For fun and whimsy, graphic designer Viktor Hertz took a crack at reworking some famous company logos so they more accurately depict what the company is all about. C’mon, let’s get real people. YouTube is not about putting “you” on the “tube” — it’s the world’s largest repository of cat videos! The rest of the satire, more of which can be found here, speaks for itself. [More]
Playing Fun Name Games Could Jeopardize Your Secure Info
By 5.2.11
It could be funny and adorable when you join in on the “What’s your royal name?” or “Your porn star name would be…” shenanigans, adding your pet’s name or street name to your real moniker to achieve humorous ends. But by doing so, you could be giving up the goods to thieves. [More]
DHS Ditches Color-Coded Terror Alert System, Joins The Facebook & Twitter Crowd
By 4.21.11
I know all of you have gotten used to checking to see if it was an orange, yellow, or red day according to the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded terror alert system. But now that’s all gone, and you can check Facebook or Twitter to see whether or not the world is going to blow up today. [More]
Scammer Cracks Your Facebook Account, Live Chats With Your Friends That You're Mugged In London And Need Cash
By 4.21.11
Last week we told you about a guy who thought his friend was mugged in London and trapped without cash and was hitting him up for help via Facebook IM. Turns out his friend’s Facebook account was hacked and he was live-chatting with a scammer who had taken over the account. It’s not an isolated incident, other readers chimed in to say it had happened to them too. We’ve heard of this scam before, but the fact that they are live chatting on Facebook with the victim’s friends, pretending to be a friend who is in trouble, is a new twist. Here is another transcript of such an occurrence, courtesy of commenter MyopicRaiderfan. They have a little fun with the scammer by asking them why they slept with their stepfather in high school. [More]
Netflix Wants To Charge Extra For Multiple Video Streams, Swim In Piles Of Cash
By 4.20.11
Netflix was sitting around looking at its money when it realized that it didn’t quite have enough to do the whole Scrooge McDuck swimming maneuver, so the video giant has come up with an idea: “family plans” that allow you to stream more than one program at once. [More]
Debt Collector Can't Harass Through Facebook Friends, Court Rules
By 4.18.11
In a precedent-setting case, a court has ruled that a debt collector can’t continue to contact a debtor’s friends and family on Facebook about her car payments, reports the Orlando Sentinel. The debt collector had already emailed, texted her, and called her at home and work, according tot he lawsuit, 23 times in one day. [More]
Scammer Cracks Into Facebook Account And Hits Up Chat List For Cash
By 4.14.11
Kevin was worried. His friend Mike said over Facebook chat that he and his wife and kids were stranded in London after getting mugged. They needed money wired immediately to settle their hotel bill. This was especially worrisome because Mike was supposed to be recuperating in the hospital from head surgery… Then Kevin realized that someone had cracked his friend’s Facebook account and was impersonating him. Here is the transcript of their conversation: [More]
Facebook's 'Previous Status Updates' Bring Back Unwanted Memories
By 4.13.11
People share all kinds of news via Facebook status update: births, college acceptances, new jobs, and deaths. Facebook recently introduced a feature that rehashes “previous,” (originally called “memorable”) status updates in the right sidebar, with some of the text of and a link to certain status updates, which could be several years old. It’s incredibly confusing at first, but at least it generates pageviews for Facebook.
The feature has been causing Carroll a lot of anxiety lately because it keeps pulling up statuses from her and her contacts’ feeds from a period in her life that she would rather not remember, when many of her loved ones and pets died in a short span of time.
Facebook App To Automatically Match College Students With Financial Aid
By 4.8.11
MTV and The College Board recently teamed up for something called the College Affordability Challenge, a contest to create digital tools that will help to make navigating the financial aid maze even slightly easier. Earlier this week, they announced the winner, a Facebook application that takes users’ info and matches them up with the most appropriate aid providers. [More]
Google Takes Another Stab At Being Facebookish With +1 Button
By 3.30.11
Remember Google Buzz, the search engine giant’s attempt at trying to become all Facebook-like? It didn’t exactly do much to make Mark Zuckerberg sweat and eventually ended up as the subject of an FTC investigation over privacy issues. But that isn’t stopping Big G from trying to create a more social aspect of its search results. This week, the company announced its new “+1 Button,” which is pretty much the same as Facebook’s Like button, except not on Facebook and not at all private. [More]
Debunking The Creation Myths Behind 5 Huge Companies
By 3.30.11
It might be shocking to you to find out that some companies have lied about their own creation, but hey, who doesn’t like a good story? From eBay to YouTube, tall tales have been spun to consumers for various reasons. Let’s take a walk down liars’ memory lane, shall we? [More]
Facebook Wants To Use Your Real-Time Utterances To Sell You Stuff
By 3.24.11
You might want to think twice the next time you update your Facebook status with, “Someone send me a pound of gummy bears and a gigantic chocolate rabbit”: Facebook is in the process of testing ad targeting that would work off your real-time conversations. [More]
Worst Company In America Round One: Time Warner Cable Vs. Facebook
By 3.21.11
Only one of this afternoon’s combatants has been the subject of an Oscar-nominated movie. Apparently, two hours of customers sitting on the phone not being helped by Time Warner Cable customer service isn’t as thrilling as the story of a site that lets 500 million users share baby photos with friends and all their personal info with sketchy app developers. [More]
Gap Wants You To Haggle Over Some Khaki Pants
By 3.15.11
In what we can only assume is a desperate attempt to make shopping for the world’s most boring item fun, the Gap is running a one-day-only promotion where you, the internet-savvy shopper, can haggle over khaki pants while potentially not even wearing any. [More]
Warner Bros. Starts Renting Movies Through Facebook
By 3.8.11
It was bound to happen eventually. Earlier today, Warner Bros. launched a new program on Facebook that will let users rent streaming movies directly through the social networking site. [More]
Facebook To Simplify Privacy Policy
By 2.25.11
Facebook has had a bad relationship with the whole “privacy” thing. Now the company says it will be toning down the legalese on its nearly 6,000-word privacy policy. [More]
Twitter: Google Isn't Trying To Buy Us For $10 Billion
By 2.14.11
It was recently reported that Google is in the market to buy Twitter and that the price tag floating around for the company was somewhere in the $8-10 billion range. But today, Twitter’s CEO denied those reports — sort of. [More]
Is Twitter Worth $10 Billion?
By 2.10.11
A lot of people expressed surprise at the $315 million purchase of Huffington Post by AOL. But that’s nothing compared to the figures Facebook and Google are reportedly considering ponying up to acquire Twitter. [More]
