Stoney Nakoda

Recently I got an email from a friend of mine asking me to make a $25 donation toward her 4-year-old daughter’s book publishing project, by making a pledge on  the popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

Young Stoney Nakoda and the effort (lead by her family) to fund her project with help from people’s contributions of small donations is already getting her close to reaching a goal of $5,000 by 23^rd of May. To date, the family has raised $1,634. Stoney, and her story book about how she overcame her fear of shadows, is one of many exciting stories coming out of the crowdfunding movement. Read more »

Whether it is uploading photos, that we then allow another entity to have control of, or granting access to our Facebook or Twitter account to a third party – we are, often unknowingly, giving away data, and, in certain instances, giving away certain privacy rights associated with that data.

Would you buy your social media influence?

If you are feeling lonely on Twitter, with only a handful of followers, or not feeling enough fans like you on Facebook, you could consider buying more friends. There are various services out there offering to get you thousands of fans with prices going up to $4,000 for 10,000 fans.

How much would you pay to increase your social network influence? And who would you buy? Read more »

Pssssst…raising awareness about breast cancer is back on Facebook, with a new viral campaign that women are sharing. Girlfriends have told me not to let onto the boys what’s going on, and we’ll see if this one reaches the success that we’ve seen from previous campaigns.

Last year, women around the world updated their status on Facebook to reveal what colour bra they were wearing. Red, white, beige, black, and leopard print was showing up all across Facebook, catching the attention of men. The phenomenon captured news headlines, and reports said that no one was sure exactly where it all started. Read more »

Don’t like someone’s outfit? Slipped on ice? Lost a job? Think your boss is lame?

Hashtag fail!

These are all situations where “That is so hashtag fail!”

These days Twitter lingo is not just for online use, as expressions migrate from the social media world into everyday vernacular. In the case of hashtag fail, its sprung from the online use of the expression #FAIL and now even has it’s own hashtag of #hashtagfail. Read more »

You may have heard the news that Facebook has partnered with more than a dozen music services, making for richer musical experiences for the social networking site’s millions of members. But are you listening yet?

The top three favourites so far are Spotify, MOG and Rdio. Other services in the mix include TuneIn Radio, iHeartRadio, Audiovroom, earbits, Deezer, SoundCloud, Rhapsody, Vevo, Jelli, Songza and Slacker, among others. All have been introduced as part of Facebook’s Open Graph approach, that aims to feed music, movies, TV, news, books, media and something called “lifestyle apps” into the social mix. All was revealed at the f8 conference back in September when Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage, alongside music darling Spotify. Read more »

Leave it to one of the world’s most visionary artists to release a technological mash up this week, for her newest album ‘Biophillia’ where you’ll hear Björk using an iPad app as a musical instrument, and inviting listeners to download the app and play with it on their own iPads.

She’s broken convention again, putting out the album online first, allowing free listening to the 10 tracks, via the NPR website, where you can also buy the full album or select to buy individual tracks. While other artists have also chosen online release first before other mediums, Björk seems to take using technology in music a step further in getting fans to interact with the music, through downloading the iPad app. Read more »

From the early days of social media, the medium has been evolving with how it is used for gathering groups of people together. Mobs may have ignited by word-of-mouth and phone calls in the past, but over the last decade, we’ve seen the medium become the infrastructure of how mass spontaneous events are organized.

When Facebook started out, its groups and pages invited people to promote events to members, and invite friends to attend. At first it was just friend’s parties with BBQs and birthday parties, and many band’s gigs. People were starting to use Facebook more than existing options like Evite. Read more »

This week’s riots across the country are causing a debate among the country’s leaders about social media and if these tools are at the core of the problem. Reports that the riots were primarily organized by BlackBerry Messenger, and somewhat with Facebook and Twitter, were revealed early by news media, and politicians jumped quickly into accusations against the services.

The Wall UK Editor Gordon MacMillan has written extensively on this topic already. He shows how social media has played a role of good and evil throughout the course of the week’s events. One shining moment I love has been the Twitter organized cleanup in Clapham, that attracted a few hundred people, with brooms, who followed the hashtag  #riotcleanup. Read more »

Recently I had a big announcement to share with family, friends and colleagues.

My son Truman Fraser Devaney was born June 1^st.

Planning how to announce this news to everyone became a real challenge of thinking who likes to use what form of communication. My partner and I had to go down the list of names and figure out if the person would get a phone call to their mobile or landline, a text message, a blog post, an email, Skype, iChat, G-Chat, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and in some cases the mail and word of mouth. Read more »