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Teens Now Are Using Instagram More Than Facebook

October 29, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Move over Facebook. Where teens are concerned, Instagram reigns supreme, according to a recently published survey.

Piper Jaffray has been tracking how teenagers use the internet for nearly twenty years, and the second report of this year has some interesting findings indeed.

Here are the highlights:

85 percent of teens report using Instagram at least once a month, up from 79 percent in the fall of 2016.

84 percent of teens report using Snapchat at least once a month, up from 80 percent in the fall of 2016.

Just 36 percent of teens report using Facebook at least once a month, down from 52 percent in the fall of 2016.

In terms of their favorite social media platforms, here’s how things look as of this year:

Snapchat in first place with 46 percent

Instagram in second place with 32 percent

Twitter a distant third with six percent

Facebook fourth with just five percent

Interestingly, more teens still use Instagram, but the survey revealed that when the teens were asked which platform they prefer, Snapchat still wins the day.

The survey revealed the reason behind the seeming disconnect. Instagram is the social media channel of choice when it comes to brand engagement of teens, with an overwhelming majority of teens preferring to be contacted by brands via Instagram.

It should be noted, however, that Snapchat is improving in this regard, but industry insiders are doubtful that Snapchat will be able to overcome Instagram’s dominance in brand engagement. This is because Instagram has been focusing heavily on improving engagement with the youngest cohort of the teen set.

Unless the company makes a major misstep in handling that segment of the demographic, they’re unlikely to lose them in the longer term. Meanwhile, Facebook has become the bastion of older users. Mom and dad check their Facebook accounts. Teens check Instagram.

If your business markets products to teens, this is good information to know. If you don’t have a robust presence on Instagram, then your social media isn’t doing as much for you as it could be.

Joseph Martin

President & CEO
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Major Facebook Breach May Have Affected Your Account

October 16, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Facebook got hit hard by a currently unknown group of hackers. If you recently found yourself inexplicably logged out of the social media site, Facebook did it in response to the breach.

The breach resulted in the theft of data pertaining to more than fifty million of the site’s users.

Here’s what we know so far about the attack:

The hackers pulled off their heist by taking advantage of three different vulnerabilities.

Facebook detected the breach after spotting an unusual spike in traffic.

Your password has not been compromised, but unfortunately, the hackers don’t need it.

The hackers stole more than fifty million access tokens. These tokens can be used to take over Facebook accounts without passwords, even if you have two-factor authentication enabled.

If you were in the compromised group, the hackers have every scrap of personal information you’ve entered into the social media site.

If you use the “Logged in as Facebook” feature on other websites, those accounts are also at risk. The hackers can use the stolen tokens to access any site you log into with your Facebook credentials.

The reason you got logged out was because Facebook reset access tokens for everyone they suspected may have had their data stolen.

To find out if you’ve been hacked, you can check “Active Sessions” on Facebook. If you see an unknown IP address, or a location in some other country, that’s a sure sign that you’ve been hacked.

This breach is not connected in any way to the hacker who pledged to delete Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Facebook page.

In addition to that, you should know that Facebook is now facing a class-action lawsuit over the hack. The suit alleges that the company failed to protect their personal data from falling into the wrong hands due to the company’s lack of proper security practices.

While the vulnerabilities have been fixed, the class-action lawsuit has a good chance of succeeding. The investigation is still in its early stages, and there may be updates to this story as we learn more.

Joseph Martin

The Internet May Be Hurting Your Sleep

August 14, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Can you imagine life without the always-on internet? If you’re like most people today, it’s a simply indispensable tool, and the thought of suddenly being without it makes you shudder and brings images of the Dark Ages to mind.

It’s glorious, no doubt, and it really is a remarkable tool, but unfortunately, it’s not all upside. A recent study funded by the European Research Council has concluded that access to broadband internet access costs you as much as 25 minutes of lost sleep every night. Considering that most of us are already getting by on far too little sleep, that’s not good.

Luca Stella, one of the researchers responsible for the study, had this to say about it:

“Internet addiction and technology use near bedtime are often blamed as a major cause of the sleep deprivation epidemic. Yet the empirical evidence on this relationship is still limited. In our study, we first show descriptive evidence that the use of digital services at night is correlated with shorter sleep duration. Then, exploiting differences in the access to high-speed internet caused by the pre-existing telephone infrastructure in Germany, we analyze the relationship between high-speed internet and sleep. We find that access to broadband internet reduces sleep duration and sleep satisfaction.”

While the report is clearly bad news, in many ways, it merely confirms what we already knew. It seems self-evident that if you spend time surfing the web just before bed, you’re probably going to get sucked in, which is going to cut further into your already limited sleep time. Sure enough, we now have evidence that supports this notion.

What is interesting in the report, and something that runs counter to most people’s assumptions, is that people in the 30-59 year age range suffered more sleep loss than those in the under 30 crowd.

A fair question then, is how much sleep are you getting? If you’d like more, it might be time to consider curtailing late-night internet use.

Joseph Martin

New Tools Help You Limit Your Social Media Time

August 12, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Facebook and Instagram are rolling out new tools designed to help manage how much time you’re spending on those two social media platforms.

On Facebook, the new feature is called “your time on Facebook,” and on Instagram, it’s called “Your Activity,” but both features do essentially the same thing.

They monitor and report on how much time you’re spending on the platform and can be fine-tuned by users to temporarily mute your push notifications.

The changes are being rolled out in an effort to address concerns that a number of groups are now raising. The concerns are about the addictive feedback loops built into social media apps. These feedback loops have been demonstrated to have a negative effect on the well being of users who get sucked in too deeply.

The new features will be rolled out to 99 percent of the users on each platform. The company is withholding the new features from 1 percent to allow for comparative testing.

Once they become available, the new features can be found under the “Hamburger Menu,” which is the nickname for the three vertical lines at the top right-hand corner of the Facebook app. On Instagram, the new feature can be found under the settings menu, accessible by tapping the gear icon on your Instagram profile.

It remains to be seen whether these new features will have the desired effect. Since they have to be manually activated, odds are that the impact will be minimal. For a certain subset of users who seem not to be able to control their social media addiction on their own, it might provide just enough of a boost to make a difference.

Even if that proves not to be the case, it’s clear that the company takes the matter seriously, so we can expect to see more from them on this front in the months ahead.

Joseph Martin

Massive Breach Affects 21 Million Users Of Timehop App

July 23, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Do you use Timehop? If you’re not sure what that is, it’s a popular, clever little app that reminds social media users about posts they’ve made in the past. It can be quite handy, especially if you’re active on numerous social media accounts.

Unfortunately, the bloom is off the rose for Timehop. Recently, the company announced that it had suffered a breach on the Fourth of July, which gave the hackers virtually unfettered access to the company’s cloud servers for more than two hours. During that time, the hackers were able to make off with the names, email addresses and other account details of more than twenty-one million users.

Nearly five million of the records stolen (4.7 million) had phone numbers in the data. As bad as that sounds, it gets worse. Because of what Timehop is and how it works, it’s got hooks into all of the social media accounts of every member who uses the app.

Timehop uses tokens to access social media information. Tokens that are now in the hands of the hackers, who could use them to view and/or “scrape” social media content (including private posts) uploaded by every one of the 21 million impacted users. In short, even if you keep tight control over who can see your social media content, if you’re one of the impacted users, the cat is officially out of the bag.

The company says that they deactivated all tokens shortly after the incident was detected, but there was still a small window of time in which they could have been used.

As is the norm in cases like these, Timehop has issued an apology, is in the process of informing all affected users, and is working with law enforcement and an outside agency to assist with the forensic investigation. This incident, however, underscores how easily it is to lose control of one’s data.

It’s not enough to simply exercise caution and be mindful of security on the social media channels you frequent. You’ve also got to be mindful of what third parties you allow to access those channels, because any one of them could provide an inroad for a hacker.

Joseph Martin

Facebook Messenger Getting Feature To Help With Fake Accounts

July 18, 2018 by Joseph Martin

It’s no secret that there are legions of scammers and spammers haunting the virtual halls of Facebook. As the world’s largest and most influential social networking site, it’s a natural target, making its masses of users natural targets, too.

Facebook is taking steps to counter the threat posed by these nefarious actors, after being somewhat slow to act initially.

This resulted in a series of Congressional hearings that saw CEO Zuckerberg in the hot seat earlier this year.

While the company has already taken many steps to help bolster the privacy and online safety of their users, their latest announcement is a much larger and more significant step in that direction. The company is currently testing a new feature embedded in Messenger. This is a feature that would identify suspicious accounts sending unwanted messages by informing the recipient of the account’s country of origin via phone number, and listing the date that the account was created.

In its simplest form, this approach has obvious advantages that will help reduce phishing and spam-oriented messages, but based on the screenshots the company published to highlight the new feature in action, it could also be used to detect and identify messages sent by agents whose intentions are to spread misinformation. For instance, users will be notified if they receive a message from an account that is tied to a Russian phone number.

The company is still reeling from the aftermath of Russia’s massive misinformation campaign, which used several social media channels, (but had a heavy presence on Facebook) in an effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. To this day, the company is still actively suspending accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, which is a propaganda outfit with direct ties to the Kremlin.

Whether you agree or disagree that Russia influenced (or attempted to influence) the presidential election, this is a very good move. Misinformation is a cancer. Anything we can do to stop its spread has to be counted as a good thing.

Joseph Martin

Bug In Facebook May Have Unblocked People You Blocked

July 12, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Facebook recently announced a site bug that impacted the privacy settings of more than 800,000 of its users. If you’re one of the unfortunate souls who has been affected, then people you had formerly blocked may have become unblocked, and can now see your posts.

For many people, that’s not a huge deal. In some cases, say for example, if you blocked your ex-girlfriend, boyfriend, or wife and were impacted, they may be able to see things you don’t want them to.

Facebook’s official statement in response to the matter provided additional details and said that 83 percent of the people who were impacted only had one person on their blocked list temporarily unblocked, and that the situation had been remedied.

Of significance, the bug did not allow unblocked users to see content shared by friends of those who had blocked them, and it did not reinstate a “severed” friendship on the system. In some cases, however, someone who had been blocked may have been able to establish (or attempt to establish) a Facebook Messenger communication with the person who had blocked them.

The bug was active between May 29th and June 5th, and was caused when a small amount of data governing “associations” between users was deleted. When the data was restored, the issue went away on its own.

The number of impacted users may sound grim, but given the legions of people who use Facebook, it’s actually a drop in the bucket. Even so, Facebook’s response was immediate, decisive, and the company took actions to reassure its user base that the issue had been resolved and they would take steps to see that it did not happen again.

Nice words, but given the intense scrutiny Facebook has been under in recent months, blunders like this one only underscore that the company still has a lot of work to do where privacy is concerned.

Joseph Martin

Some Private Posts On Facebook May Have Been Exposed

June 24, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Facebook is in hot water again. Recently, the company admitted that while testing a new feature on the site, they inadvertently made public the posts of more than fourteen million users. The incident occurred between May 18th and May 22nd and occurred when Facebook was testing a new “Featured Posts” enhancement.

The goal was that users could selectively make posts visible to everyone. Unfortunately, the error created a situation where any posts users in the test group made were automatically shared to everyone. The company found and corrected the mistake on May 27th, but during the intervening span of days, any posts those users made were set to global visibility. Facebook is currently in the process of contacting the impacted users and asking them to review any posts they made during the impact period.

Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan had this to say: “To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before – and they could still choose their audience just as they always have. We’d like to apologize for this mistake.”

Unfortunately, this is not the first time in the recent past that Facebook has gotten into hot water over the mishandling of user data. Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to testify before Congress when it came to light that the company acknowledged they had improperly shared private information pertaining to tens of millions of its users with Cambridge Analytica, which used the information in an attempt to influence the most recent presidential election.

Even if you’re not a member of the test group, if you use Facebook and made any posts between May 18th and May 27th when the company fixed the bug, it pays to review your posts just to make sure that their visibility has been properly set.

Joseph Martin

Facebook Is Adding New Features, Including Dating

May 21, 2018 by Joseph Martin

At this year’s F8 Developer’s conference, Facebook announced a raft of changes and updates it will be rolling out later this year. Some are fun, others practical, but they’re all interesting. Here are the highlights:

Get Ready for “FaceDate”

This announcement is interesting. Not so much because the idea of using Facebook to meet someone is new, but because of what the announcement did to the stock prices of existing companies.

The new feature will look and feel a bit like Tinder, with a few important caveats:

Your FaceDate profile will be separate from your Facebook profile

The app will not match you with your existing Facebook friends

Your existing friends will not see, or even know about your FaceDate profile (unless you tell them, of course)

Facebook fanatics will no doubt love this feature, but the news caused the stock prices of two online dating companies to fall sharply. These included Match Group (parent company of Match.com) tumbling 22 percent, and IAC (parent company of both Tinder and Match Group) falling 16 percent.

Third Party App Review Starting Up Again

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company suspended its third-party app review. That is re-opening starting Tuesday, so by the time you read these words, app review should once again be in full swing. The major change here is that the company will now require business verification for apps that need access to specialized API’s or extended login permissions. Apps asking for basic profile information only will not be subject to this new requirement.

Real Time Language Translations In Messenger

A long-anticipated feature addition, the company is taking a cautious approach here. When the feature is initially rolled out, it will only translate English-Spanish conversations, with additional languages added incrementally. In addition to the translation feature, the messenger interface will also get some tweaks and improvements.

“Clear History” Feature Being Added

This one is aimed specifically at the lingering privacy concerns Facebook’s CEO was recently grilled about when he appeared before Congress. In a bid to increase user privacy, Facebook will now allow its users to see the apps and websites that send Facebook information when in use, and allow users to turn off Facebook’s ability to store that data. It’s a good first step, but it remains to be seen how helpful it will be in terms of increasing user privacy. There’s no good way to know that until we get the opportunity to see the new feature in action.

All in all though, a productive conference, with a number of interesting changes ahead.

Joseph Martin

Facebook Post Removals May Soon Get An Appeals Process

April 10, 2018 by Joseph Martin

There are some big changes coming to Facebook, which may have some serious unintended consequences.

In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg indicated that he’s considering allowing users to independently appeal to the content moderation team if their posts get taken down for violating various community policies.

On the surface of it, this seems like it would be a good thing. Zuckerberg said that the move is designed to give people in the Facebook communities what they want, rather than reflecting short-term, profit-driven wishes of the shareholders.

It’s a significant change because as of right now, Facebook only allows for appeals if content was removed for violation of copyright laws. In addition, the appeal must be made via a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notification, which makes it a somewhat daunting process.

Zuckerberg describes the new approach as follows: “So maybe the folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined, and then people can get a second opinion. You can imagine some sort of structure, almost like a Supreme Court, that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgement call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world….I think we can build that internally as a first step.”

All of that looks good on paper, but there are some major problems with this approach.

First, the company will struggle to find enough volunteers to monitor content and appeals to keep pace with demand. Given the size of Facebook’s footprint on the web, that’s a very real concern. The new, easier appeal policy is certain to cause the number of appeals to explode.

Second, if not done with great care and forethought, it could further polarize the platform. It could lead to the development of more estranged “information silos,” which runs counter to what the company ultimately wants its global network to be. In addition to that, it could easily lead to a massive backlash against the company.

Time will tell, but the coming months should be interesting indeed.

Joseph Martin

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