Kendra Castillo Social Media Site

With more than 4 million Facebook followers, Humans of New York is a famous photoblog that provides the social media world with a glimpse of the lives’ of random New Yorkers. Humans of New York was founded by an inspirational individual named Brandon Stanton. Stanton created HONY (Humans of New York) in the summer of 2010.  What Brandon thought would be a cool and creative hobby turned into the most popular meaningful blog. His blogs include a photograph along with a short excerpt of the lives of random strangers he encounters.

“Do you remember the saddest moment of your life?” Probably sitting at the kitchen table with my dad, an hour after my mom died, realizing we had to figure out what we were going to do for lunch.”

Stanton’s passion for photography has gained him the ability to share his talent with millions and impact social media in many different aspects. Brandon has proved that we can utilize social media for many other reasons. Those reasons go beyond gaining popularity to become the next celebrity, trend, or top product. Beyond the cyberbullying and the invasion of privacy. Brandon Stanton shows that we can use social media to build a network that promotes kindness, charity, and empathy, in which can ultimately help lead a better life for all.

There are about 60 million blogs on one site alone. Now, imagine what the total would be if we combined the total of blogs within all blogging sites. How many blogs do think there would be? I think we could all agree that the amount would be enormously large, right? So the question is how do you get others to view your blog entry, out of the billions of blogs available? Here are some tips to consider.

First, you want to write a clear, concise, and memorable blog. You want to make sure that you get your point gets across clearly and as short as possible. Now a days, people are at a loss of time. No one is going to sit and read a story of a blog. Also, you want to make your blog a memorable one. If you give your readers a reason they will come back and read you blogs on regular basis. So give them that reason.

Next, use keywords, phrases, and tags. When using keywords, use words that are popular among the web. There are websites (i.e. google trends, google adwords) that can assist you in looking up the most popular or most searched words online. After selecting your keywords, you will use your selection to create unique short phrases.

Most bloggers just use the selected keywords and use them as tags. However, this is a disadvantage. Why, you ask. Well, using the most popular words can decrease your chances of getting noticed because once again, there will be a vast number of blogs using the same keywords as yours. Ultimately, you want to set yourself apart. Therefore, you should use the selected keywords and create a unique phrase.

Once you create a unique phrase, your final step is to incorporate the phrase into your tags. Tags are important because they are words, phrases search engines use to relate to your blog. Hence, when people search for things on the web the tags are used and if your blog relates to the search, it may appear on the suggested results.

With that being said, I hope you find these tips helpful!

Many large groups or organizations use Facebook to engage with a designated audience. In addition, most groups fail to effectively engage with their audience. So how should these groups or organizations overcome this problem? Simple, they should post content that their audience finds appealing.

Below are some useful tips in effective Facebook content that groups should utilize or consider when posting content via Facebook.

1. Length Matters – The length of your Facebook post matters. These days’ people are busy and are scarce on time. If your posts have more than 250 characters or exceed 3 lines, you’ve effectively lost your audience. Therefore, keep your posts short and concise.
2. Mix it up – Mix it up by adding variety to your content. Recent studies show that posts with photos, videos, and other graphics experience more audience engagement. Remember people don’t read on Facebook, they scan. So making a visual impact is an advantage.
3.  detatoR Images – Having trouble reading that? Nothing is more annoying than a rotated or distorted image. If you decide to upload photos or graphics ensure that they are high resolution, uploaded properly, and face the right direction.
4. Tell em’ –  Tell your audience what you want. Ask your audience to like, comment, or share your posts. Many claim that this technique is ineffective and unpleasant. However, if your posts include relevant content, this technique can be quitehelpful.
5. It’s a 2-way Street – Communication is a 2-way street. If you want your audience to engage with you, make sure you do the same. Respond to their comments and like, or share their posts.

The ultimate goal is to set yourself apart from the rest. There are over a billion Facebook users. Your audience is frequently bombarded with content. Therefore, you want to choose content that will make you stand out and ultimately, allow you to engage with your audience. To conclude, I hope these tips were useful and beneficial in allowing groups or organizations in engaging with their audience.

Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg leads the call for action for Facebook and other tech companies in demanding the U.S government to establish privacy laws for its’ users.

Zuckerberg called President Barack Obama to express frustration over the NSA surveillance.

He claimed that the NSA (National Security Agency) has taken the internet to a different level through their new program in which allows the NSA to impersonate users and hack into people’s computers and inject spyware. In addition, that the proposed NSA reform is moving too slow.

According to various media outlets, Zuckerberg claimed that “hacking” is a major concern and demands action.

He argued that the hacking and violation of privacy has resulted in upset, confused users and could potentially result in the loss of users.

Zuckerberg claims that Facebook’s security engineers work hard to improve security to protect its users from criminals, not from their own government.

Therefore, Zuckerberg had no other choice than to take affirmative action and advocate for Facebook’s and other tech company users’ privacy rights.

As a result of the dispute and the call, President Barack Obama met with the Facebook founder and other tech executives and discussed the U.S Government’s spying tactics.

During the meeting, Obama updated the executives on the steps the Obama Administration has taken since Obama’s January 17 speech that discussed the government surveillance reform.

In addition, Obama updated the executives on the White House work of exploring “big data” and privacy.

After the meeting, the administration posted a new form on the White House website, in which enables visitors to express whether they feel their personal data is protected online.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg and the other executives wait and play the waiting game in hopes of calling it a game over for the NSA’s spy game.

Today, social media is used for many reasons including forming romance relationships. According to Doctor Phil, more than 40 million individuals look for love online. As a result, many people are at risk of being victims of a scam. The most common scam among online dating is “catfish”. A “catfish” is an individual who creates a fabricated identity, to persuade others into building a romantic relationship, knowing that it would never work out because of deception. A “catfish” is usually found in social media sites and online dating sites. So, how do you know when you’re a victim of a “catfish”? Listed below are tips that can help identify a “catfish”.

To begin, a “catfish” is usually a complete stranger that initiates contact with you.  Typically, a “catfish” sends you a message, friend request, or anything else to try and communicate with you. In addition, when trying to identify them it is often troublesome. For instance, they may not have an active Facebook account or they do have an active Facebook account, but with a false image and/or no mutual friends.

Next, a “catfish” is usually someone attractive or someone who claims to be a model. Logically, one would assume if you are not a model, photographer, or model agent why would someone like this contact you? Normally a model receives publicity from a vast audience, so why would they have the need to reach out to random people? Hence, this should signal a red flag.

Another way to identify a “catfish” is if they constantly make up foolish, obvious lies. For example, every time you request a video chat or a picture they make up excuses explaining why they can’t. Generally speaking, mostly every individual has an accessible picture of himself or herself. In addition, most technological devices have internal web cameras that allow you to chat anywhere. Therefore, there is no proper justification in why he/she cannot provide an accurate image or web cam chat.

These are just a few of many ways in identifying a “catfish”. Hopefully this will help individuals or victims in similar vulnerable situations.