The Social Media Channel

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• These were our first ever Facebook statuses, what was yours?
• Why we use email for everything and how we can be better emailers
• Tumblr announces biannual Transparency Report, says it responded to 76% of 462 requests for user data in 2013
• Facebook estimates that between 5.5% and 11.2% of accounts are fake
• Tumblr enables optional SSL encryption on its Dashboard, tells users to turn it on

These were our first ever Facebook statuses, what was yours? Posted: 04 Feb 2014 09:41 AM PST As Facebook celebrates its tenth birthday today, we were drawn to think back to our early days using the service and our first ever Facebook statuses. Most of us have changed our approach to using Facebook over the years, so here various members of the TNW team look back at how their relationship with the social network has evolved. TL;DR? It's complicated. Martin Bryant, Editor-in-Chief With apologies to Madonna. My early days on Facebook were spent accumulating friend connections to everyone with whom I went to school – most of whom I've interacted with precisely once each in the years since. As I gravitated to Twitter, my usage dropped off before Facebook settled into a comfortable place in my life where I tend to check it a couple of times per day but usually not much more. Facebook Messenger is a useful tool from time-to-time, and I often use my login as a convenient way of setting up an account on apps I try out, but it's hardly a core part of my daily life. I definitely could get more out of Facebook if I put more in, but for me it's a question of time. Twitter fits around your life; Facebook is more demanding of your time – time I don't tend to have these days. Nick Summers, UK writer Nick took some convincing. Matt Navarra, Community Director Matt was into location-based networking before it was cool. My Facebook use grew very quickly to crazy proportions between joining and around the middle of last year. However, since then, my social media allegiance has swung massively over to Twitter with me posting to Facebook less than 1-2 times a week (if that!). I love it less than I used to, but it is still my destination of choice for brief personal social interactions with family and friends (now and then!). Natt Garun, Commissioning Editor Natt used the Facebook Force Oh gosh, the era when Facebook forced you to write statuses that begin with action verbs! Natt is this, Natt is that. As far as I can tell, in 2007, Natt is a dork. I can't say I quite remember what this status referenced other than the obvious. I had just graduated high school and joined Facebook to keep in touch with old schoolmates and to-be friends in college. Facebook acted as a bulletin board of feelings, upcoming events, and occasionally, the very quirks that keep me as random as ever. Whatever the reason was for practicing those light saber skills, I hope they become useful when the zombie apocalypse hits. Owen Williams, Weekend writer Owen was… confused. Jon Russell, Asia editor I used to comment on other people's walls, first thing I posted was photos of a trip to Japan — but they are set to private ;) I've always been a casual lurker rather than a super-engaged Facebook user, but my opinion of it changed massively when I left the UK for Asia in 2008. Initially, few people in Thailand used Facebook, but these days it is a phone book used by all. People in the West are more negative about Facebook, perhaps due to fatigue and privacy concerns, but I've seen its power to bring people together and be their Internet experience all on its own. Facebook is unique in having over 1 billion users per month, and I think it and Mark Zuckerberg have the potential to do a lot of good improving access to information and communication across the world. Paul Sawers, UK writer Extra points to Paul for including an image in his first post, even if he drinks cocktails called 'Doctor Funk' I used to post tonnes of photos to Facebook, of holidays and such like. I hardly post any photos any more – I'm really not sure why. I guess it assumes people are really bothered about seeing your snaps, when in fact they're not. These days, Facebook for me is more of a 'Visible email platform for groups', if that makes sense. I get lots of group messages, about organizing holidays, birthday parties and such like. I don't leave many status updates, but when I do it's typically sharing a video or news article that I think is genius in some way, or the occasional 'funny' pun that I've pilfered from the Internet. I'm definitely sensing a gradual shift away from Facebook as a communications platform. I discovered tons of people I know use WhatsApp, and I have maybe 5 or 6 groups set up in there, for organizing things and sharing photos/videos that perhaps aren't best suited to Facebook. I also discovered a good friend who now lives in Korea uses Kakao Talk, so I've been using that too. I think Facebook will definitely still have its place, and I'll probably not stop using it, but there's plenty of alternative avenues for sharing and communicating now than when I first joined Facebook in 2007. I see Facebook more as a platform 'for everyone I've ever known', and other services such as WhatsApp for actual good friends. Ken Yeung, San Francisco writer Ken was another location-based networking pioneer. Josh Ong, West Coast writer Josh joined Facebook the earliest of anyone from TNW. I can't really find my first status. Seems like some are missing, but I never really got into posting status updates on FB. I joined Facebook when it first arrived at UC Berkeley in the fall of 2004, back in the days when it still had the "the." There was a ton of buzz on campus about the service that fall as students signed up to check out their classmates. I don't use Facebook on a daily basis anymore, but it's still the default method for keeping in touch with old friends and extended family. My News Feed has become extremely noisy, but no other social network has the near-ubiquitous reach that Facebook does. Now almost ten years later, it's easy to take for granted how convenient it is to have almost all of our contacts in one place. Dare you share your first Facebook status with us? Don't miss: Facebook's ex-CTO Bret Taylor on the site's 10 year milestone, lessons learned from Mark Zuckerberg And: Facebook unveils 'Look Back', a video product that shows your 20 biggest moments Image credit: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Why we use email for everything and how we can be better emailers Posted: 03 Feb 2014 02:21 PM PST Denis Duvauchelle is the CEO and co-founder of Twoodo Mail, helping your team collaborate effectively with email through #hashtags. Email is arguably one of the greatest things the Internet made possible. As with all huge innovations, no one could have predicted how email was going to be used in the future. What began as a messaging service has now become a document exchange point and archive for 76 percent of people. "We asked respondents to list the tasks they use e-mail for. Note that communication between individuals—the original intent of e-mail—isn't even listed in the top five activities," Harvard Business Review states. "A third of users find email search to be time-consuming and difficult to navigate. Average time to locate a document in email is two minutes." Image via HBR So what has gone wrong with email? The fact that we are trying to use it for everything. It's ironic that the task we use email to do most is the least streamlined, and consumes a huge amount of work time. What email is truly being used for now is collaboration. However, the tool has yet to catch up with this development. Extensions and plugins are frequently being installed and combined by users looking for the best solution to their collaborative problems. The "collaboration tools" segment of the SaaS industry has skyrocketed as a result. However, email is so deeply embedded in our psyche that encouraging people to convert to a new form of collaboration tool is deeply challenging. Is the only remaining solution to develop email into a more intuitive and pragmatic tool? Let's take one of the most famous and most disruptive email client as a case in point. Gmail Google's email service is now 10 years old – yes, released in 2004 when everybody thought that it was silly to compete with Yahoo! and Hotmail. We all know the state of affairs now. Gmail has reiterated many times over the years to optimize its simple usefulness, like all Google products. Along with that have come helpful extensions and plugins that make your Gmail experience better. Twenty years ago, an email inbox was not a huge problem. Nowadays, it is a common complaint as to why employees are so unproductive and why on your "off hours" you are still, in fact, working. Smartphones have given us 24/7 email access – both a blessing and a burden. My personal favourites (extensions and features) for Gmail inbox management are as follows: Yesware – check if your emails have been opened and replied to Rapportive – scrape information about the people who have sent you emails Boomerang – rescheduling and reminding service for email Gmelius – reorganize your gmail inbox to have the features you actually want IFTTT – "if this, then that" – have your own preferred synching set up between programs Labels and stars system – basic "filing" of emails Canned responses – common email replies stored for quick sending Add to calendar – appointment management Add a todo – open a window in Gmail and add a tick-box todo Kloudless – save and move attachments to Dropbox, Box, Google Drive Not the most surprising list to be sure, but extensive nonetheless. I take 10 extensions/features in order to manage my inbox info. Doesn't that seem a little much after 10 years in the making? Whilst there are a lot of options for after you have received an email – categorize it, reply to it [later], add yourself a task, send the attachment somewhere – there is still no way for you to send actions to the recipient and track if they get it done. Yesware partially helps in this respect, by telling you if someone has opened and replied to your email. But you have no control over the tasks mentioned. You can tell yourself the tasks to do, but you can't tell someone else what to do. Alternatives for Gmail management Active inbox for Gmail  ActiveInbox gives you the ability to add actions for yourself within an email. You can assign a to-do and add it to a project folder and add a due date. On the day it is due, the email is extracted from your inbox and placed at the top with the to-do you added visible under the subject line. Also, you can add to-dos by clicking on the box icon to the left of the email subject line. A drop-down menu appears, allowing you to add tasks whilst staying in inbox view. A summary of all your tasks, and those that are due today, are listed in the top-left corner of Gmail. After a two-week trial, ActiveInbox costs about $40 a year. Grexit Grexit lets you share labelled emails with others, write notes, and follow the notes others leave on the labelled and shared emails. This only works when others also have Grexit accounts. Any.do for Gmail The Any.Do extension is a fairly simple to-do list. It is compact, existing only as an extension icon in the top-right corner. Click it whilst you are in the inbox or in the email view, and type a task. Add a due date from the calendar, and mark if it is priority or not (a red bar will mark it as a priority). The task appears as a simple tick-box to-do. To see all the information about it, click on the task and a drop-down shows you details about the date, priority and folder. …but they still do not accomplish the collaboration necessary. Next: How to be a better emailer How to be a better emailer Time is wasted when information has to be rehashed, rewritten, reorganized. Back when we gave each other tasks on paper, did we make two copies of the post-it notes? Usually not. It is smoother and makes more sense to be able to parse the information out before you hit the "send" button. Here are five email tips the productivity coach Tara Robinson and I often discuss on how to reinvent the way you write and send email: 1. Why am I sending this? Before you send, think about what you want to get back. If you don't want to be caught in an endless back and forth about what's to be done, start by determining what exactly it is you want as an outcome. 2. Include vital information in the subject Indicate whether it is a task, a question, just an FYI. Also include things like due dates, levels of importance and any other relevant indicators. 3. Use clear concise words When you make your request, use the right kind of verb. Project verbs are big, chunky, oversized–words like complete, draft, finalize, research, develop. Task verbs are small, succinct, actionable: call, buy, print, take, find. If you need immediate action, choose a task verb. 4. Think about the receiver This might seem like a no-brainer but is so often overlooked. Ask yourself what the recipient will need in order to be successful. What information or resources are required? Does he have the necessary documents the right context? 5. How truly important is this? Consider the true urgency of what you're requesting. You almost certainly experience other people's urgency all the time–they are amped up and demanding an immediate response on something that isn't actually that urgent at all. The reason behind this out-of-whack urgency is simple: anxiety. The anxiety is fueled by lack of trust; people worry that if their request isn't on fire, it won't get dealt with. And you may be falling prey to that same logic. Don't. Instead, be persistent and consistent: practice clarity about when something is truly urgent and when it's important yet not on fire. Communicate accordingly. There are a number of effects that occur when giving the sender the power of organizing the information in the email. Responsibility is given to them to make sure that they are, for example, sending something of import and value, rather than wasting the receiver's time. It forces them to think critically about what they are sending – how can this task be prioritized, when do I need this question answered, do I need this person to approve my next task? This is the future of the use of email. Actions should live within our conversations so that the flow of our daily lives is not interrupted by having to go back and read emails, or extract tasks to add to yet another list. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Tumblr announces biannual Transparency Report, says it responded to 76% of 462 requests for user data in 2013 Posted: 03 Feb 2014 02:13 PM PST As it passes 170 million blogs, Tumblr today announced it has begun publishing a biannual Transparency Report that details the number of requests it get from different sources, why it receives those requests, and how it responds to them. In 2013, the Yahoo-owned company received a total of 462 requests for user data, and responded with account data (like an email address or an IP address) 76 percent of the time. Tumblr says "a small subset" of those responses also included content of blog posts (text, audio, images, or video). The remaining 24 percent of requests were illegal, vague, or inaccurate. In those cases, Tumblr explains it refused to provide any data at all. Most government requests made for Tumblr user data came from state governments, but a larger percentage of federal government requests were fulfilled: Internationally, requests came from all over the world, but were only approved to governments in the UK, Canada, and Germany: Unsurprisingly, Tumblr has found that the bigger it gets, the more government requests for account data it receives. "And since there may be a day when it's your information they want, it's important you know what they're asking for," the company writes. "Striking the right balance between privacy and legal responsibilities is no small task, but we hope this report demonstrates our ongoing commitment to this community." Earlier today, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft released new data about national security requests. Under new US government rules, each company is now allowed to disclose how many requests it has received, the number of accounts impacted, and the percentage that they respond to. It's great to see Yahoo decided to expand its disclosure today to include Tumblr. See also – Yahoo reportedly wants its battle against the NSA's secretive Prism requests to 'be made public' and Here's the letter Apple, Google, Microsoft and others sent to the US government over data requests Top Image Credit: Gil C/Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Facebook estimates that between 5.5% and 11.2% of accounts are fake Posted: 03 Feb 2014 08:51 AM PST Last week, during its fourth-quarter earnings report, Facebook revealed it had 1.23 billion monthly active users, 757 million daily active users, 945 million monthly active mobile users, and 556 million daily active mobile users. In its 10-K filing published on the weekend, the company estimated that in 2013, between 5.5 percent and 11.2 percent of these users were fake. Putting those numbers together, Facebook says at least 67.65 million fake accounts were used last month. That number can go as high as 137.76 million, if the company's higher-end estimate is to be believed. More specifically, Facebook breaks down the numbers as follows (the previous 5.5-11.2 range was found by adding the following ranges together): 4.3 percent to 7.9 percent of accounts were duplicates (meaning someone has created more than one account for an individual), or anywhere between 52.89 million and 97.17 million. 0.8 percent to 2.1 percent were misclassified (meaning someone has created an account for something not someone), or anywhere between 9.84 million and 25.83 million. 0.4 percent to 1.2 percent were undesirable (meaning accounts created to violate Facebook's rules), or anywhere between 4.92 million and 14.76 million. Again, these are all estimates. Facebook previously offered one number for each of the above, but now it is offering a range to show that these are inexact. It's thus worth underlining where these numbers come from. Here is how Facebook puts it: The numbers for our key metrics, which include our DAUs, mobile DAUs, MAUs, mobile MAUs, and average revenue per user (ARPU), as well as certain other metrics such as mobile-only DAUs and mobile-only MAUs, are calculated using internal company data based on the activity of user accounts. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage of our products across large online and mobile populations around the world. It's also worth emphasizing that an active Facebook user does not necessarily mean someone using Facebook.com or the company's own apps. The company considers an active user anyone who uses their Facebook account somewhere on the Internet. For reference, here is the relevant section from Facebook's 10-K: We estimate, for example, that "duplicate" accounts (an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account) may have represented between approximately 4.3% and 7.9% of our worldwide MAUs in 2013. We also seek to identify "false" accounts, which we divide into two categories: (1) user-misclassified accounts, where users have created personal profiles for a business, organization, or non-human entity such as a pet (such entities are permitted on Facebook using a Page rather than a personal profile under our terms of service); and (2) undesirable accounts, which represent user profiles that we determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming. In 2013, for example, we estimate user-misclassified accounts may have represented between approximately 0.8% and 2.1% of our worldwide MAUs and undesirable accounts may have represented between approximately 0.4% and 1.2% of our worldwide MAUs. Since Facebook is now offering a range, it's difficult to determine if the number of fake accounts is growing or shrinking. After the company's first earnings report, the estimate of fake users on the social network was 8.7 percent. The midpoint of the range shared for 2013 is 8.35 percent, but that's not the number Facebook chose to share. Top Image Credit: Manjunath Kiran/Getty Images This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Tumblr enables optional SSL encryption on its Dashboard, tells users to turn it on Posted: 03 Feb 2014 07:21 AM PST Tumblr today launched an option to turn on SSL encryption on the Dashboard under Account Settings. The Yahoo-owned company called the feature (denoted by https instead of http in the URL) "extra precaution against hackers and snoops" and said there's "not really" a reason users shouldn't turn it on. Tumblr also said its staff has been using the feature internally for weeks and hasn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. While it's great to see Tumblr offering to encrypt users' connections, unfortunately the company hasn't shared a timeline for when, if ever, it would be mandatory on the Dashboard, as well as the whole site. Image Credit: Josh James / Flickr This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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