Media Archives - knowtive

Whatever your A-level results, stay away from social media today

Results day. The day when thousands of A-level students find out the marks for the final exams that determine whether or not they have got into university, and if so, where they’ll be spending the next few years. It’s a landmark moment, not that any of you getting your results today need me to tell you that.

If you’ll allow an old(er) woman a moment of reminiscence, I remember my own results day well, even if it was just over a decade ago. I wasn’t among those who had been phoned up the night before to come down early to jump up in the air alluringly for the local papers (not nubile enough, perhaps, or maybe I’d just failed horribly), so I slept in. I finally showed up at around 2pm (by which time my friends had been in the pub for hours), not because I didn’t care, but because I cared so much. I didn’t want other students around when I found out my future. I was terrified of failure.

Thankfully, social media didn’t really exist then. Otherwise I would have woken up to post after post of other pupils’ celebrations, which would have served only to compound the fear. Which is why I’d advise today’s cohort to be cautious about how much they boast. This is an important moment, yes, but one of your friends’ hearts is probably breaking as you upload that celebratory status. For every dream that, on results day, transpires into concrete quads and bicycles and medieval libraries, there’s another turning to dust. Be humble.

It’s a good lesson for the future. Much has been made of the so-called iGen – today’s teenagers who have grown up never knowing a time before the internet and smartphones existed – and the impact that 24/7 connectivity and constant social media sharing could be having on mental health. Certainly rates of depression and anxiety have skyrocketed.

I suspect that my generation, which is only a few years older than today’s teenagers, caught the tail end of this. Certainly, we’re acutely conscious of the look-at-me competitiveness of social media, a world of self PR in which people are their own publicists, yet at the same time many of us continue to be guilty of it ourselves. Right now, in our mid- to late-20s and early 30s, it’s exotic travel, weddings, babies and – my least favourite – house selfies. “Look at the keys to the house we just bought!” “Look at our brand new flat!” It’s easy to see why people are happy (unless you’re very lucky, it’s no picnic getting that money together these days), but it also feels like a punch in the guts to those who are so far away from achieving that dream, if they ever will. No wonder so many of my friends have quit social media recently.

In this social media bubble, where people’s lives are condensed into ruthlessly curated news feeds, only certain kinds of updates are really acceptable. You’re fine to post an ultrasound announcing that you’re pregnant, but it would be frowned upon for me to have jubilantly posted a negative pregnancy test every time I had a scare, and even less so for a couple to post frankly about their miscarriage. If you’ve bought a house, fine. If your house has been repossessed, not so fine.

When people do go ahead and break this social contract, revealing the pain, grief, or depression that they are feeling online, you note that it makes people uncomfortable. The sympathetic likes and comments may roll in, but there’s a sense that so much raw unhappiness is unbecoming, somehow. It undermines the facade. Instead of presenting people with a pleasing spectacle which they can passively scroll through and heart before getting on with their day, it demands something of them. That demand is conscious engagement. People don’t like it. It reveals the world as the sad place it so often can be.

Which is why, if you’re a teenager, you might see uploads of plenty of transcripts displaying straight As, but you’re unlikely to be subject to a devastated status from a friend whose plans lie in tatters at their feet. By all means celebrate – you’ve worked hard as a guinea pig in what amounts to an untested new exam system – but spare a thought for those who haven’t done as well as they hoped today. And also bear in mind that, though it might feel like it, life isn’t some linear track on to which you are now irrevocably attached, always moving forwards, onwards, upwards. There’ll be setbacks too. Of the friends I celebrated results day with 12 years ago, quite a few switched courses or dropped out. Some of us ended up in places we never thought we would, myself included, as I write this.

The jury is out on whether the supposedly toxic effects of the internet are really all that toxic. But nonetheless, you’ve spent the last couple of years with either your head in a book or your eyes glued to a screen. It’s time to get down the pub and see your friends in person, popping the prosecco with those who did well, and comforting those who didn’t. Social media can wait. Believe me, you have a whole life ahead of wrestling with that shit.

source:-theguardian.

HBO’s Social Media Accounts Hacked. ‘Again?’ Asks Internet

In the latest of many security breaches that have plagued HBO for the past few weeks, the network’s social media accounts were compromised about three hours before writing this. HBO’s Facebook and Twitter accounts were hacked by a group called OurMine, who also hacked the social media handles of many of the network’s shows, including Game of Thrones and Veep. The social media posts were removed shortly after they were posted.

“Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security, HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security – ourmine.org -> Contact,” read the messages posted on both the social media platforms.Another message read, “let’s make #HBOHacked trending!”

OurMine is notorious for hacking high-profile social media handles, and has in the past managed to compromise the social media accounts of Netflix, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, reports the BBC.

For HBO, this is the latest in a line of many cyber security breaches which saw leaks of unaired Game of Thrones episodes, show scripts and other sensitive company information. It also follows at the heels of HBO Spain accidentally broadcasting Game of Thrones season 7, episode 6, days before its release, leaving many fans wondering whether HBO seriously needs to upgrade its security.

Source:-NDTV

Australian Public Service Commission’s new social media guidelines go too far

Ulrich Ruegg Ellis was a pioneering member of the Canberra Press Gallery and a government stirrer who stretched the limits of public servants’ freedom to criticise ministers and their government.

His case came to mind as I considered the latest Australian Public Service Commission guide “Making Public Comment on Social Media”.

In April 1945 Ellis, who by then was working as deputy-director of public relations in the Department of Post-war Reconstruction, wrote an acerbic letter to the Canberra Times.

It began: “Sir,—When a Minister of the Crown issues decisions with the carefree abandon of a child of three and laughs with contempt in the face of the common principles of administrative justice, it is time not only to protest but to remove him from an office which he is no longer fit to hold.”

He concluded: “As the Minister has proved himself unfit to administer his Department, the time has come for the establishment of a publicly conducted Housing Priority Committee so that the work of allocating houses can be carried out in the broad light of day.”

He signed it Ulrich Ellis, Hotel Kingston, Canberra.

Given his unusual name there was no hiding his government employment.

Housing was extremely scarce in Canberra at the time and Ellis explained that upon his transfer to the ACT in the previous year he had sought to exchange his Melbourne home with a person who had been transferred from Canberra to Melbourne.

[Source”cnbc”]

EXO’s,Sehun,Wins,2017,King,of,Social,Media

Does your fave have what it takes to rule over the kingdom of social media? PopCrush’s King & Queen of Social Media Contest is a month-long competition to determine 2017’s social media pop royalty.

This year’s King & Queen of Social Media competition is officially over, and your reigning king has been chosen!

After receiving 60% of more than a whopping 255,000 votes, EXO star Sehun took home the crown, beating his fellow band member Chanyeol, who received 100,251 votes from EXO-L.

Here’s to the “Ko Ko Bop” singer! Below, dive into some of Sehun’s coolest Instagram selfies:

EXO’s Best Dance Breaks:

Subscribe to PopCrush on

K-Pop Groups That Disbanded Over the Years:

[Source”cnbc”]

Social Media Helps Perth Woman Build Her Home

Perth based social media marketing expert Sasha Ioppolo was frustrated by the lack of local products and services she could find when it came to building her dream home. So she started searching Instagram and Pinterest for help.

Ioppolo told HuffPost Australia social media empowered her because it meant she didn’t need to rely solely on an architect.

“Social media gave me thousands of ideas to choose from. In the past I’d be restricted to a few magazines. It also allowed me to communicate those ideas clearly to my architect,” Ioppolo said.

“Also there’s a similarity about homes in Perth. Social media allowed me to try something different. I’d see amazing design and beautiful products online, available in Europe or the US but no one was doing that here. So I thought I’d use them myself.”

Ioppolo spent around a year collecting ideas online before taking them to her architect. Some of the most innovative touches in the home include a a Palm Springs-inspired roof garden by landscape designer Mon Palmer, and an electronic doggie door.

There’s also an art lift to hide the TV and an above-ground pool that means there’s no need for a fence.

The house, known as the Triple Deck House, now has a life of it’s own with it’s own social media accounts. According to Ioppolo, there have been a countless stream of motorists slowing down or parking out the front for a closer look.

“A few rubber-necking motorists have crashed into the median strip road sign outside the house!” Ioppolo said.

Sasha Ioppolo’s Tips For Building Your Dream Home Via Social Media

Pinterest: Create story boards for different rooms in the house such as the kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, as well as key aspects like a staircase or swimming pool. Save images from designs you find online
Instagram: Used to source images of designs. Search for designers and start following their posts and their work.
Source other services: Watch who and what your favourite designers recommend in their social media. This can help you track down elusive products and services not found locally.

[Source”cnbc”]

Use of social media sites surges globally with Facebook way out in front

One-third of the global population will be using social media platforms on a regular basis by the end of the year, according to a new study.

This equates to more than 2.4 billion people, and is a 8.2 per cent on the number of social media users recorded in 2016.

The eMarketer forecast indicates that at least 71 per cent of internet users worldwide will access social media sites with China alone accounting for over 46 per cent of users. By 2021, social network penetration will expand to 73.1 per cent globally.

The number of people accessing social media platforms via mobile continues to rise, growing by an estimated 10.7 per cent this year to reach 2.01 billion. This is equivalent to four in five social network users.

Facebook is far and away the most popular social network worldwide. Nearly 1.50 billion people will log in to the platform in 2017, accounting for 60.8 per cent of all social media users. Approximately 87.2 per cent of Facebook users will access the site via a mobile device.

According to eMarketer, more than 260 million people worldwide will use Twitter regularly this year, an increase of 4 from 2016. However, while Twitter’s audience is growing, it continues to feel pressure from competing social platforms.

The result of this is that the share of social network users worldwide who use the platform will contract from 11 per cent last year to 10.6 per cent in 2017.

The survey reveals that Twitter accounts for 10.6 per cent of all social network users.

More than eight in 10 internet users in China, or 626 million people, will access social networks regularly in 2017, with homegrown messaging platform WeChat fuelling takeup.

“Social networks as a whole continue to grow, increasingly resembling new internet users by accessing almost exclusively via mobile devices and gradually adding older users to their ranks,” said Monica Peart, senior forecasting director at eMarketer.

[Source”timesofindia”]

TRUMP SAYS HE AND MODI ARE ‘WORLD LEADERS IN SOCIAL MEDIA’

President Donald Trump says he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are “world leaders in social media.” The two leaders met at the White House on Monday, delivering a joint statement from the White House Rose Garden.

“I am proud to announce to the media, to the American people and to the Indian people that Prime Minister Modi and I are world leaders in social media. We’re believers,” Trump said.

“Giving the citizens of our countries the opportunity to hear directly from their elected officials and for us to hear directly from them,” Trump added. “I guess it’s worked very well in both cases.”

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In what was Modi’s first visit to the White House since Trump’s inauguration in January, the two leaders discussed relations between their respective countries, working together to tackle terrorism and future business opportunities.

Trump also took the opportunity to praise Modi during his visit. “He is such a great Prime Minister. I have been speaking with him and reading about him,” Trump said. “He is doing a great job. Economically, India is doing very well and in so many other ways. I would like to congratulate him for this.”

He added to Modi: “I have always had a deep admiration for your country and your people, the rich culture and traditions.”

“The relationship between India has never been better and stronger,” Trump added.

Following the meeting, Modi said the talks with Trump had been very successful, describing them as “fruitful,” Reuters reported, with the prime minister also confirming he had invited Trump to visit India.

Modi, proving the social media accolade from Trump, tweeted later on Monday: “Interacted with top CEOs. We held extensive discussions on opportunities in India.”

How eBay Supports Buyers and Sellers on Social Media

eBay, the online marketplace, is in a unique position: It sells billions of dollars of merchandise each year, but none of it is their own. So when customers reach out on social media, they are either buyers or sellers on the platform, and eBay stands in the middle.

“We can’t be too biased on the buyer side and we can’t be too heavy on the seller side,” says Dallen McKee, Global Social Media Customer Care Team Leader at eBay. “We have to create a good experience for both.”

In general, disagreements between buyers and sellers are not specific to eBay – they occur in many other e-commerce transactions, McKee says.

“That’s what happens to e-commerce is buyers might have an expectation of exactly what a product is, and in e-commerce you don’t have the luxury of seeing it, holding it, trying it on, whatever the case may be,” he says.

The eBay team aims to “set both parties up for success” by “encouraging the two parties to work together,” McKee adds, noting that “the vast majority of our sellers are very willing to correct the situation for a buyer.”

eBay’s goal is “to create experiences that make a difference” while balancing the need for a quick response. It is critical, McKee says, “to not allow social media customer care to turn into just any other channel… to really make it a different voice a different tone and to create an experience that can actually generate a positive brand perception.”

eBay has done that in two big ways:

First, the company takes user feedback seriously and because the Social Media Customer Care team is integrated into the rest of the organization, it can act on that feedback. After a recent mobile app release that wasn’t as well received as the company had hoped, McKee’s team quickly gathered both the negative and positive feedback and helped the product and technical teams make quick adjustments in a future release.

“Once our product team specifically understands that social media is a faster avenue to generate this type of feedback, they are more prone to ask us for assistance,” McKee says.

The product and technical teams now understand that social feedback is more immediate than sifting through phone call records, so they are now proactive about engaging the Social Media Customer Care team right at product launch.

“They come to us to say, ‘Hey we’re launching a product, can you get X amount of headcount positions to search for this feedback as it comes in, get it real-time, and we’ll make changes on the fly,’” McKee says. “And that’s the culture we’ve started to create here within eBay.”

Second, the company has embarked on a new Facebook Messenger bot to simplify the experience of searching for items on the massive site.

“[It’s] a feature with Facebook Messenger where you type in what exactly you’re looking for and it asks additional questions to really hone in on the specifics of what you want,” McKee says.

(Readers can try out the new bot, called eBay ShopBot, here.)

McKee acknowledges that messaging apps are the “wave of the future” and says the company is focused on messaging for both service and the buying experience.

Interestingly, eBay seems to be a victim of its own success in social media. The company is seeing a 20% increase in customer service inquiries year over year in both Facebook and Twitter.

“You generate your own volume,” McKee says. “The more you engage, the more you respond, the more questions that come in, the more customers start to realize that they can come here first and it’s not just a way to complain about not getting what you wanted out of a different channel.”

[Source:- Socialmediatoday]

Key Tips for Creating Effective Visuals for Social Media

Creating visuals for your social media channels is more important than ever.

The internet is more driven by images than ever before, and this trend is only getting more pronounced. Image-based platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are challenging older social media sites, while Facebook and Twitter themselves contain more visual content than ever.

Given this shift, one of the best ways to reach your audience is to master a compelling visual style. Let’s explore some of the best techniques for creating visuals for social media.

Identify Content That Brings Results

While the idea that it’s best to create visuals that bring the best results is fairly obvious, it’s important to recognize the criteria for this.

The internet is full of funny and clever memes and images, and while many of these are entertaining, they won’t necessarily help you, as a business, promote yourself or your products or services.

For example, behind-the-scenes photos are very popular as they make your audience feel more involved. But what you’re seeking is not simply views or even shares (though these are nice, of course) but engagement with your brand and, ultimately, conversions.

To create visual content that helps you convert, it’s essential to make your images targeted, relevant and appropriate for the platform you’re using.

Creating the Ideal Images for Different Platforms

While visuals are popular throughout social media, it doesn’t mean the same image will work equally well everywhere.

Each platform has its own requirements, quirks, and user preferences.

Facebook – Research indicates that visual content is 40x more likely to be shared on Facebook than non-visual content. Some of the best image formats for Facebook include infographics, contest banners, and animated GIFs. Remember, Facebook users see images all day long, many of them boring stock photos. Differentiate yourself by creating custom photos and images that stand out.
Twitter – Although Twitter wasn’t created as a visual platform, it’s certainly evolved in that direction. The trick here is to combine a short tweet with an appealing image. Although you have 140 characters, it’s often best to make your tweets even shorter, especially when the goal is to highlight the image and create a tweet people can retweet..
Instagram – The meteoric rise of Instagram over the last few years is itself evidence of visuals rising in popularity – up until recently, Instagram, after all, was almost completely image-based. To succeed on this platform, it’s important to develop a unique style and to post frequently. Inspirational quotes work very well on Instagram, as do photos highlighting company culture. Another approach is to display photos of actual products you’re selling. Flat lays, where the product is resting on a flat surface and you shoot it from above work well on Instagram. And, using visuals in Instagram Stories is also highly recommended
Pinterest – Like Instagram, Pinterest is specifically a visual platform. Pinterest is now integrated with eCommerce services like Shopify, making it an ideal place to display product images, however it’s also good for other types of images, including exceptional photos and inspirational photos and quotes. Remember that you pin images to boards, so always target your images to followers of a specific board. If you have multiple themes, it’s easy enough to create more boards.
LinkedIn – The leading B2B social network, LinkedIn is often considered a mainly text-based platform. There remain many opportunities to showcase visuals here, though. Remember to convey a professional image as you’re reaching out to business people. It’s better, for example, to publish quality head shots rather than the more casual kind popular on Facebook. LinkedIn owns Slideshare, so slideshows are easy to integrate into your posts. Business-related infographics also work well on LinkedIn.

These are some guidelines for creating a visual strategy for different social media sites. It’s crucial, however, to identify the sites and visuals that work best for your own business. Some businesses, for example, get more out of Facebook while others do better on Pinterest or Instagram.

[Source:- Socialmediatoday]

Teenage Bollywood actor faces vicious social media abuse and no one knows why

She’s 16, talented, newly famous. And unfortunately, facing vile abuse on social media.

Zaira Wasim, the young actor who dazzled audiences with her flawless debut in Dangal — India’s highest-grossing film ever — posted an inexplicable “confession/apology” on Facebook last night.

And then, she deleted it in no time.

Not before screenshots had been taken though.

Her note reeks of fear and coercion. And sadly, submission too. She says she is “sorry for what I did” and wants to “make it very clear that I do not want anyone to follow in my foot steps or even consider me as a role model.”

What has she “done”? No one knows. Yet.

But there’s enough conjecture.

Going by the comments surfacing on social media, she’s either being bullied for meeting Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister (CM) Mehbooba Mufti or being criticized for her supposedly “un-Islamic” act of joining films.

Scores of abusive comments have flooded her Facebook page.

However, there’s a silver lining. Almost.

The hate comments have been outnumbered by the empathetic ones. All sections of Indian society from politicians and media-persons to film personalities and sportsmen, and of course, the masses have come out in loud support of the Kashmiri actor.

Noted among them is a comment from former Jammu & Kashmir CM and Mufti’s political rival, Omar Abdullah.

[Source:- Mashable]