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For all the powerful processing work the human mind can do, it's still prone to making bizarre assumptions or jumping to an illogical conclusion every now and then. Problem is, we don't even recognize these patterns as strange.
Right now in Kent, England, Anthony is almost certainly checking actor Jamie Dornan's Twitter feed. The 22-year-old French teaching assistant has probably also got one eye on Dornan's Instagram stream, although the actor posts there less frequently, and Facebook page
Anthony relentlessly follows and checks (and then re-checks) virtually every action the 50 Shades of Grey star takes online. He spends up to 15 hours per day keeping tabs on Dornan's social media activity
In the quest to be first to Like, comment or respond to Dornan's online activity, and to bring news to Dornan's other fans via the Jamie Dornan Online fan site, Anthony is a social media monitoring machine. In France, Anthony's "co web," Laura, a 25-year-old childcare worker, puts in the same kind of hours in pursuit of reaching Dornan's posts first Read more...
Snapchat will debut its first original series this Saturday on the heels of the rollout of its media platform Discover earlier this week.
The series, titled Literally Can't Even, will appear on the app's Snap Channel, as part of the new Discover feature, according to The Hollywood Reporter .
Sasha Spielberg and Emily Goldwyn, daughters of Steven Spielberg and John Goldwyn respectively, will write and star in the series. The duo will play fictionalized versions of themselves, and the plot will revolve around their lives in Los Angeles. Read more...
Last week, we asked you to dream up your ideal gadget, whether it was as fantastical as an invisibility device, or as practical as an x-ray vision smartphone.
To bring you this challenge, Mashable partnered with Kingsman: The Secret Service , an upcoming action film by 20th Century Fox
Scrolling through the hashtag #DreamGadget, we were pleased to see submissions that encompassed both live-action and stop-motion techniques. Here are a few of our favorites:
It’s hard to call Amazon a trendsetter in this field, since eBay has done something similar for over a decade. Still, because of Amazon’s influence over ecommerce trends, we may be able to consider it groundbreaking. What’s this “new” thing they’re doing?
Haggling.
I like to think of Microsoft PowerPoint as a test of basic marketing skills. To create a passing presentation, I need to demonstrate design skills, technical literacy, and a sense of personal style.
If the presentation has a problem (like an unintended font, a broken link, or unreadable text), then I’ve probably failed the test. Even if my spoken presentation is well rehearsed, a bad visual experience can ruin it for the audience.
Love it or loathe it, Facebook is as integral to our day-to-day lives as checking email or texting that special someone. And in case there was any doubt, the social network unleashed new data on Wednesday to prove it.
Nearly 1.4 billion people around the world use Facebook every month. Some 890 million people visit it daily and now view more than 3 billion videos a day. Unsurprisingly, much of the growth is happening on the mobile side. Almost half of Facebook's 1.89 billion mobile users now check the social network exclusively on their phones and tablets. In other words? While most people continue to use their desktop computers to share, like and comment, mobile-only use is quickly catching up Read more...
It isn't a fashion faux pas in your Instagram feed — celebrities and women around the world are smearing their lipstick for a good cause.
The new #SmearforSmear social media campaign and hashtag, spearheaded by UK-based organization Jo's Cancer Trust, aims to raise awareness during Cervical Cancer Month this January. Participants post selfies with smeared lipstick, encouraging women to get regular Pap smears to screen for cervical cancer. Then, similar to the viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, they nominate friends and family to do the same.
Just one day after Snapchat launched Discover, the app has its first original series.
Discover already has 12 media partners that will be putting content into the app, but Snapchat can now boast video that is completely originalSnapperHero, a series from online video producers Astronauts Wanted and Fullscreen, and made in conjunction with AT&T, will be available on Snapchat early this year.
The series, which Bloomberg first reported, will feature YouTube and Vine personalities playing superheroes in short videos that last between 100 and 200 seconds. True to Snapchat, episodes will only be available for viewing for a set time period. There will be 12 episodes, with four released each week, starting in early 2015 Read more...
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 B2B and B2C benchmark reports, less than a quarter of marketers are able to prove content marketing ROI. Measurement is a key area of difficulty: 49% of B2B and 51% of B2C marketers were challenged with measuring content effectiveness in 2014.
While definitions of effectiveness may vary by team, it should at least be simple to figure out if you’re successful once you define what “success” means. Here are two simple steps to establish a baseline for content effectiveness and prove if it’s failing (or not).
It's not just you: Snapchat's best friends feature is no more, at least for now
The latest Snapchat update, which added a new Discover feature and rearranged the app's settings and contacts menus, also removed the app's ability to see the "best friends" of people in your friends list.
While social media users are known to complain about most major updates (remember the freakout over Facebook Messenger), it's the removal of this relatively minor feature, rather than the app's new editorial content, that has users up in arms.
The feature allowed users to view the top three users with whom a friend exchanged messages. The names in your best friends list was determined solely by the number of times you exchanged messages with a particular friend; users couldn't manually control whose names appeared. Read more...
For Snapchat, it isn't enough to have 100 million users sharing ephemeral photos every month. With Snapchat Discover, a long-awaited feature unveiled on Tuesday, the Los Angeles-based startup wants to be a hub for media content, too.
Snapchat Discover allows media companies to publish content to a new section of Snapchat. Staying true to the app's ephemeral nature, that media content disappears after 24 hours
What remains to be seen is whether reader interest will vanish that fast, too.
At launch, there are 10 partners: CNN, Cosmopolitan, the Daily Mail, ESPN, Food Network, National Geographic, People, Vice, Yahoo! News and Warner Music. Each partner currently publishes a batch of content called a "daily edition," averaging between 5 and 10 stories. Read more...
Twenty years ago, I graduated from Bentley University with a degree in Computer Information Systems. I had always thought about going for a marketing degree, but was advised that it would be too hard to find a job after college. I decided to focus my energy elsewhere.
Little did I know that I’d have a very successful career in marketing, starting my own agency and working on campaigns for clients as diverse as HBO, American Eagle Outfitters. and The Coca-Cola Company.
There have been a lot of questions about Facebook lately: Are people still using it? Is it on the decline? Can businesses still find it valuable?
An all-out blizzard has slammed the northeastern U.S. with a thick blanket of snow, and it just keeps getting worse.
More than 5,500 flights have already been canceled. Several states have put in place travel bans for the sake of safety. Even major transit systems like the MTA, MBTA and Amtrak have suspended their service for Tuesday. This storm is no joke.
But even so, there were souls brave enough to make the trek to parks, bridges and rooftops just to get that one solid capture. From slushy streets, to snowmen, to portraits under falling snowflakes, we curated our favorite photos and videos shared using the hashtag #MashaBlizzard. Read more...
UPDATED: Tuesday, Jan. 27 / 2:14 a.m. EST — Facebook, Tinder and Twitter appear to be back to normal after a 40 minute outage and mass freak out.
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Hold your duck faces, sexy messages and food photos. The world is in the middle of an extreme outage.
Facebook, Tinder and Instagram users worldwide are experiencing issues on Tuesday.
Mobile apps and website versions of the sites have gone down for some users, while others have been experiencing intermittent issues since 12:10 a.m. EST, according to downdetector.com, which monitors disruptions to Facebook's services
It is unclear at this time the reason for the issue. Facebook, which also owns Instagram, said in a statement emailed to Mashable: “We’re aware that many people are currently having trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.” Read more...
While Facebook arguments and Twitter fights are almost always immediately regretted by all parties involved, a social network of like-minded people would have its own downsides.
In this Above Average parody, a new social network called "Jynx" exists to show you exactly what you want to see, when you want to see it. Like something straight out of a Black Mirror episode, the video explores the concept of filter bubbles, all-to-real algorithms that keep users from seeing anything outside of their comfort zone.
Oh, yeah, it's hilarious too.
Nearly every blockbuster disaster film shows us how New York City handles the apocalypse, but we rarely get to see what New Yorkers are really up to on the ground as disaster approaches. Well, now we know, thanks so the panic-stricken Twitter messages from hundreds of people in the tri-state area anticipating a major snow storm
The bottom line: Hoarding is in
Like most panic buying, it started as a trickle, just after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's dramatic televised speech during which he described the upcoming snow storm as "one of the largest snowstorms in the history of this city." Read more...
Some Snapchat creations are too funny to disappear into the ether.
We salute the savvy souls who saved this selection from deletion. You can get inspired to create your own funny, punny Snapchats with our list below.
Have you seen any other amusing Snapsterpieces that play on words? Any other hilarious puns worth sharing with the world? Let us know in the comments below.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. Read more...
A school friend's mom passed away last week. He posted the news on Facebook with a short, dignified note, giving brief details of how his mother had died and information about the funeral. Feeling for his loss, I started to write, "So sorry to hear your sad news..."
But before I pressed "Enter," I scrolled through the comments others had already posted — passionate eulogies and anecdotes from people who really knew my friend's mom, celebrating her spirit and uniqueness. Suddenly my well-meaning comment seemed trite below such heartfelt words. As I deleted it, I wished there were another way to let my friend know I'd seen his news, and that I was feeling for him Read more...
Many of us remember a time when Internet access was a privilege; now, however, access to the Internet is believed to be a basic human right by 83% of global users.
Access to a global network of information has become something we can’t live without. The Internet enables us to be more self-sufficient — and yet more dependent at the same time.
Smartphones are like security blankets, with 65% of digital natives reporting that they carry their devices from room to room with them. We feel safer knowing we have access at our fingertips to any information or people we need. We don’t need to know it all; our phone does. Read more...
