral universe is admittedly rather haphazard. Its automatic boob-detecting software got onto those breastfeeding Mums much quicker than the site had on other occasions removed pages dedicated to hate and vilification, or pages that cruelly mocked the innocent dead.

But here’s the thing. Facebook is not an arbiter of values, nor should it be. It has its own rules and its practices, and anyone who uploads content onto Facebook cannot reasonably expect its editorial policy (or lack thereof) to align with their own values.

Continue reading "Stop expecting Facebook to be your friend" »

Some friends of mine had lunch on Saturday with a mate who spent so much time artfully composing photos of the gathering to post on Facebook they never got to have an actual conversation. It was as if my friends were just attractive extras, hired to play a part in this bloke’s nicely curated published version of his excellent life.

I’ve also written before about paying hundreds of dollars for a great experience only to miss it because you can’t bring yourself to switch off your iPhone. It’s a modern curse. And in cases like these the greatest danger is your friends will be busy next time you suggest a photo-shoot, neatly disguised as a catch-up.

But what happens when the urge to document an event gets in the way of saving someone’s life? There is a terrible story out of the flood-affected Queensland town of Roma this morning about about a woman who was swept away by raging waters while six brave, still-connected-to-reality men tried desperately to save her.

Continue reading "Life slips away while you’re filming it on your phone" »

The Facebook ban on photographs of women breastfeeding their own children raises some important issues about freedom of choice and the role of social media in setting behavioural standards.

There is no valid reason for any social media network to ban legitimate pictures posted by women of themselves breastfeeding their own children.

Such pictures can help normalise breastfeeding and educate others about how breastfeeding is done in real life.

Continue reading "Facebook’s being a boob over breastfeeding pics" »

FOR a year now, I’ve had a little quote pinned above my desk. “Tell me,” it says, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” On a particularly joyless day, I scribbled a response: “Make lunch boxes.”

But even doctored with my smarty-pants cynicism, that scrap of paper winks at my soul. Some days, I try for ‘wild’ by blasting The Buzzcocks through my office after dropping the kids at school. Other times, I aim for ‘precious’, tinkering with words in the hope they’ll flow from me to you as naturally as breath (they don’t).

Now, I’m not one for malcontent. Live well, love well, don’t leave a mess and “yes, please” to another piece of cake is generally my motto. But, recently I’ve felt disconnected, which is absurd because last year I received 13,506 emails, sent 432 tweets and became Facebook ‘friends’ with someone I kissed in 1989.

Continue reading "Reconnecting by getting totally disconnected" »

Ah, the holidays. How good is it to relax on the couch to watch the cricket and – hang on, my phone’s beeping.

Gee, I’d better respond to some of those work emails.

And there are notifications on Twitter. Someone’s tagged a photo on Facebook. Looks like there’s a job offer via LinkedIn. And I should check out who’s on Google+ while I’m at it.

Seriously, do we ever turn off anymore?

Continue reading "We all need to tune in, turn off and chill out" »

So the truth is out. If you have forty bazillion Facebook friends, chances are you have a lot fewer buddies in the real world.

News.com.au reports that according to a recent survey, the number of friends Australians have is their number of Facebook friends divided by 11.

I guess you must be a little lonely if you’ve only got 10 Facebook friends. Punchers, it’s (hopefully) a bright, beautiful and promising Monday. What’s on your minds?

So a Puncher got invited to a big birthday bash a little while ago.

The invitation was sent over Facebook. The Puncher was only really an acquaintance of the person whose party it was, but was happy to have been invited.

After all, the Puncher had a really good conversation with the acquaintance at a party not all that long ago.

Continue reading "Friday dilemma: Should I snub the two-faced host?" »

There’s a growing trend in rear window art. It’s the biggest thing since Baby on Board signs. Only these are telling you not just about the baby but every other member of the family - including the cat and dog.

They’re called My Family stickers and they need to come with a warning: “May Cause Road Rage”. Or “Will Incite Anger”. Because people are going nuts about these little white labels.

For every person proudly adding the adhesive version of their dog, cat or sibling to their back windscreen, there’s another one angrily waving their fist in objection. Or joining the Facebook hate page. Yep, those tiny stickers have divided the nation.

Continue reading "A family that stickers together, sticks together" »

There’s only one thing worse than a person who spends all their time on Facebook. The person who spends all their time on Facebook bagging it out.

You know the ones. Well, how could you not. They’re always on the damn thing. Posting riveting status updates such as: “I hate you Facebook” and “Grrr, what’s with all the changes?”

Fact is, nobody forced you to join up in the first place. Second fact - it’s actually really easy to quit Facebook. You just delete your account, end of story. But still they stay. Moaning, posting and updating.

Continue reading "Festival of Obvious Ideas #6: Dump Facebook" »

It’s good to be big. But being big doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing good things. 

Think what people mean when they refer to Big Pharma, Big Liquor, Big Tobacco, the big supermarkets - and talk about the big banks.

Brace yourselves - we’re entering the age of Big Social.

Continue reading "First there was Big Tobacco. Now there’s Big Social" »

Anonymous says: “I started doing it at night when everyone else was in bed. Then sometimes on the train, while I’m on my way to work. I’ve even done it at parties, or at the pub. Everyone just used to think I was busy checking work emails. But I wasn’t.

The truth is I’m a Facebook stalker from waaay back.  And now, thanks to these pesky new changes, I’m going to have to fess up or give up before everyone catches on.  Unless, they already have.

Oh, god! Thanks very much Facebook, they’re hardly improvements you know.

Continue reading "Friday dilemma: What’s a Facebook stalker to do?" »

Since the beginning of the London riots, everyone’s been talking about social media and, confusingly, The Planet of the Apes.

Specifically, folks have been discussing the possibility of shutting down social media during crazy, violent times (let’s not worry about the apes thing, for now).

The discussion, dry as most of it has been, has prompted me to think about what the world would be like if social networking sites were actually suddenly switched off.

I’m told there’s a giant switch hidden somewhere in the desert. What if we all woke up tomorrow and Twitter and Facebook were gone, replaced by a link to a 57-minute video of Bob Katter building a tiny model ship in a glass bottle?

Continue reading "Turning off social media would be a riot" »

Humans are social creatures and require human contact but the digital age has caused a seismic shift in how we experience life and engage with others.

Gen Y for example is now the most connected generation the world has ever seen.

Australian social commentator Hugh Mackay has labelled this as a new form of RSI - Reduced Social Interaction. He says people are not getting the ‘‘emotional nutrition’’ of spending time face to face with others.

Continue reading "You ‘like’ your friends. But do you really LIKE them?" »

In one of the earliest scenes in The Social Network, the nerds are shown using the net to rank the hotness of women at their university. That nerds are still using Facebook for these very same purposes a decade on should surprise few.

In recent days a private Facebook group has been exposed as trading in images of women. Of pilfering snaps from the pages of friends, of reposting them, of ranking the women like cuts of meat.

In a surprising twist, a group which clearly demonstrates no ethics apparently has a code of conduct for members including a mandate to never discuss the group, a rule I daresay imposed for fear of outing oneself as a geek, a letch and as a perv rather than to preserve any Stonecutter secrets.

Continue reading "Facebook ‘friends’ can pimp you out for kicks" »

The exact time and date of the beginning of the end of civilisation is said to be recorded on the birth certificate of an Israeli baby.

Arriving suspiciously close to last week’s planetary alignment, Like Adler wasn’t fooling anyone.

While reportedly exceptionally cute and a source of profound joy to her parents - Lior and Vardit - many believe she is also a harbinger of society’s downfall.

Continue reading "Like, I totally give this name the thumbs up" »

There’s a new craze in town, haven’t you heard? Stretch your body across an unlikely object, take a pic of yourself, post it on Facebook, then act like you’ve done something really clever and original.

Don’t fall, though. If you do, you could end up like 20 year old Brisbane man Acton Beale, who is believed to be Australia’s first planking fatality after he fell from the balcony of a Brisbane apartment on the weekend.

Allow us to express our condolences to Beale’s family and friends. Now allow us to explain why planking is the dumbest thing we’ve heard of since train surfing, line dancing and Australian hip hop music.

Continue reading "Planking: like plankton only not as intelligent" »

Last week, Melinda Tankard Reist argued right here on The Punch that the “Pippa Middleton Arse Appreciation Society” set up on Facebook constitutes “virtual sexual harassment”.

She re-published some of the more hideous comments people had placed on the fan page, and claimed this is part of a trend that stems from our increasingly “pornified” culture:

When Karl Stefanovic let all the men present know in his Logie acceptance speech that his wife had “the best arse”, frequent comments were made that if a woman had made the same comments about a man, no one would mind. But a woman making a comment about a man’s backside does not carry the same weight or intent as the reverse. We don’t hear men being told to “shake that arse”. We do not hear of a man’s backside referred to as “booty”.

Continue reading "Ease up, we’re not all bum-obsessed trolls" »

Now that Osama sleeps with the fishes, the world inevitably turns its attention to what comes next. We’ll tell you what comes next. The jokes, that’s what. In fact, they’re already here.

We’re not dancing on anyone’s grave. We’re just faithfully reporting, in the old impartial style of reporters of yesteryear, the great mirth outbreak around the world in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s very timely demise.

Normally, there’s a cycle with this kind of stuff. It goes: death, shock, respectful pause, joke outbreak. Not this time. Yesterday it was more like: “hey, shame they had to kill Osama. A much better punishment would have been to capture him alive and make him go through airport security for the rest of his life!” Boom, tish!

Continue reading "Rifling through a bin laden with comic gold" »

This week, Facebook pages have been brimming over with pictures of same-sex couples kissing. The pictures are a protest against Facebook because a photo (actually a still from EastEnders) of two blokes having a pash was removed.

Facebook have now apologised, saying the removal was a mistake (check out the exclusive news.com.au story here). Maybe it was, but people are right to be cynical when discrimination against gay people is still seen as OK by many sections of society.

Growing up, there were some things I couldn’t get my head around. Differential equations were one, homophobia was another.

Continue reading "It started with a kiss: Gay protests in your Facebook" »

One steamy night in February 1974, I went with friends to hear the great blues guitarist B.B. King in concert at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion.

All went well until, an hour or so in, King collapsed on stage and had to be carried off. I left the Hordern in search of a phone box.

The first one was broken. Finding one that worked, I stuffed some money in, rang one of the copy-takers at ABC News and dictated five lines of copy.

Continue reading "A journalist kicking it old school on Twitter" »

Anonymous says:

“While searching around Facebook for a rellie of mine the other night, I came across my niece, my brother’s daughter. I haven’t spoken to or seen him for years. I don’t like him one little bit. Now here’s my problem. My niece has her profile set for the whole world to see and being a 19-year-old you can just imagine the crap that’s on her page. The way employers are using social networking sites to dig into the lives of potential employees these days, she wouldn’t even be considered for a job.

Continue reading "Friday’s dilemma: My niece is exposing herself on Facebook" »

Sometimes, when I’m particularly sleepy, I drink coffee. It’s my little way of pistol-whipping my brain in the face and letting it know I’m in charge. There are times when I simply can’t afford to let old Grey Matter drift off and have to resort to sweatshop tactics circa 1982.

Often, however, this just doesn’t cut it. Scientists tell us that at any given time, we are using but a small fraction of the squishy stuff inside our domes. The rest, apparently, is busy playing solitaire, visiting AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com or sharing a spliff.

This, simply put, is not good enough. And so, in a desperate search for scientifically-sound solutions, I have once again turned to Hollywood.

Continue reading "If I only had a (Limitless) brain…" »

As fossil fuels dwindle and we struggle to feed a hungry population, the world faces a new shortage. As we speak, implausibly rugged scientists are being taken by chopper to a secret bunker while Robert Redford does his best to convince an old special forces type to leave his forest cabin for one last job.

They told us the supply wouldn’t last. “Ration it out,” they told us, “there’s plenty to go around”, but we didn’t listen.

That’s right, because of our greed and refusal to acknowledge the finite nature of our resources, the world has run out of Charlie Sheen jokes.

Continue reading "Witty tweets beat twitty bleats on Twitter" »

For observers partial, impartial or militant, there is now a barometer for the turbulence in the Middle East. The Qatar-based news outlet Al Jazeera has set up an online tool to track Twitter updates from Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen.

But if you’re an aspiring insurgent worried that your movements are now more visible to the government you’re trying to topple, rest assured – social media will find a way.

When Libyan secret police monitored Facebook and Twitter, revolutionaries seeking to oust Muammar Gaddafi from power turned to a dating site called Madawi, assuming aliases from “Sweet Butterfly” to “Melody of Torture” and exchanging coded messages. Their missives, and their mission, are another entry in a series of social media-attributed uprisings that has already claimed the scalp of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.

Continue reading "When the medium becomes the message in the media" »

If the internet is to be believed — and I see no good reason why we shouldn’t believe everything we read on the internet — Facebook has become essential to staging a revolution. As the Web 2.0 (or are we up to 3.0?) commentators keep telling us, if you’re planning on toppling a dictatorial regime, then best first spruce up your Facebook profile.

But we in the West who already inhabit the sunny uplands of democracy haven’t been slouches when it comes to using Facebook to effect large scale social change. A case in point: I recently came across a Facebook group set up to fight the good fight against noisy children in restaurants.

I hadn’t previously noticed this scourge, but apparently restaurants across the nation have been overrun by parents. Even worse, these parents, many of whom would have you believe are responsible and upstanding members of society, have been thoughtlessly taking their children along with them.

Continue reading "Families have dined out on the public long enough" »

Readers, as we’re sure you’re well aware, The Punch is Nigeria’s main national newspaper. It is also, you may be interested to learn, an Australian news and opinion website of considerable standing.

Many of you may mistakenly believe you’ve arrived at the website of your national newspaper. No doubt, then, you’re bewildered by the lack of coverage of the trial of Judge Salami, who is charged with some very serious crimes, possibly against smallgoods. Some say he once put Spanish olives in a Greek salad. Don’t you hate that? String him up, we say.

Let us, however, be clear. This is not the online presence of said Nigerian newspaper. This is The Punch in Australia, where our coverage of the Salami trial has been minimal, to say the least. You will excuse us, we trust. And to those of you who have become our Facebook friends – you will stay friendly with us, yes? We love having you as part of our big, happy family. Truly we do.

Continue reading "Welcome, Nigerian Facebook friends. Please send money." »

The notion that one person’s status update can spark a revolution has gained momentum in recent years.  The “Twitter Revolution” is now a familiar concept. Before it was applied to the current protests in Egypt, the term was used to describe the election riots in Moldova and Iran in 2009 and last year’s Tunisian street demonstrations.

As well as being an attractive media catch-word, the moniker has been regarded as apt because the political upheaval in each of these cases was organised using technological networking tools, including SMS, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Social networks are powerful instruments for connecting and uniting strangers with common objectives.  The Obama 08 campaign was fought perhaps most intensely on the internet, where followers were offered intimate access to “Obama Everywhere” (or at least on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, Black Planet, MiGente, LinkedIn, MyBatanga and DNC Partybuilder).

Continue reading "The revolution will be Twitterised" »

It’s no secret that I am a fan of Facebook.

It should be no surprise that I like it. I am a 30-something, stay-at-home mother, and I work from home part-time, freelance.

And it is a lonely life. Activities with babies last one or two hours, then it’s you and the baby or toddler, toys with bells and blocks.

Continue reading "Don’t let today’s technology control you" »

I woke last Thursday morning wondering whether my sister was dead or alive.

That day, the Brisbane River was expected to peak at 5.5 metres.

Suze lives in the city’s west, near Ipswich.

Continue reading "Saved by the social network" »

Am I missing something here? I don’t Twitter, tried Facebook for about a week and found intelligent and literate friends were writing banal crud.

I know, I know, I’m a dinosaur. What do you expect? I started out communicating mechanically using a cordless, battery-less typewriter.

I now have a bracelet made of old Remington or Royale typewriter keys.

Continue reading "Facebook: putting readers ahead of the words" »

I always wanted to be Indiana Jones.

In addition to being the quintessential whip-cracking he-man, Indy got to dig up ancient relics and shiny physical memories of glories past.

Archaeology has always had a magical appeal to me. There’s a real romance to it that few other pursuits can match.

Continue reading "What would Indy think of Facebook?" »

It’s been a big year for 26 year old Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Not only was he the subject of movie, “The Social Network” he’s also just been made Time person of 2010, “for changing how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even optimistic.”

There’s no question that Zuckerberg is a success; Facebook has 600 million members, employs 1, 700 people and is worth an estimated fortune of £4.4 billion.

Continue reading "Did Time get it right with Mark Zuckerberg?" »

I became an Uncle again in early August of this year. Within minutes of having arrived at the hospital to meet the newest member of our beautiful clan, I had taken a photograph of him, and posted it on my facebook profile.

Within minutes of doing that, I had a message of congratulations from a first cousin I have never met, and who lived far away in the remotest parts of Northern Italy.

At first I thought this interaction and the technology that allowed it was simply marvelous. In discussing it with my mother, Madame Perin still found it impossible to believe. Not unlike the reaction she had when J.R got shot.

Continue reading "A picture tells a thousand lies" »

RIP Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Serena Williams, and Elijia Wood. For today at least, they are dead, digitally speaking.

They are amongst a host of celebrities who have signed on to stage their “digital death,” that is, they have temporarily pulled the plug on their Twitter and Facebook lives until their loyal followers stump up $1 million for World AIDS Day.

But this cyber stunt raises an interesting possibility – what if we like this blessed silence? What if we find we don’t crave their incessant inanities and misspelt, mangled English?

Continue reading "Instead of paying them to Tweet, let’s pay them not to" »

My Facebook profile has been a source of confusion and anxiety for several of my loved ones over the years. To be precise, it’s where ‘single’ has been listed next to ‘relationship status’ for longer than I care to confirm.

Yup, I’m 22-years-old and single. Very, very single. Apparently the spinsterhood clock is ticking for me, and it’s ticking pretty loudly.

The reaction I receive to my single status has been a source of amusement to me in recent times. The head-tilt and lip pout, followed by the ‘oh really?’ comment has become incredibly predictable. The ‘all in good time’ speech that follows has also quickly become an expectation.

Continue reading "Thanks, but I’m not dying - I’m just single" »

Email turns forty this year which makes it at least as old as Black Sabbath, Tina Fey, Andre Agassi, the floppy disk and the Post-it-Note but its reign as our mainstay of office communication could be over if Mark Zuckerberg gets his way.

At a press conference in San Francisco last night, the fresh faced Facebook CEO announced the launch of the company’s new messaging platform that while specifically described as “not email” evidently seeks to eradicate the need for it anyway.

Continue reading "What would you do to improve email?" »

I’ve never been addicted to gambling, drugs or smoking. My drug of choice is Facebook, which I got hooked a few years ago and became obsessed.

Although I still visit the social networking site for a daily hit of notifications, my addiction has slowly lessened in its intensity overtime.

The breaking point for me was finally owning up to the realisation that too much of my time was wasted looking at pointless status updates and photos belonging to people I don’t ever see in real life or speak to.

Continue reading "Modern bullies hide behind a computer screen" »

“@Marty yeah that gear was craaazy, can Dezza get anymore of it? #bestnightever.”

That’s the kind of crap that’s going to get some poor MP de-throned in twenty years time.

Journalists and political nasties are going to have a field day in 2030, with millions of Facebook photos, status updates and tweets to trawl through.

Continue reading "One day only the most boring will prosper in politics" »

With those Facebook geeks-made-good-then-turned-bad immortalised in the new film The Social Network (that opens today)  it’s been on my mind (geddit, I made a FB joke) about what life might be like if they never cracked the coding for it.

How would we know people had hooked up, shacked up, broken up or got knocked up?

People’s nights of debauchery would go unnoticed without the obligatory Sunday arvo upload of pics.

Continue reading "Facebook stole the romance from human relationships" »

Facebook is an easy target. With its size and history of privacy gaffes, criticising it is like taking aim at the proverbial barn door.

The same could be said for the online world in general. When we are faced with a social problem, from cyber-bullying to privacy breaches, it’s much easier to blame technology or the company that provides us with it than to take responsibility ourselves.

We can truthfully say that the internet has changed us, but once we start talking about how and why we need to factor ourselves in as well.

Continue reading "Blaming technology when society goes wrong is lazy" »

At some point in the past decade, geeks became cool.

Like the products they created, geeks began to be marketed as friendly and helpful types that everyday people could turn to to solve problems or get more out of life.

Sometimes they even seemed to be attractive to women. The Social Network should go some way to ending all of this.

Continue reading "Social network geeks aren’t cool, just angry losers" »

Last night three of my female friends posted unusual updates on Facebook about where they “like it”.

I wanted to know what was going on, so I Googled it (I often find this approach less stressful than talking to women). i-It turns out it’s a campaign to draw attention to October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

It’s an idea along similar lines to last year’s effort which centred on posting your preferred bra colour on your favourite online social network.

Continue reading "I like it on the floor too, but not for an entire month" »

Apple released its newest incarnation of music management software last week, and unsurprisingly dubbed it ‘iTunes 10’. Flaunted amongst the new features is something called ‘Ping’, the ability to sign up and follow friends and strangers alike through iTunes, communicate your music tastes and discuss artists.

Apple claims it to be a way to ‘get to know your music by getting to know your friends’. After a cursory examination I went to Twitter and typed ‘WTF #Apple #iTunes #Ping’, laying out my initial superficial assessment bare for the world to see.

In centuries to come, ‘digital archaeologists’ may need a Rosetta Stone of some sorts to decipher what I said. Indeed, many of you reading this may wonder WTF I was tweeting about, so let me explain my standpoint in a way that 140 characters wouldn’t allow.

Continue reading "#isanybodyoutthereupfora realfacetofaceconversation" »

If you are reading this then my job is half done; you’ve started reading this article.

Maybe the headline piqued your interest; perhaps the accompanying image caught your eye; or maybe you are just procrastinating at work. Either way, it’s an honour and a privilege to have your attention for this fleeting moment.

You see, your attention is becoming an increasingly valuable thing. At any moment of the day there are a multitude of entities vying for your interest; some will be trying to sell you a product or service, others will be trying to educate or inform you and some provide little more than a distraction.

Continue reading "May I have your attention please!" »

Want to lose all your friends on Facebook in record time? Then keep up the boring status updates people - you know who you are.

It can start with a nag about your partner because they forgot to take the bins out, but on other days you might make reference to how “cute” they are. Some people log on just to say how bored, tired or drunk they feel, while others detail their children and or pets bowel movements and feeding patterns.

Paying out the boss and whingeing about work is also popular and then there’s the tortuous holiday countdown; I challenge anyone to come up with a more aggravating update than those that begin: “Only 35 sleeps till I’m out of here!” 

Pointless, mindless and repetitive these, albeit short sentences, raise the petty ire; they’re what the dislike button was made for and in its absence, drive the weak-willed to secretly “hide” your feed from their profile pages. And it’s only going to get worse because this week Facebook registered its 500 millionth user.

Continue reading "How to be a Facebook killjoy" »

I’m looking at a series of pictures by the photographer Robbie Cooper, and they’re making me think about computers, the cyber world, and our changing relationship with reality.

They’re from a book called Alter Ego – a project in which Cooper travelled the world taking pictures of people alongside their ‘avatars’ – the images they construct for themselves in cyberspace games like World of Warcraft and Everquest.

Some of them are funny, like the skinny kid who appears as a superhero or the obese boy whose avatar is a Viking-like warrior – and some of them make you wonder what’s the point, such as the woman whose avatar looks exactly like her - but one pair of images really stays with me. 

It’s the little boy in an oxygen mask, with stick-like, atrophied arms and hands resting on foam support cushions, next to the image of a menacing figure in full space armour.

Continue reading "The internet is making us more adaptable, not dumber" »

I like technology.  I like the fact that technology allows me to be an actor for a living.  You see, without technology like television, I wouldn’t be where I am today. 

Yet there is something sinister about the way technology is changing our lives. 

I sometimes think that each new marvellous technological invention gives us yet another reason to spend less time with each other.

Continue reading "The joy of unplugging from our tech-stressed lifestyles" »

In recent months, and especially the last week, there has been a noticeable shift in public sentiment against Facebook.

The controversy surrounding the company’s decision to change its privacy settings have been further amplified by the murder of 18-year-old Nona Belomesoff. As I write a Pakistani court has banned Facebook in the entire country over a page encouraging users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

But since when did all this become Facebook’s fault? Why do we put such an onus on a corporation to act so responsibly with our details rather than questioning our acquiescence to handing over that information in the first place? Why is it we seem to be laying a portion of blame on Facebook for awful human behaviour rather than questioning where it grew from in the first place?

Continue reading "How it became Facebook’s fault" »

The internet offers a world of opportunities. But it also brings some new threats a lot of parents and young people don’t adequately understand.

The tragic murder or 15 year old South Australian girl Carly Ryan by a 50 year old Victorian man who travelled to Adelaide after grooming her on a social networking site brought home to many of us how badly our outdated laws deal with the new threats posed by the internet.

The fifty year old killer had pretended to be a 20 year old youth online in order to win over Carly’s confidence. With the support of Carly’s mother Sonya I introduced into the Senate a Private Senator’s Bill which would make it illegal for an adult to misrepresent their age while communicating with a minor online.

Continue reading "We need to be able to act when online alarm bells ring" »

This graph shows the number of people searching the term “delete facebook account” on Google was up to five times higher than usual last week.

The new wave of concern over Facebook’s privacy settings is mainly being driven from the US, after some high-profile technology commentators quit the social networking site.

However the next graph (over the jump) shows over the past year Australia has led the pack among English-speaking countries on searches for the same term. The spectacular spike at the end shows the more recent volume against the trend.

Continue reading "The world is… trying to find out how to quit Facebook" »

Much has been written about Facebook and its apparent devaluing of friendship. If you want to be friends with someone, or are already friends with someone, it does seem strange to go through the mechanised process of requesting and confirming that friendship online.

Especially in such a public setting – even though some people, such as former Adelaide checkout chick Caz Marshall, sacked last week for bagging a fellow shop assistant on Facebook, still clearly struggle to grasp its public nature.

The flipside of course is that Facebook is a great way to share photos, anecdotes, to arrange to hook up, organise a visit, whatever – that is,  if you have the wit and the enthusiasm to work out how to use it. I am not in this latter category.

Continue reading "Social media turns friendship into a stressful chore" »

When they hear that I don’t have a Facebook account or a Twitter page, some people look at me as if I’ve just announced that I want no part of some fundamental convention of society.

It’s the same reaction that I would get if I told them that I don’t own a pair of underpants or a toothbrush.

They look at me like I am some sort of commando-going, halitosis-suffering maniac who must be stopped for the sake of all mankind.

Continue reading "Surrendering to social media" »

Online memorials have been getting a bad rap lately, and in many ways, rightly so. The cruel comments posted on the Facebook memorial page for murdered Brisbane 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher are nothing short of repulsive.

Even after the furore over the posting of pornographic images on Fletcher’ s site, insensitive and offensive comments persist. Amid good wishes to Elliott and his family, Matt Jackson has written on one Fletcher tribute page, “im famous, im on the world famous post hahahahaha hi mum im on tv lol.”

Scroll down. One of three “fan photos” at that page’s left shows Fletcher in life, grinning under tousled hair, with the words “Woot I’m [sic] dead” written over him in thick red marker.

Continue reading "Don’t kill off online tributes because of bad press" »

Public outrage over the shocking vandalism of internet tribute sites for two young Queenslanders who died in terrible circumstances has again raised questions over freedom online.

The worldwide web next month celebrates its 21st anniversary. It has grown from a single web page to more than a trillion unique pages and is expanding rapidly every day.

Social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube transformed the web from largely static pages under a website owner’s control into something more fluid, with people interacting on the websites to create content.

Continue reading "What next for Facebook after its nightmare week?" »

The Punch has just left Facebook’s headquarters in San Francisco where the company sought to address the fallout from the controversy of tribute pages to dead minors being defaced with obscene content.

Following questions earlier this week from The Punch, Facebook’s global communications and policy director, Debbie Frost, told us the company was sending a letter to Queensland Premier Anna Bligh apologising for the incident and addressing the Premier’s letter of concern sent to the social networking giant this week.

Frost said the incident was unprecedented in her time at Facebook, adding it was difficult to fathom how people would decide to attack memorial pages in this way.

Continue reading "Facebook responds: Shock at obscenities, no policy change" »

As a new recruit to Facebook, I admit I was not exactly on the first-wave of the online social networking phenomena. It’s not that I’m a techo-phobe by any measure (my blackberry is a constant companion).

It’s just that I am not entirely convinced that the addition of a Facebook page will enhance either my work or personal lives.  And the thing is, in this job, the two are often inextricably linked. MPs are public figures - albeit very minor ones. And - after sharing weekends, evenings and most waking hours with either my local constituents, my parliamentary colleagues,  Industry groups and stakeholders within my shadow portfolio responsibilities -  I’d kinda like to keep a little bit of me just for my nearest and dearest.

Call me old fashioned (and I’m sure many of you will) but I prefer to share my personal trials, triumphs and trivia with those I am closest to, rather than the-acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance who I met once at a function and who has now requested to be my “friend”.

Continue reading "Online tributes a hollow imitation of genuine grief" »

Considering the complex cloak and dagger diplomacy surrounding US-Iran relations deputy US State Department Spokesman Robert Duguid comes out with a pretty open account of how and why the State Department asked Twitter not to close down during the post-election uprising in Iran. 

“We don’t have anyone on the ground in Iran; we haven’t since our hostages were set free in 1981. So for us just knowing the information was coming out that this real information, or at least piecemeal information that you knew was happening on the day was important,” Mr Duguid told The Punch from Washington.

“It was also evident to us that without social media being available that those groups who were opposing the crackdown and opposing the election results would not have a voice. So yes we learnt that Twitter was going to go down for maintenance. So we talked about it upstairs at the public affairs section, and one of our number knew the folks at Twitter.”

Continue reading "The diplomatic tightrope in the age of Social Media" »

Update 7am: Despite the company’s statement yesterday, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy say Facebook needs to explain itself. The Punch is still awaiting a response to its questions put to Facebook’s press office.

Update 4.45pm Wednesday: Today there are at least two groups live on Facebook - one of which has over 3400 members - calling for the death of the man accused of Trinity Bates’s murder. If this happened in a newspaper or on a major news website the editor would be at risk of going to jail.

Update Wednesday 2.45pm : Facebook has published a statement about obscene content on the tribute pages to Elliott Fletcher and Trinity Bates on its website. It is printed in full below. We’re yet to hear from them.

Facebook’s statement:

Continue reading "Obscenity on tribute walls: Five questions to Facebook" »

IF you’ve been following the tech media this week, you’ll know that Google is in hot water over one of the most serious privacy breaches in its history.

You’ll likely have heard that Google launched a new product, called Google Buzz,  that was meant to create a social network out of its email users.

And that major privacy flaws in the product led to abusive men getting access to the details of their ex wives, political activists finding their contacts made public for investigators to peruse and journalists having their sources “outed”. I’m one of those journalists.

Continue reading "How Google managed to reveal my sources" »

Another week, another internet service that needs joining to see what the hype’s about. The web was supposed to make life easier, but all it seems to be doing lately is inventing more ways to bombard people with babble.

Google Buzz‘s launch last week was wrapped in an increasingly familiar aura. As with the iPad launch, there was huge excitement from some nerdy types but a resounding verdict from much of the public has been a sigh and a shrug.

Instead of capitalising on excitement, new products have to overcome fatigue. There’s the effort setting up yet another profile, then somehow remembering to check back on it in between reading the news, monitoring tweets, Facebook status updates, doing the footy tipping, watching that Hitler video everyone’s talking about and getting to your reading recommendations all while trying to manage your phone and email inbox.

Continue reading "I’m sorry but the internet is starting to suck" »

It’s Thursday @ The Punch

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg today in 2004.

There have been a few additions to the site you might like to know about.

Want to take up a reader’s point directly with them? You can now reply directly to them by clicking the “Reply” icon at the foot of each comment.

The Punch also now has a Facebook page, where there’ll be occasional updates during the day. Just log in to Facebook, browse to the Punch Facebook page, and hit the “Become a fan” button. You might even get to know other fans of the site through it.

Continue reading "New features on The Punch" »

Perhaps the elite all-male college at Sydney University, St Paul’s, needs to get some rugby league players to talk to its members about respecting women.

The ranks of the elite who would decry league players as “boofheads” and would have been most vocally repulsed by the exposure of player attitudes to the opposite sex have been revealed as nurturing a virtually identical culture of the sexual objectification of women.

Rugby league teams aren’t known for being overrun with players who are also top-flight academics but they could probably teach the boys at St Paul’s a thing or two. The students are supposed to be high achievers but for outright misogyny it’s pretty hard to beat setting up a Facebook group that basically endorses rape.

Continue reading "League players might teach rich boys a thing or two" »

What’s your barometer for keeping things in perspective?

For the past four months or so for me, it’s been Facebook.

Not because of the constant status updates (from the witty to the mundane) or the pictures of new babies, houses, holidays or parties. 

Continue reading "A very modern way to say goodbye forever" »

I still remember exactly where I was when I found out both my parents had passed away. I remember every smell, every colour and I remember exactly what I was thinking as if it was just yesterday.

It’s a horrible thing learning someone you love has died, and I still am completely in awe of those who passed on the news, and provided the support and care I needed at the time.

Today news broke of a Western Australian family who yesterday learned their daughter had died in a car crash via a Facebook post.

Continue reading "Facebook is not the place to find out your child is dead" »

This simple graphic illustrates one way the internet can be used to get an insight into a person, by analysing publicly available information associated with a name. I’ve chosen, for no particular reason, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. Through the rest of this post are similar profiles of a range of Australian public identities.

You can enter your own details into the Personas tool here. If you feel uncomfortable watching the process of this tool scouring the web for information about you, that’s the idea. It was designed to show you have a publicly available profile which you cannot control.

Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it’s intended to highlight not just how you are seen on the web, but “for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories.”

Continue reading "What does the web think of you?" »

It was shortly before my wedding. As I assume others do, I spent some time examining my life. Amidst the consideration of my health, my career and my relationship came a question.

What are you doing on Facebook?

There must be people who find Facebook fulfilling, just as there are people who enjoy discussing Kanye West’s latest rant or actually believe the man has a talent for making anything other than a tit of himself. I just happen not to be one of them.

Continue reading "I killed myself on Facebook, and lived to tell the tale" »

Earlier this month I spoke at a social media conference in Melbourne. When you wear a badge that says you work for Rupert Murdoch at these events, it’s like sitting in the middle of the Collingwood cheer squad in a Carlton jumper. With some people the best you can hope for is that their initial horror will eventually subside to a mild hostility.

I was there to speak about strategy for social media, including Twitter, which The Punch has engaged to a fair degree of success. It is second only to the mighty Google in terms of the number of readers it helps the site reach. My presentation was on using social networks to connect with people.

The Social Media Summit 2009 came just days after the announcement that News Corporation planned to charge for access to its websites. It was the hottest topic of conversation in the wings and with the exception of one or two people, the view among the delegates was that it wasn’t going to work.

Continue reading "Psst, Twitter: You might want to help save big media" »

My family is under strict instructions that if I’m ever kidnapped by Guatemalan rebels (it could happen), am the first victim in a global pandemic that started with domestic animals or become in anyway incapacitated in a newsworthy way they’re to distribute three flattering photographs of me to any media outlet that wants them as soon as the news breaks.

Its a long standing fact that if you die overseas of something other than natural causes, are part of a public tragedy, or just can’t speak for yourself after something really weird happens, newspapers, websites and TV stations are going to scramble for any picture of you they can get your hands on.

If all that’s on offer is some Facebook pics of you throwing up in a garbage bin at Schoolies Week - well so be it. Five years ago the chances of a picture like this one of Jason Scorer, who died in Rome after falling into the Tiber this week, ever seeing the light of day in the mainstream media were minimal.

Continue reading "Your last photo: how do you want to be remembered?" »

I am a social media whore. That’s the point of it all right? There’s a lot you can know about me from what music I listen to, what concerts I’ve been to and yes, even occasionally what I just ate.

There’s even a 12 second video somewhere of me dancing in a tutu to What a Feeling by Irene Cara.  All of which I chose to share across a number of social networks I belong to that include Blip.fm, Twitter and 12seconds.tv and I’m comfortable with that.

And then there’s Facebook.

Continue reading "Six million Australians are selling their lives to Facebook" »

I’m addicted to Facebook. It’s not uncommon for me tie a piece of elastic around my arm and shoot up a dose of the online social network eleven or twelves times a day.

Even when I’m not actively stalking someone or randomly updating my status, Facebook is constantly idle in the background, ready for someone to start up a Facebook Chat conversation.

There are now 6.7 million Australians on Facebook, although you’ll have to take my word on that. I’m just a blogger and not a real journalist so I didn’t do any research on that statistic, I just asked Twitter.

Continue reading "What if you had a birthday and nobody poked you" »

The internet is probably the best beach in the world to go for a surf. It’s the reason I spend more than ten hours a day on the computer, at least eleven if you include my iPhone.

It’s not just the great weather, the rad waves and the cool surfers you meet, in fact there are too many reasons why the internet is awesome to talk about here.

But one of the more interesting ones that’s emerged lately is the concept of collaboration. And not just any collaboration, because that’s been around for ages. But this idea of people who have very little in common, have no prior knowledge of each other and in some case even remaining anonymous, coming together and working together.

Continue reading "Make friends, investigate murders on the internet" »

The Daily Show team digs out the best clips from the archive for this stuff. Here’s Stewart on unverified social media info driving coverage of the Iran elections.