LinkedIn vs. Twitter & Facebook

Everyone seems to forget about LinkedIn due to the massive popularity among other social media networks including Twitter and Facebook. These two social networks have been in control of the marketing and media world, especially in the United States. However, LinkedIn has made the decision to further expand into China. On a side note, Twitter, Facebook, as well as Google are all generally blocked by China's government. As a result of LinkedIn's growing presence in China, LinkedIn has already acquired approximately four million new users. 

The new Chinese-language website aims to broaden the LinkedIn business world. "Our mission is to connect the world's professionals and create greater economic opportunity—and this is a significant step towards achieving that goal,” Derek Shen, LinkedIn’s president of China, wrote in a blog post. In addition, Shen wants to continue upgrading the technological world at the same rate and pace of the business world. Because of China's hands-on government, this could become very difficult. 

Due to China's strict government regulations, censorship will definitely come into play. The company must regulate and censor any content from the users in China. Any information outside of China will not be censored. The creation of the Chinese website makes it much easier for the Chinese government to control the content of their users. Traditional LinkedIn users do not typically or traditionally censor content. However, this massive expansion into a huge business-oriented economy is a major step forward for LinkedIn. 

In my opinion, social media networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all can not only serve as personal profiles, but as well as business profiles, professional portfolios, and any other business-oriented utility. LinkedIn's expansion into China really sets them apart from Twitter and Facebook, especially in the business world. In general, this is LinkedIn's opportunity to finally become the definitive professional publishing platform.

For more information, here's the link to the whole story.
http://qz.com/180755/linkedin-is-doing-what-facebook-google-and-twitter-cant-expanding-in-china/

Facebook is Stealing Again!

We have all seen the movie The Social Network, the movie that immortalizes the creation of the social media site; Facebook. In that movie we were thrown into the world of Mark Zuckerberg, maker of Facebook, and we witnessed the events that led up to his extraordinary success. Some of those events consisted of blatantly stealing ideas from others and now, in 2014, we are witnessing this again, but in the news.

In an article by Jason Abbruzzese, I learned that Facebook released a new app on Monday called Paper which is the name of an already highly acclaimed app that does essentially the same thing.  The original Paper was created by a company called FiftyThree and has since been named the iPad app of the year in 2012. The app launch brought CEO Greg Petschnigg to publicly ask Facebook to change the name of their app, but Facebook refused and simply apologized for not notifying FiftyThree sooner.

Petschnigg  described Paper as a “computer application software for smart phones and tablets, namely, software for use in writing on smart phones and tablets with either a stylus or finger." While Facebook’s Paper doesn’t allow the user to draw within the app or use a stylus, Petschnigg urges that the similarities are too strong to be ignored.

This is not the first incident of a trademark complaint with Facebook and I doubt it will be the last.  Theft of ideological property is the base of the network, why would they change it now after we allowed it to become a multi-billion dollar company? They seem to have gotten away with every stolen good and the question I am facing is, “how does one even stop an ideological thief if they alter things slightly?”  

The article was posted on February 3, 2014 and can be found at Mashable.com. 

The Measures We Take for More Likes and Followers on Instagram

The "InstLike" Scam

The Instagram Scam That Tricked Over 100,000 Users Into Giving Away Their Passwords

...well, that's Instagram worthy.

The Android app, InstLike, promised free Likes and followers to Instagram users was another effective scam that over 100,000 Instagram users fell for and became No. 22 under most downloaded "utility" apps and No. 571 app overall.

After downloading the free application, users were asked to share their usernames and passwords, turning them into willing participants of a giant scam. The app developers promised at the login screen that, "We don't steal your account," leaving the user feeling safe as if they could trust the application. Once starting the application, InstLike began following random users and liked random photos with your account. The more people who downloaded the application, the more likes and followers the pool of scammed users would get. If you weren't satisfied with the results of the free version of the app, you could buy virtual coins to accrue more likes and followers. The application got more than just your password, but as well as your credit card information. 

The app was overlooked by Apple and Google for months. The first red flag was put up by the security firm Symantec who spotted the scam in late October. "People didn't realize that they were being duped into giving their login credentials to this app," Satnam Narang, the security researched at Symantec who found out InstLike.

Symantec warned Apple and Google after their discovery and was removed from Google Play and the App Store on October 25th and November 7th. Though, it was too late, tens and thousands of users had already downloaded the application.

This scam is just one representation of the extensive measures we are willing to take to receive more likes and followers on Instagram. Instagram is the power of popularity among social media network. It has become a social standard to receive more than 60 likes on a photo. If you do not receive that many, then lengths will be taken from as far as posting photos of illegal drugs to posting nude photos. "It's just very interesting to see what length people will go in order to get likes on their photos," Narang added.

Even though the application has been removed from Google and Apple stores, the website, InstLike.com, is still in operation.

As George Carlin once said, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

                                                                            Chloe Smith