Buy Friends....Online Friends that is

One of the biggest trends found on social media sites today is the overwhelming number of accounts that allow users to purchase friends.  There are multiple accounts that allow users to send the money ranging from $5 to $100 for more followers or friends on social media sites in order to increase their popularity.  The website 1000followers.co allows individuals to purchase packages that guarantee the individual a certain number of added followers on their social media account.  Though with today's world this seems like pretty promising business to get into and could create a lot of money, I feel that this just isn't right for the average person.

For the average person, I don't understand what the difference is whether you have 3 followers or 3,000 followers.  I personally feel that I would much rather be actual friends with my followers or at least interested in topic that a group posts rather then just have an absurd amount of random people follow me.  However, if the account is for a band or business starting up this may be something beneficial to look into.  Having a lot followers or friends on an account provides a sense of credibility when other individuals may look at the account and could be very beneficial for the account.

source: http://buy1000followers.co

Facebook Going too Far?

Recently this past week, Facebook has been challenged in court by an Illinois man who has a very interesting law suit.  We all have seen the facial recognition feature on Facebook and how it can practically pick out who is who, and this is thanks to Biometric Data.  The question now comes that if  Facebook should be allowed to have this data, or is it an invasion of our privacy?  This individual from Illinois plans to test this and is taking Facebook to court of the unauthorized use of his biometric data because he never received a notification was told that they would be storing and using this information.

I'm not totally 100% how this will go for Facebook. I think a lot of this court case will be decided on how good this individuals lawyer is, and how far into Facebook's privacy regulations that they want to dig into.  I can see both sides of the argument in this situation but I feel like Facebook should be okay with this court case.  When you sign into and register with a social media site, you are taking the risk of your information to be taken or stored on the internet.  I feel at most Facebook will have to send a message describing that the users information is stored and being used for facial recognition with pictures to all users and pay a small fee to this man, but I do not think this will change anything or force Facebook to not use this feature.  After this court case is settled I believe that we will see a very bold line in the agreement that we have when signing up for a Facebook account that states the use of biometric data being store by the company strictly to avoid something like this happening again.

source:
http://mashable.com/2015/04/07/facebook-facial-recognition-lawsuit/

Periscope = Something New? or Just a Remake of Snapchat?

Periscope is the newest social media app to hit the market over the past few months.  This new app has many new features though that make it quite interesting.  Like SnapChat the main objective is to take videos (or pictures in Snapchat's case) and use these as a form of media to connect individuals from across the globe.  However, when using Periscope all the videos are set to being live immediately.  This means that there is no do-overs or reruns when recording and your friends on Periscope can comment on your videos as you're recording.  The other biggest feature of this app is the connection with Twitter and the ability to upload your videos right to Twitter.  Partnering with this social media powerhouse is probably one of the best options Periscope could have taken because of Twitters reputation and already high fan base.

Though this new social media app will be competing directly with Snapchat, I think that Periscope has a chance of making it in the social media world.  The partnership with Twitter is probably the biggest and most successful direction this company could have gone in to survive in this market.  The ability to add you friends from Twitter, share directly with Twitter and comment immediately will allow Periscope to compete in the market and separate themselves from other competitors enough to be successful.  Only time will tell however with how successful they will be with advertising their service and how they will be able to gain users at a fast rate.

source:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/periscope-and-meerkat-the-apps-where-life-is-but-a-stream-20150411-1mhxsk.html