Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda has announced his resignation as editor-in-chief of Slashdot after 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted. In his farewell post, Malda cites "dramatic" changes to the Internet since Slashdot's inception. "For me," writes Malda, "the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site. While my corporate overlords and I haven't seen eye to eye on every decision in the last decade, I am certain that Jeff Drobick and the other executives at Geeknet will do their best."
The recently-departed co-founders of Twitter - Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman - now working together again under the old Obvious Corporation name, announced their latest product today, a stealth alpha app called Lift. It's described as a way to help users achieve their goals through positive reinforcement.
It sounds like Twitter in its simplicity and from what I've seen it looks a lot like Twitter too, but with more structure. What's called Lift today was apparently called Mibbles just weeks ago and was described then as "a very simple tracking and encouragement tool." GetMibbles.com now redirects to Lift.do. What was Mibbles all about? Lift has disclosed almost no details about how it works, but you can find a number of hints about it if you look at the previous iteration of the project. It looks like a really interesting idea, too. (Lots of other coverage of corporate background etc. is here.)
It's a little discussed but widely-known fact that Twitter is bigger outside the United States than it is inside its home country: it's huge in Brazil, Japan and the Philippines, for example. It turns out Twitter's pretty hot in the Spanish speaking world, too.
Rebecca Villaneda of HispanicBusiness.com points out some interesting numbers in an article tonight: the official Spanish Twitter account @Twitter_Es now has half a million more followers than the official global Twitter account in English, @Twitter. That's pretty remarkable; according to Twittercounter.com, @Twitter_Es just took the lead earlier this Summer. Twitter en español amassed its bigger pile of followers in less than half the time, too.
A few weeks ago, we reported on some demographic information about the first wave of Google Plus adopters. Bime, the data visualization firm who conducted the study, found that early Google Plus users were mostly young American men working in technology (surprise!). The Bime study used profile data from Find People on Plus, a third-party directory of Google Plus users, except for the age numbers, which were pulled from comScore numbers.
Bime has just put out an updated visualization that breaks down Google Plus demographics including the month of August, now that the service has had some time to grow. This survey covered 10 million users, more than twice the size of the previous one, and some things haven't changed. About 70% of Google Plus users still identify as men, and the vast bulk of them are American. One major shift has taken place, though: While the updated post doesn't have the age numbers (which came from a different dataset last time), the occupation data show that students have overwhelmingly displaced tech workers, though all the same tech jobs as before dominate the rest of the top spots.
Facebook has reportedly removed a unique feature from its site used by pharmaceutical companies to block all user comments from being posted to the Facebook pages owned by the companies. According to a report from the Washington Post, that policy changed yesterday. Some drug companies are shutting down their Pages, the vehicle they use to publish updates out into the news feeds of their fans, rather than allow public commenting on those Pages.
The Post quotes company representatives saying they need to figure out how to effectively monitor their pages before those pages can return. It quotes experts saying the companies likely don't want to deal with the headache of monitoring all the crazy complaints that could be posted 24 hours a day. I think something different is at issue. I think the companies already know that the web is filled with complaints about their products and they just don't want those complaints to appear on an officially sanctioned page. Why were they ever allowed to silence comments in the first place?
LinkedIn has launched a major overhaul of its mobile apps for iPhone and Android, as well as a brand new HTML5 mobile Web app. It's a complete redesign, forgoing the larger grid of menu options in favor of four key sections: Updates, You, Inbox, and Your Network. The previous menu had too many choices, and some of the titles weren't intuitive. What's the difference between "News" and "Buzz?" Why are "Connections," "Reconnect" and "Invitations" all separate buttons? The new screen simplifies the navigation options.
The update also adds new features. This release addresses what LinkedIn reports is "the #1 most requested feature" from its members, allowing users to access LinkedIn Groups from the native apps (though not from the Web app). The app has also been rearranged to open by displaying the Updates stream, which LinkedIn says is "one of the most frequently used areas of the current mobile app."
Did you know that both Kanye West and Jay-Z are on Google Plus? Each has less than 1,000 followers at time of writing, so chances are you didn't. Now that Google Plus is going mainstream, or at least experiencing rapid growth in user numbers, you'd think that entertainers of Kanye and Jay-Z's popularity would be using it.
As we discovered earlier this year, Kanye West has huge followings on both Twitter and Facebook. He was a regular Twitter user at that point, although he's only tweeted 4 times since the beginning of July (the last time on 21 July). Google Plus emerged onto the scene at the end of June, and Kanye posted his first message there on 27 July.
Google responded tonight to the widespread criticism of its controversial Real Names Policy. Some artists, abuse survivors, political activists in repressive countries and their advocates have argued vehemently against Google's requirement that Plus accounts be registered under real names. You could call it a "go by what you are known as in real life (don't worry Lady Gaga)" policy, too.
Tonight the Google Plus team responded to the extensive public conversation. Its decision? Instead of immediately suspending accounts that seem to violate the policy, and then letting users appeal, now Google will send warnings that users have 4 days to comply with the policy before they are suspended. In other words: the policy stays, the enforcement of it will just be slowed down.
Twitter quietly added a prompt to post a public reply to any user whose profile page you visit today; it's a small but logical step to take and one that makes the interface all the more supportive of social interaction. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied to user @jSammy17 and said the feature was new today - that appears to be the company's only public statement about it so far.
Activity streams, photo uploaders and media galleries, now changes to the posting interface - with all these changes made in one week you'd think there was a hot new social network that had just launched and that was challenging Twitter for its users. When will a Twitter Games Platform launch, I wonder?
It's a little bit amazing that any social networking site could pull what many posts are calling "a Facebook" at this point in history. Nevertheless, LinkedIn has made news by creating an opt-out account setting to use member names, photos, and information in "social advertising" on the site. Facebook made this strategy infamous, although there's no way to opt out of many of Facebook's social ads.
Still, no one likes surprise opt-out uses of personal data. Complaints about this perceived breach of privacy have made the rounds over the last day or so. LinkedIn has just posted a response to the backlash offering some clarifications.
