With Internet Week in full swing, I stopped by the W Hotel in Times Square to get a look at the Instagram photography exhibit, a collaboration between the hotel and a photography community called Instagram NYC.
There was once a time when you’d type up your resume on your old fashioned word processor, add a little flair and a unique (but not irresponsible) font and print it out to deliver by hand to a prospective employer. Those days are long gone, and today’s job hunt is new territory for people on all sides of the fence. A new infographic looks at the history of social recruiting and provides some startling statistics about how many people are using it — for instance, 49% of employed Americans are looking for new jobs on social networks.
Quora, the social question and answer site that was all the rage in 2009, has raised $50 million as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and an early Facebook investor, was one of the main contributors, along with Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo who put $20 million of his own money. Will this give Quora the infusion of capital necessary to regain its web buzz and begin to monetize?
Want to know whose obsession with sharing photos on Instagram is becoming a problem? Step 1: Look in the mirror. Step 2: Check out this infographic from Flowtown.
If you love the photo-sharing app for its easy sharing capabilities and sexy light filters, you are not alone. There are now 40 million users who have fallen for its charm. A sore thumb from excessive scrolling is to be expected; disdain for Android users and Instagram’s new parent company, Facebook, are signs of a more serious problem.
PostSecret is no longer a secret. The postcard secrets service that lets people send in their deepest anonymous secrets on a home-made postcard has been running since 2005, and founder Frank Warren took the time out to talk with the Reddit community on Friday to answer people’s questions about the service.
Frank introduced himself and answered questions for hours. He discussed some of the weirdest and wildest postcards he’d ever seen, and although he had a few hiccups with the format, people seemed to dig his answers and he got a ton of upvotes, unlike that Rampart star who botched his AMA recently. Here is one of his most upvoted comments.
For me the most disturbing secret was a photograph of a young girl who had cut her face so that it appeared as though she was crying blood tears. (I just remember that image not the secret.)
Another time I was contacted by the FBI about a secret. I am unable to share the details of that secret.
He also answered the big question of how he actually determines what to put in the book.
I get hundreds every week and try to select secrets for postsecret.com that I have not seen before or that express a common secret in a new of visually interesting way. I always try to include secrets that touch on the full range of human emotion. So there will always be at least one secret that’s funny, shocking, erotic, controversial, hopeful, etc. I also try to arrange the secrets so they tell a story.
Check out the entire Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) here. Also, Frank also linked to his TED talk, where he talks about “half a million secrets” and reveals some of the best he’s ever seen. It’s a highly entertaining watch!
On Friday, a Kickstarter engineer discovered a small bug in Kickstarter’s private API. The bug allowed a user’s private project data to be accessed via the API. No financial data was compromised, but users with private projects may have had some of their information leaked. Kickstarter reports that 48 projects were accessed during the weeks where the bug was live, but there’s no telling whether those were authorized by the original project owners or not.
On today’s Morning Media Menu (MP3 link), I joined GalleyCat editor Jason Boog for a chat about our favorite new Spotify apps.
Spotify has been hinting at big changes to its digital music service for months. Today, the company launched new features that are reminiscent of Pandora and iTunes, including a Playlist Radio and a Play Button that you can embed on your website or blog.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian appeared on CNN on Wednesday to explain why he would not be buying any Facebook stock in the upcoming IPO. Specifically, he is critical of their support of bills like CISPA which are not in the best interest of users. Alexis posted the interview on his own blog and I take a look at his comments below.
Google is clearly pushing Google+ on all fronts, with several updates per week, and it looks like it is helping them improve their traffic. Experian Hitwise recently reported that the total US visits to Google+ increased 5% in April 2012 vs. March 2012 with over 64 million visits.
