Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

YouTube to stop support for IE6

Friday, July 17th, 2009

YouTube recently announced that they will soon discontinue support for Internet Explorer version 6.  Media rich sites like YouTube had to accommodate for IE6 in the form of specialized code. This is because IE6 is not as standards compliant as FireFox, Chrome, and Safari. Anyone that goes to YouTube using IE6 will soon be greeted with with a screen stating that they must upgrade or change their browser.

Internet surfers should not be too worried however as the usage of IE6 is very low. Microsoft was pushing out IE7 and the recently released IE8 as an automatic windows update. Also about 65-70% of Internet users use non IE browsers like FireFox. IE6 only accounts for around 5% of Internet users. If you do have IE6 simply visit microsoft.com and download Internet Explorer 8 or visit firefox.com to download Mozilla FireFox. Google also has their new Chrome browser available to the public.

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Jackson’s Death Rocks the Internet

Friday, June 26th, 2009
Michael Jackson - August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

By now everyone knows about the death of Michael Jackson yesterday. The only thing that has been reported at this time is that he had cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. Other specifics have not been released yet.

Some have said that Jackson may have been the most famous person on an international level. He may have had a questionable personal life but no one can deny his impact on the music world.

On June 25, 2009 around 2:40 pm Pacific Time several websites and services began experiencing slow downs and problems as a result of millions of people worldwide trying to find Jackson related information simultaneously.

Between 2:40 pm and 3:15 pm Pacific time people performing Michael Jackson related searches were greeted with the error “your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.” This means that the Google system perceived so many searches for the same thing at the same time as an automated virus trying to potentially attack the system. Once Google fixed the problem it continued to run slow for several hours do to extreme levels of traffic.

Twitter experienced downtime as a very large number of users began sending out tweets related to Jackson virtually at the same time.  Twitter continued to run slow for the rest of the day.  Social Media and News related sites also reported slow downs as everyone seemed to be trying to find any news or updates regarding Jackson’s condition.

It may be stating the obvious but widespread downtime like this has never happened before.

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The Power of Social Media

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

iran-protestsIf you have been keeping track of the news then you know about the conflicts in Iran right now.  All the rioting and unrest as a result of the recent election. If you somehow do not know, the President of Iran won the election so his presidency will continue and several Iranians are claiming that the election was rigged.

I’m not going to be doing any political commentary because quite frankly, I don’t think I’m well enough informed on the subject. But it is amazing how much we see concerning the rioting and unrest considering the Iranian government put a ban on all media within the country. They wanted to keep the rest of the world from seeing the unrest. So how are we seeing so many images and videos of what is happening on the television and online?

Cell phones. 60% of Iran’s population is under the age of 30. Many of these people are taking videos and pictures using their cell phones then sending them to other people outside the country who are posting them online and sending them to news agencies etc. Iranians are even posting news on twitter about the situation.

When you stop and think about it, 10 years ago their media black out probably would have put anyone outside the country in the dark. Today with cell phones, social networks, and twitter it seems that a general media black out just isn’t enough to stop information from getting out.

That’s the power of social media!

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