Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 12 of 168)

Facebook serving as an election predictor?

Facebook election results.There’s some interesting data around this year’s election results and the number of people who became “fans” of the winning candidates on Facebook. According to All Facebook, 74 percent of the House and 81 percent of the Senate victories were accurately predicted by the number of fans the winning candidates received.

Obviously this stat is a bit anecdotal without all the supporting evidence required to back it up (Did the fans actually vote? Did they vote for that candidate? etc.), but it’s interesting to see how Facebook engages the political spectrum. So much of what happens on Facebook is drivel, but everyone has that friend, you know, the one constantly sending you cause invites and voting reminders and all that. Those people, at least in my experience, tend to behave the same way in public – constantly talking politics and causes, so maybe it’s not so different.

At any rate, give a looksee to All Facebook and their awesome election tracker for more intimate details on each race and the Facebook correlation.

Twitter starts in-stream advertising

Allen Stern Twitter feed.

Here’s some big news. Twitter started running in-stream ads at some point this week. It’s a big deal because it’s so insanely intrusive. I’m not a Twitter user, but I do check a few accounts here and there, and I would hate to see this kind of crap show up on a regular basis.

As you can see from the photo (which comes from Allen Stern at Center Networks), Twitter inserted an ad in between actual tweets from users, calling it a “promoted tweet.” I don’t really have a problem with these things showing up in search results, but in my own feed? How often will I have to see them? Can I opt out? Will that be a ‘Twitter Pro’ feature?

Whatever the case, it’s a shitty move by Twitter.

More pics of the Playstation Phone

Engadget picked up some more photos of the Playstation Phone over the weekend. Here’s what they’ve got to say:

The device appears to have an 8GB microSD card slotted, and at least 512MB of internal storage (though we’re hoping it’s the 1GB we’ve heard would be present). As you can see from the pictures in the gallery below, the device isn’t exactly thin — we surmise that the handset is around 17mm thick, or slightly thicker than HTC’s Touch Pro 2 (and funnily enough, about the same as the PSPgo). From a design standpoint, the device seems to have more in common with BlackBerry handsets than previous Sony Ericsson phones; that smoky chrome bezel which surrounds the device is definitely giving us Torch flashbacks. As always, we’re hard at work digging up more info on the phone (and potentially more images), but for now, just sit tight and enjoy the exclusive photos in the gallery below.

You can find that gallery over at Engadget.

More reasons Apple should release a Verizon iPhone soon

NPD mobile stats.

A few days back I wrote about the impetus for a Verizon iPhone launch in early 2011, mostly citing John Gruber from Daring Fireball. NPD just gave us a little information that could very well serve as more evidence of the impending release. The iOS market is actually shrinking, while Android is exploding. You don’t have to be a genius to see how a Verizon iPhone could change that, or at least help Apple’s position.

It’s not that Apple isn’t doing well – its market cap proves that it is – but Android is on so many more handsets now. From Peter Kafka at AllThingsD:

So how did Android gain share? Because it’s on so many other new phones. Canned quote from NPD’s Ross Rubin: “The HTC EVO 4G, Motorola Droid X, and other new high-end Android devices have been gaining momentum at carriers that traditionally have been strong RIM distributors, and the recent introduction of the BlackBerry Torch has done little to stem the tide.”

What will it take to bring down Facebook?

Facebook icon.A few months ago I went through and cleaned house on my Facebook account. My big problem with the service is exactly what makes it so popular – the prioritization of broad, largely meaningless connections over close, intimate ones. I dumped my broad connections, and it felt great.

That’s where Facebook falls short, and where there’s room for a serious competitor. As Facebook pushes ever closer to a billion users, there’s really no way anyone will unseat it – not immediately, anyway – but someone could easily steal a lot of time from Facebook users by simply creating a more closed and intimate network. It’s a strategy that venture capitalist Dave McClure covers in detail on his blog, Master of 500 Hats.

A quick excerpt:

I’ve got too many goddamn friends on Facebook.

yeah, that’s right: i’ve got over 2,000 “friends” on FB, and it’s fucking KILLING me. Now admittedly most normal folks don’t have *that* many Facebook friends — true: i’m tremendously insecure, an only child, & a pathetic people pleaser — but regardless a lot of “normal” people have the same problem with only a few hundred friends. and i’m guessing neither they nor i want to share our most jealously-guarded deep dark secrets with *everyone* on Facebook. but they might just share it with a smaller subset.

Read the full post here.

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