Technology’s Effect On Interpersonal Relationships

Modern technology may prove distracting on occasion, but at SXSW, a panel agreed that it can help people maintain and build interpersonal connections. One panelist was good enough to talk to WebProNews and explain her ideas on the subject, too.

Jenn Deering Davis, Cofounder of Appozite and CheapTweet Community Manager, observed in an interview with Abby Johnson, “There are all these new tools that can augment our existing relationships.”

In fact, she later added, “I think the biggest thing is to just keep in touch with people and to use all of these tools that we have,” whether your tool of choice is the telephone or something more newfangled like Twitter or Facebook.

The popularity of technology can lead to a difficult sort of balancing act, though. People can spend the majority of their day staring at their cell phones rather than talking to others, and Jenn said, “I think we’re all still figuring out how to manage that and how to best do both, because our face-to-face relationships are important and we want to be here, but we also need to be keeping track of things.”

She then concluded, “We need both. We need the in-person, the face-to-face, and we need the online.”

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CNN President “Really Afraid Of” Social Networks

Over the years, there have been more than a few arguments about whether online news sites are killing newspapers.  Now, due to some almost startling comments made by the president of CNN, it looks like the next round of old media-new media disputes might concern social networks and cable news organizations.

According to the AFP, Jonathan Klein’s remarks on this subject were in no way ambiguous.  He said at Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s 2010 Media Summit New York, "The competition I’m really afraid of are social networking sites.  That’s an alternative that threatens to pull people away from us."

Klein then explained, "The people you’re friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information. . . .  Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news.  We don’t want the 1,000 people you follow in Twitter to be the most trusted sources for you. . . .  So I’m far more worried about the 500 million people on Facebook than I am about two million people watching Fox."

That’s an interesting take on the power of social networks.  It implies – at the very least – that CNN anchors are going to spend a whole lot more time referencing Facebook and Twitter from now on.  An ad campaign and new apps could follow, too.

On a broader scale, Klein seems to be saying that social networks’ users can easily – even unwittingly – make or break major corporations.

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Microsoft Talks Google’s Privacy “Fails” at SXSW

At the keynote today at SXSW, Microsoft’s Danah Boyd placed a lot of emphasis on Google’s privacy "fails" with Buzz. The topic of the keynote was the relationship between privacy and publicity, and she certainly covered much more territory and social media in general, but it was interesting that Google Buzz was essentially the first thing talked about.

A lot of people will love Buzz, and will use it, but that doesn‘t mean Google didn‘t mess up in terms of privacy, she said. She says that the company did nothing wrong technologically (there were multiple ways to opt out), but that Google managed to find the social equivalent of the "uncanny valley".

Google got in trouble by integrating a public facing system inside of one of the most intimate (Gmail), she said, adding that a lot of users believed Google was exposing their private email, even though this was never actually the case.

Google also assumed that people would opt out if they didn‘t want to participate, she said. She said she gives the company the benefit of the doubt, but she can’t help but notice that more companies are starting to think it’s ok to expose people and then back pedal once people flip out.

She said she kept meeting users who thought if they opted out, it would cancel their Gmail account.

With regard to Google’s handling of the situation, Boyd says they "foolishly" told users what they wanted to hear rather than asking them what they wanted to hear.

Make no mistake, the point of the keynote was much larger than pointing out Google’s failure, and it was quite a thought-provoking talk. Still, one can’t help but notice the excessive amount of jabs at Microsoft’s main rival, and emphasis placed on a very young product (the remainder of the speech’s focus was mostly placed upon Facebook and Twitter, with a little bit of Chat Roulette).

 

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The Death (Or Redefinition) Of SEO Discussed

Some people would have you believe that search engine optimization is a dying art, and depending on how you define SEO, that may be true. But at OMS 2010 in San Diego, Greg Jarboe, the president and cofounder of SEO-PR, explained that other definitions of SEO make it very much alive.

Here’s the thing: as Jarboe admitted, “The era of ten blue links is dead.” People also can’t expect to optimize a page by just changing keyword metatags anymore. Indeed, much of what so many SEO experts learned ten years ago has become irrelevant.

The trick is that expanded search, which can be defined as “search wherever it happens,” is now important. Facebook, eBay, and YouTube users all perform searches, after all, and their attention is valuable. So Jarboe concluded, “If you focus on those kinds of fundamentals, then SEO is alive and kicking.”

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Actor Corey Haim Reported Dead

Actor Corey Haim, best known for roles in movies like the Lost Boys, License to Drive, and many others (a number of which also featured Corey Feldman), has reportedly been found dead of an apparent drug overdose. 

>>> You can leave your condolences on FamousDead.com.

The LA Times reports:

The Los Angeles Police Department said Haim, 38, was pronounced dead after 3 a.m. at a Burbank hospital. He had been living in the San Fernando Valley.

Details of his death were not immediately available. The L.A. coroner’s office was investigating. A police spokesman said more details would be available later.

Haim connected with his fans through social media, specifically a MySpace page, which currently has 4,253 friends.

The "about me" section reads:

The real Corey Haimster here! I asked Jenny J to set this up for me, so here it is. I’ll be checking in to read all your shout outs & when I get the time, I’ll leave a message for you all. Thanks for hitting my MySpace page!
Love & peace out,
Corey

"Actor Corey Haim" and "Lost Boys" are currently both trending topics on Twitter.

Haim’s latest movie American Sunset premiered in Las Vegas in January. He had also been seen in the realty TV show The Two Coreys with Feldman. More on Haim here.

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