Not So Instagram For Twitter

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Seeing Instagram photos pop up in Twitter cards are no more, or at least they soon will be. Twitter users have started noticing weird cropping issues in Instagram photos linked in tweets. According to Instagram, photos stored on their service will eventually stop appearing on Twitter altogether. Instead when users click on a photo link in a tweet, they’ll be taken back to where it’s stored on Instagram.

Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom acknowledged the change while speaking at LaWeb conference in Paris, calling it “an evolution of where we want links to our content to go.”

Systrom also denied that the decision is influenced by their parent Facebook or that it has anything to do with Twitter not making its Find Friends mobile app compatible with Instagram.

For its part, Twitter has released this official statement: “Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. Issues include cropped images. This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience. So, when users click on Tweets with an Instagram link, photos appear cropped.”

Source: TechCrunch

Meet Mrs. Brown

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Originally premiering in a commercial spot during the Super Bowl, Mrs. Brown is the new sassy personality representing M&Ms in the U.S.A.

Enjoy a spot showing her out on a date on the official M&M’s U.S.A. YouTube Channel. Always remember what Ms. Brown always says, “Ladies and gentlemen, please keep it sophisticated.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/d9FPqqrf3Xs {video link listed as “private”}

Check out her curated Pandora station and check out tracks by the Cowboy Junkies, The Sundays, Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions and Cat Power.

Chat with Mrs. Brown live on the official M&Ms Facebook page.

Add your photo and a caption to the official M&Ms Mrs. Brown Mosaic and be part of herstory.

Facebook Looks To Eliminate User Voting Rights

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Perhaps giving ideas to poorly run democracies everywhere, Facebook is giving users one last chance to keep the right to vote on data use policy changes. If too few voters turn out, all users lose the right to vote on future changes.

Facebook users have always had the right to vote on data policy changes, as long as 30 percent of all users submit a vote. That’s never happened. Now the site is following advice from regulators, such as the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s Office, on how to legally eliminate the process entirely. Facebook’s worldwide operations are run by Facebook Inc. in the U.S. and Facebook Ireland Ltd.

Elliot Schrage, Facebook VP, Communications, Public Policy and Marketing, responded to concerns in a blog entry, writing, “We’ve revised this proposal to make it clear that the sharing of information among our affiliates is and will be done in compliance with all applicable laws, and where additional consent of our users is required, we will obtain it.”

The proposed changes cover governance, data sharing with affiliates, user ownership of content and privacy controls, and advertising policies. They are described in detail by Facebook Site Governance {link no longer active}.

Voting has already begun {link no longer active} and ends on December 10 at 3 p.m. EST. If 30 percent of users submit a vote, as tabulated by an independent auditor, the vote is binding. Facebook calls the vote “advisory” should fewer than 30 percent of users participate.

At the time of this writing, nearly 92 percent of votes were in favor of keeping existing data use and governance policies, but with fewer than 135,000 votes cast.

Source: Facebook

A Hobbit Feast

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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has opened a site called Recipes of Middle-Earth which features official as well as fan-submitted takes on what delicious meals and snacks one might encounter during a journey through Tolkien’s world.

Fellow travelers, we welcome you to sample this collection of recipes for authentic Middle-earth cuisine cultivated by the Dwarf Company’s heartiest appetite. Give each dish a rating, and submit your own recipes for others to enjoy and appraise too!

Recipe categories include:

Breakfast

Appetizers & Sides

Soups & Salads

Main Course

Sweets & Treats

So far, available recipes range from main courses titled ‘Gollum’s Stuffed Liver Fish’ and ‘Dragon’s Strength’ to treats such as ‘Bilbo’s Biscuits’ and ‘Dwarves’ Dumplings.’ The site features Bombur, a food-loving member of the treasure-hunting band Bilbo joins with in his unexpected adventure.

One Big ‘Farcebook’ Scheme

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An Arizona man may have been trying to bring wishful thinking into some semblance of reality when he posted a shopped photo claiming to hold the winning ticket in a record lottery jackpot. He ended up setting a different record when his post went viral, shared by more than 2 million Facebook users.

Nolan Ryan Daniels put a photo of himself with a ticket supposedly showing the winning numbers from a $588 million Powerball drawing. He included a caption saying he’d never have to work again and asked Facebook users to share the post for the chance to get $1 million, which he offered to reward to a user at random. According to news reports, the post continued to spread at a rate of 100 shares a minute even several days after it had been revealed as a hoax. The 2 million shares it managed to drum up beat out Facebook’s previous record holder, a 2011 New York Times interactive post on the Japan tsunami that was shared by 600,000 users.

Trying to explain Daniel’s motivation, his brother Derek Daniels told a local paper, “I think he craves the love from people.”

Source: Savannah Morning News

Get Ready For The Hunt

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At the official site for Zero Dark Thirty, a brief mini-game experience puts you in the role as a member of the CIA being tested to see if you have what it takes. Play Covert Ops {link no longer active} to find out if you have the level of courage, mental strength, and grace under pressure reserved for only a select few. Test your skills in this series of challenges; each exercise will be scored based on time and accuracy. Retry the experience again and again to try and get a better score. Connect via Facebook to share progress and invite friends.

KEEP THE FOCUS
Sort through vital information instantly and accurately to determine how you would succeed in the field. For this challenge, you will be briefly shown nine people. Are they friends or foes You decide.

THREAT IDENTIFICATION
When you’re an agent in the field, accuracy and confidence in your decisions are everything. Watch a brief surveillance video and click to decide who you believe is the person of interest.

TRACE THE ORIGIN
As an elite agent, courage will only get you so far. Engage your powers of reason and deduction to positively identify the members of an enemy organization and their individual roles.

Social Media Stats From 2012

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It’s that time of year when everyone is into lists – shopping, resolutions, top this and that. Huffington Post has collected 100 statistics on social media sites from 2012, all properly sourced.

Amidst head scratchers (37 percent of Instagram users have never uploaded a photo) and some clutter (85 percent of women find their Facebook friends annoying), there are useful marketing stats. 80 percent of social media users prefer Facebook to connect with brands. 77 percent of consumer products companies have managed to acquire customers from Facebook. 26 percent of re-tweets are prompted by re-tweet requests. In August, Instagram beat Twitter in traffic to the tune of 432,000 daily users. People prefer Pinterest (43 percent) over Facebook (24 percent) to connect with retailers. Plus a whole bunch of stuff about Google+.

Check it out at Huffington Post

Twitter’s Black Friday

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IBM released a report that found online and mobile sales both saw a boost on Black Friday while social traffic accounting for cyber sales overall dipped drastically. The report found online sales on Black Friday rose by more than 20 percent compared to last year. Mobile sales saw a boost of more than 24 percent year over year, which IBM credited in part to iPad traffic.  Meanwhile only .34 percent of overall sales traffic came from social sites, a 35 percent drop from last year. Twitter fared the worst, accounting for zero percent of traffic to online retail sites this year compared to .02 percent in 2011. Facebook drove .68 percent of the traffic.

While none of the major social sites have stepped up to counter IBM’s data — yet — one data firm is saying Twitter conversations about early holiday shopping actually both spiked during Black Friday weekend and saw a bump from last year. DataSift called the report flat out “wrong” and questioned whether IBM was measuring the right thing, for instance factoring in activities such as coupon sharing that drive sales but not necessarily direct clicks to retail sites. The firm said that it measured more than 50 million Tweets relating to Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping this year. The retailers that drove most of the activity were Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy and Apple, owning 85 percent of Twitter mentions.

Separately, Facebook released data to TechCrunch that said retailers were the top 25 most talked about pages during Black Friday week, with Walmart, Toys ‘R’ Us and Macy’s owning the conversation.

Source: IBM

Calling All Bounty Hunters

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Jump into the bounty hunting business in the the latest mini game {link no longer active} (also available as an app for iOS devices {link no longer active}) for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and play as one of the characters in the film.

Play as Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter on the trails to collect his next bounty. You’ll be shooting bounties dead in their tracks. There are five bounties in total and with each bounty you kill you’ll reveal a new higher-priced bounty and new locations.
After you have freed Django (Jamie Foxx) from slavery, you’ll receive a letter from a townsman desperate to rid themselves of the filth that consumes his town.
The town is not too far from Candieland, the plantation owned by the sadistic proprieter Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and where Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) is possibly being kept against her will.

If you feel that you are not up the to challenge, you will have an opportunity to train your slick hands at a training ground not to far from town. In training, shoot five bottles and be timed.

It helps to have quick hands, so take the challenge, kill your bounties, and share your scores with your friends on Facebook. Show them why you have the fastest guns in the west.

 

A Chevy In Your Stocking

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Chevrolet has partnered for their holiday campaign with Dailybreak’s platform which includes 10 million consumers who have signed up for promotions that get pushed via social channels and email.

The effort, dubbed Home for the Holidays, begins today and runs through Dec. 31, pitching the chance to win either a Chevy Cruze, Sonic or Spark.

 

While signing up for the contest, consumers need to enter their email address and zip code.

To enter to win, participants answer a handful of trivia questions about such things as how to drive in wintry conditions, how many airbags Chevy’s economy-sized models include, and what drivers can do with the OnStar app.

Then, consumers need to create a virtual postcard. That process involves uploading a photo of the friends/family they’d like to see during the holidays, writing a short message about why they are excited to see their loved ones and then sharing the postcard on a social network such as Facebook or Twitter while asking friends/followers to vote for it. The number of votes combined with creativity, per Chevy, will determine which consumer wins a new ride.