Perry

Hewitt

Tag: meme

Friday 5 — 8.21.2015
1. A new report from Pew delves into mobile messaging for the first time, and updates social media trends. Mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat continue to grow, with 49% adoption among 18-29 year old internet users. Also of note: 59% of Instagram users reported using the app daily,and 35% several times per day.
2. Giphy doubles down on its bet that GIFs will grow as a popular communication tool with the launch of its new iOS app, GiphyCam. GiphyCam simplifies the creation of GIFs so you can put yourself (or your pet) in the picture.
3. There’s increased attention paid to user experience design for products, but a risk that these efforts are undertaken screen-by-screen. Here’s a compelling, in-depth explanation of why and how you should shift your thinking from a deliverables-driven to platform-based approach to user experience design.
4. Still trying to tell your Bitcoin from your blockchain? The Berkman Center has you covered with a podcast demystifying digital currency and its implications.
5. Slack has plans for its customizable robot Slackbot well beyond jokey remarks and useful reminders. Stewart Butterfield explains how Slackbot will become more useful as a meaningful personal assistant to team members, as well as a repository for organizational knowledge.
Weekend fun: Emojis are at least partially responsible for the decline of LOLers. This emoji usage map lets you track regional variability in emoji use, and confirms that Massachusetts natives are obsessed with modes of transportation. I have no theory re: the hatching chick.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
August 21, 2015
Tale of a social media meme

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a social media account will eventually have a regrettable public post. Certainly, that’s the assumption of 59% of teen social media users who have deleted or edited something they posted in the past. Adults are not immune to social media remorse: 74% of 18-34 year olds claim to have removed social media posts for fear of career detriment. Privacy settings may mitigate the risk, but don’t eradicate it entirely.

In the spirit of the Roving Typist’s I Am An Object of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything, I offer up a personal story of a Facebook post gone viral.

Nearly a year ago, my then-18-year-old son went on a three-month backpacking trip with NOLS. Upon his return to Wyoming, he shared this unfortunate selfie of his newly hirsute self on Facebook:

I couldn’t resist commenting, “Shave, or we’re changing the locks. Love, Mom.” A friend of his quickly shared both the photo and the exchange to Reddit. Sure, the names were lightly redacted, but the profile photo matches mine on Twitter. Within a couple of hours, an enterprising Harvard College junior — let’s call him Zach, because that’s his name — posted this:

So, less than a day for a theoretically private comment to travel from Facebook to Reddit to Twitter. I posted quickly on Reddit to implore the Redditors with pitchforks not to show up at the door, and assumed it would be an amusing anecdote about social media and the futility of privacy settings for a couple of weeks.

Ten months later, it’s a minor meme that wouldn’t die. Cheezburger. Fark. Failbook. Runt of the Web. New captions emerge: “Positive Family Interaction,” “On Facebook, Sometimes You Win and Sometimes You Lose,” or, my personal favorite, “A Mom’s Unconditional Love.” The beard meme surfaces often enough that in the past month it’s surfaced at a staff meeting and a nonprofit event in D.C.

So, what lessons can we learn from all this? Like the recent New York Times article on mugshot extortion and editorial on revenge porn, it’s a vivid reminder that images uploaded in any context can persist on the web, and take on nefarious or amusing lives of their own. Secondly, nothing you post to a social network is truly private whatever your settings, so always presume a scenario where your post turns up on your boss’ desk. And finally, parenting is all about compromise:

October 23, 2013
Friday 5 – 06.28.2013
Every Friday, find five quick links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas. Source: the internet.
1. Is the 800 million dollar valuation of Snapchat the sign of the bubble poised to burst or a smart bet on the need for ephemeral content in an always-on world? Here’s an interesting read on the valuation and the parallels with Instagram, including shared focus on experience over revenue.
2. Fragmented operating systems and the mobile-first world we live in are just two of the drivers for content management systems that encourage the right amount of structure for content. Contentful headed into beta this week, seeking to solve the problem with a publish-everywhere, API-driven approach.
3. Enterprise is heading for mobile to reap productivity gains, and enterprise mobile is heading for the cloud, largely via backend-as a service. Here’s a take on how it’s all playing out.
4. What’s a library these days if not card catalogs, dark wood and walls lined with books? Lots of smart people hard at work on this problem, and Pew Internet weighed in this week with a report on Younger American’s Library Habits. Unsurprisingly, Americans ages 16-29 expressed a strong interest in apps for finding library materials within the library or accessing library services on their mobile.
5. Since it’s the Friday before a holiday week, and everyone’s planning their barbecues and/or reading reddit, why not craft your invitation using this handy new meme generator from Imgur?
June 28, 2013
Parsing Chinese political memes

Exploring tragic, funny, and clever Chinese political memes — fascinating observations about “memes as the street art of the censored web” by An Xiao Mina recorded at Personal Democracy Forum

June 14, 2012