Facebook Testing New App 'Moments'

Sharing To Get Easier And More Private

One of the criticisms lobbied most consistently against Facebook is the complicated nature of its privacy settings. No matter how many tweaks the site’s algorithm goes through, choosing who can see what you upload is frustratingly difficult. It’s nigh-on impossible to select only those on your friends list who’d appreciate that link to TheFappening your uni mates should see – it’s why my auntie won’t look me in the eye anymore. 

Fortunately, a new standalone app from Facebook HQ might be about to fix that. Codenamed ‘Moments’, the app has been described in some detail in an article on TechCrunch. Apparently, the app features a series of tiles aligned in a grid. Each square on the grid represents a different set of friends or family, so when you click it will only share whatever you post with that set of people. Naturally, this process will be much faster than fiddling with your privacy settings on a post-by-post basis.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Chances are, we’ve all experienced the horrific embarrassment of friends and family colliding over Facebook. While your friends know all the sordid little details of your time at uni (I even spoke to a girl one time. Don't tell my mum), your parents remember when you cried at an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine because you found the Fat Controller scary. The two parties should never mix, and the fear of it happening is currently agenuine reason to avoid sharing content on Facebook.

Unfortunately, we’re yet to see even the blurriest of screenshots of the app which might fix all that. In fact, apart from the description of its grid-based interface, we know pretty much nothing. All we do know is that it exists, and Facebook’s people are currently squishing its bugs. We're also told its design closely resembles Cluster, a third-party app which does pretty much the same thing.

Source: techcrunch.com

While it could be argued that those interested in the app could just switch to private messaging, some may find the chaos of a multi-user IM chat more trouble than it’s worth. Furthermore, the design of public Facebook is infinitely more pleasing than the design of its instant chats, with users able to like, share and respond to individual comments. In this sense, Moments may divide Facebook itself into dozens of little subforums, each featuring different groups of the people in your life.

While Facebook has a chequered past of app creation (I will personally give you £20 for every friend you have who uses Slingshot instead of Snapchat), they’ll hope that Moments will have sticking power. Facebook's failed attempts at app creation tried to steal market share from pre-existing, well-established apps, but Moments instead places a plaster over a problem they have with their own site.

The main Facebook app deals in content. Moments will worry about audience. 

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Social Media Playing A Part In The Rising Complaints Against Doctors

Doctors Under Fire On Social Media?

A recent report commissioned by the General Medical Council has revealed that a rise in complaints against doctors reflects the role of social media and negative press coverage of the medical profession as a whole.

Source: blog.cureus.com

It comes after the revelation that complaints by the general public against GPs doubled between 2007 and 2012, and as a result, a research team from Plymouth was asked to investigate the dramatic increase.

The numerics are stated in the report, and it is identified that the number of complaints went from 5,168 in 2007 to 10,347 just five years later.

Despite the numeric details, the report did not point to any specific cause for the rise in complaints made by the general public. Instead, it rather ambitiously chose to identify a number of trends that it says have influenced the general public, and correlated these trends with the rise in complaints.

The report suggested that patients are now more aware of their own health, and therefore have much higher expectations of doctors. This attitude results in a shift in power relations between the two parties, andultimately removes doctors from the pedestal.

As well as this, the report said that social media had a role to play in the rise in complaints, as it encouraged people to discuss their previous experiences with the medical profession. This has been conducted in dedicated public forums and this ensured that specific information about health care could be shared easily and accessed by all.

The biggest influence on the general public is the negative press in the media, and this is also highlighted in the report.

Whilst the media coverage of high-profile medical cases may have had an influence on the rise in complaints, the report also suggested that this also gave rise to more complaints that were not relevant to the GMC, which regulates GPs in the United Kingdom.

Source: pando.com

The lead author of the report, Dr Julian Archer, said that the report had produced “some fascinating findings.” He said: “they show that the forces behind a rise in complaints against doctors are hugely complex and reflect a combination of increased public awareness, media influence, the role of social media technology and wider changes in society.”

He added that “the report also indicated that there is much to do to improve the wider complaint handling system, so that complaints made by the general public about their doctors are directed to the appropriate authorities.”

The research certainly brings up some interesting points, without outlaying hard evidence. Social media gets a hard time in the report, as these conversations about healthcare were happening long before the birth of social media, but they were conducted in private.

The more sinister reason for the rise in complaints is the negative media influence, and a possible government agenda to privatise the NHS.

The mass media will always have great control over the general public, so it comes to no surprise that with all the negative press that surrounds the medical profession, people have chosen to complain. It is a subtle form of indoctrination, and maybe by citing social media as a heavy influence on people’s negative connotations towards doctors, the researchers have been indoctrinated also.

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Head Over Heels For Social Media

W Hotels offers ‘social media concierge’ to live-tweet your wedding – for $3,000

Is this a story of modern romance or a case of social media taken too far? The wedding photographer is a staple at the big day – but a Social Media Wedding Concierge? 

The luxury W Hotels chain has taken the decision to offer a social media specialist as part of its wedding package, ensuring there’s someone on hand  to tweet, Instagram, Vine, blog and Facebook every precious moment of your day. Surely there are certain things you want to keep private? 

The deal (which only runs to the end of the year so get your names signed up quickly!) is offered by four of the hotels in New York, providing the happy couple with a social media expert who can satisfy all your networking needs from ‘live tweets and hashtags to Vine videos and Instagram filters, W’s Social Media Wedding Concierge will document the ‘I Dos’ and encourage guests to utilize a dedicated wedding hashtag for every one of their posts’. Right.

In the hotel chain’s marketing spiel, there’s also something about creating a Pinterest board ‘to inspire the couple’ and a Shutterfly book containing all the ‘social media highlights from the day.’ 

Live tweeting from the ceremony, Instagramming pics of the first dance and Vining videos of the reception – as well as thinking up a unique wedding hashtag – begs the question, who is going to pay $3000 for this, frankly bizarre, service? Perhaps the same couples who buy into this latest fad would also consider signing up to the new social media prenuptials clauses.

Is the W ahead of the game on this one, or is it simply an overpriced gimmick seeking to exploit people’s addiction to social media?

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Social media a rendezvous for terrorists according to intelligence official

The Western world are now looking at social media in order to frighten its citizens, and keep them on guard. According to a top European intelligence official, terrorists have changed their management stye, and it is making them a more threatening prospect. In the past, decisions were left to be made by a top-down hierarchy, but now the decisions are being made by a collective “swarm,” and this has been aided by the power of social media.

Source: mashable.com

These are the words of Rob Bertholee, who is the head of Dutch Intelligence, and he further stated that up until recent years, jihadi groups operated through “vertical communication.”

“The leader spoke to his followers and then they would all do what he said,” Bertholee stated. He added thatthe rise of the Internet and social media have seen a rise in “horizontal communication” in these groups.

“So what we see now is what you could call a group dynamics, swarming, or the idea of swarming, where many individuals, without a visible leader, actually lead themselves and decide on themselves which way they go.”

“You know they all fly in a swarm, there’s no leader there. There’s nobody who says yeah we have a map and we have to go this way. But amazingly they all go the same way. That is what we see.”

Despite Mr Bertholee appearing to see “terrorists” as inferior to himself and his allies, by using language by degrading his fellow human beings, such as assuming that they only use a map when navigating, and expressing shock at the fact that there is no visible leader, he must take them seriously. Opposition to Western culture have become very competent in areas such as social media strategy, and technological advances.

The use of social media by opposition groups has bolstered fundraising and recruitment, and at the same time, has made life more difficult for figures such as Bertholee as they try and combat such groups both at home and abroad.

Source: spinsucks.com

“If you can single out a leader then you know where to attack, where to move, where to focus you attention to,” Bertholee said. “If you don’t have a leader, if you have a swarm that is self-guiding and self-deciding, it’s much harder to focus your attention, your efforts.”

These are fascinating words from Mr Bertholee, as he is merely acknowledging that people are using social media. This is the way the world works now; communication is made easy on a global level now, due to theimpact of social media on millions of people. Yes, there are people who want to cause distress and harm to others, but Mr Bertholee is another example of how people are being influenced by the media.

He uses animalistic comparatives and war rhetoric in order to make the reader believe that there is an army of insurgents coming to cause havoc on the lives of many. Whilst doing this, he paints a bad picture of social media, by asserting that networking is the biggest weapon for opposition groups, and if people take that in and choose to believe it, then social media as a whole will be viewed as a bad thing.

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Social media hits new low

It has finally come to this, a social networking site that only allows the user to communicate via emojis. Although it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, how on earth can you get your message across with limited resources, with one of which being a picture of a smiling poo. Well you will have to, because the launch of an emoji-only network is imminent.

Source: businessinsider.com

The new online network will predictably be called Emojli, and it will get rid of those annoying words and letters that other people usually use when communicating, leaving you to choose from various animated pictures. You will soon be able to reserve your unique Emoji username at the website, and then the chaos will begin.

Each username of course will have to be an emoji, and to those that are unsure how to do that, just press Command + Control + space bar to bring up an emoji keyboard on a Mac.

Source: guesstheemoji.com

Although anticipation is hotting up, there is no official word on when you will be able to start using the service in its entirety, so for now you will just have to reserve your username and wait. After doing this you will be greeted with a screen that reads, “Launching on iOS soon, other platforms later.”

The company have chosen to use the slogan “No words. No spam. Just emoji.” A promotional video for thenew networking service assures the user that the worse form of spamming you will ever see on the site is the occasional pile of grinning excrement.

Source: trendhunter.com

No one has been able to try out the service yet, so no reviews are available. For now it is just a case of holding tight and hoping that this will open up a door into a new realm of communication.

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