The social Web certainly shows that there's a lot of curiosity out there. Q&A services – Quora, Aardvark, Yahoo Answers – are hot, and now Facebook is testing its Questions service. ReadWriteWeb co-editor Marshall Kirkpatrick says that, once the bugs are out, the service will be "a very big deal ... a net win for the human experience." Why? "It might be tempting to assume that Facebook … [Read more...] about Is Facebook Questions ‘a very big deal’?
social networking
Finding & honoring teachers on Facebook
We see so much coverage of social Web abuse that it was a nice surprise to see a story about what it's great at: finding long-lost friends, relatives, classmates ... and teachers! The New York Times tells of how people out of school 20+ years use Facebook to find their favorite high school teachers and thank them: "At a time when public school teachers are being blamed for everything from poor … [Read more...] about Finding & honoring teachers on Facebook
Facebook passes half-a-billion mark
Five hundred million people "are now using Facebook on a monthly basis," PC World reports, which means "Facebook has a slightly smaller population than the continent of North America," and that's "enough users to put 75 people on every one of the over 6.6 million square miles of Russia, the largest country in the world by landmass." Just a couple of PC World's "Fun Facts," and this is just one of … [Read more...] about Facebook passes half-a-billion mark
Digital social basics for parents (or grandparents)
Is anyone in your (extended) family needing a primer on (Web- and phone-based) social networking, maybe to understand what his great-granddaughter finds so compelling about "this Facebook thing?" If so, David Pogue at the New York Times gets really, really basic – in both a cute little video and brief written explanations on this page – of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FourSquare, and Yelp. The … [Read more...] about Digital social basics for parents (or grandparents)
US senator calls for Facebook ‘panic button’ too
As did UK members of Parliament, US Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is now calling on Facebook to create a "panic button" for the US like the one FB's putting in place for UK users, reports HometownSource.com in Minnesota. Only it's not a "button" or a 9-1-1-type helpline; it's an app that users would need to download, as I wrote earlier this week. So it needs marketing to create uptake, which is fine – … [Read more...] about US senator calls for Facebook ‘panic button’ too