Sophie helps a guest check her bags.

I spent the summer of 2008 living in a youth hostel in the middle of Times Square, where an old classmate I had reconnected with on MySpace had filled his two-bedroom apartment with bunk beds. I shared a basement with a rotating cast of 14 tourists and two kittens while he slept in a loft space above the living room and his roommate took the other bedroom. The idea was ahead of its time — Airbnb, a site for listing short-term rentals of rooms or entire homes, emerged just a couple months later.

In exchange for free room and board for the summer, I would help my host check the guests in, hand them their keys, and answer the questions they had about the city, although I had just arrived myself and didn’t know much more about it than than they did.

For instance, I didn’t know at the time that we needed a certificate of occupancy to be doing what we were doing, or that we didn’t already have one. All I knew was that our hostel was one of the few places that a traveler on a budget could find a room in New York City for less than a hundred dollars a night.

Most of our guests were polite and cheerful, coming home with shopping bags full of jewelry and computers to drop off in their rooms (the exchange rates in Europe were favorable that summer) while they poured over museum pamphlets and made a quick pot of tea. There might have been loud parties from time to time, but the party people typically stayed out until four a.m. when the bars closed and came back to the hostel only to sleep it off.

If anyone was rowdy, it was the cats. Megan regularly locked herself in the closet by accident and Sophie, who was always looking for good head to sleep on, kept me awake at night more than once.

The Lobby

What we were doing was not exactly a secret — the owner used an online hostel booking service and a basic website to advertise the space — but I suspect the neighbors hadn’t been consulted about all of the people who would soon be sharing their stoop.

With the buzzer constantly ringing in the confused strangers who would show up on the doorstep with their suitcases in hand, it was hard to hide our temporary residents for long.

Our neighbors started having meetings about the “illegal hostel” on the first floor, which we found out about through the many hand-made signs that lined the hallways and doors in our building.

Ultimately, we were evacuated from the space because of the toxic mold that had grown in the basement thanks to the hot tub that the previous tenants had installed. (So maybe the hostel wasn’t as wholesome as I’m making it sound, but I’m at work right now, so we can talk about that another time.)

I was tired of living in Times Square at that point, and had decided move across the East River to Brooklyn, where I would always have a moat between me, the blinking signs, and all of the screaming Justin Bieber fans outside MTV’s studios.

If homeowners now are making serious cash off rentals on Airbnb, I would be very surprised. I soon learned that the fees we collected from tourists barely covered the rent. I eventually quit my job altogether because my paychecks were bouncing.

Now that I’ve lived in this expensive city long enough to realize just how spectacular that apartment was (aside from the mold), I can understand why my former classmate wanted to rent it out rather than move to less convenient parts of the outer boroughs to make ends meet like the rest of us.

Especially when the stock market crashed that fall and I was left jobless in a new city where I knew virtually no one other than the tourists I met that summer who had already gone back home.

Years later, when my apartment building lost heat and electricity for three straight weeks after Hurricane Sandy, I would appreciate that business model — and Airbnb –even more.

It was through Airbnb’s online booking service that my husband and I found a free studio apartment in Chelsea for a full week so we could shower, sleep, and get back to work. Our host, an IT professional who needed a cat sitter while he went on a sailing trip, had told his landlord he would be having Airbnb guests and joined us for dinner and a beer before he went on his way.

There was nothing scammy about it — just a New Yorker making his city more livable for himself and his cat, and helping a couple of Sandy victims along the way.

In fact, New York City’s willingness to use Airbnb to house its displaced residents in privacy and comfort while we went about our daily lives showed that city officials do understand what people really need in an emergency.

So it’s mind-boggling that laws in New York and other cities are still making it difficult for people to rent out their apartments on Airbnb and similar sites. Yesterday, CNET reported that New York City resident Nigel Warren will pay a $2,400 fine for violating a law that prevents property owners from renting their homes for periods of less than 30 days. Warren was a renter, not an owner, and his landlord had received the initial warning from officials.

No one wants 14 tourists moving in next door to them, and this law does seem to be aimed at people who turn their entire apartment buildings into hotels, but the law ignores an important aspect of living in a big city.

Home ownership is out of reach for many people, even in a household like mine, with two incomes and no children. Why shouldn’t renters be able to open our doors to visitors and, with clear guidelines on how we can do this legally, stretch our budgets a little further?

For every overachiever trying to cram half of Europe into his apartment, there will be countless others who are just trying to have a nice vacation and pay their rent. And these people can all be online,with photos and full descriptions of their apartments, for law enforcement to see.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As far back as 2008, according to The Wall Street Journal, Gary has been seen “backslapping” with Tumblr CEO David Karp. Gary’s website is hosted on Tumblr, something that, in arguably an extraordinary step, was announced on the Tumblr staff blog in February of 2009. In his first book, Crush It, Gary compares and contrasts WordPress with Tumblr, but I feel he clearly was arguing in favor of readers using Tumblr over WordPress, going as far as to have an aside on Page 63 that says, “E-mail me at Gary@vaynermedia.com for details about the press conference I’m going to have to explain why I’m a fan of Tumblr.” In his follow-up book, The Thank You Economy, Tumblr is consistently mentioned with Twitter and Facebook. WordPress, at least in an initial Google Book Search of The Thank You Economy, is not mentioned at all. (The need for transparency on any company’s part because of social media; however, is.)

You might be thinking, well what about the VC people? Don’t they do shady stuff like this too! YES! Absolutely. But I don’t know too much about their world. I do know about the social media industry, the players in it, and some of the shady stuff they do in order to benefit themselves and sell you their wares. So my focus rests, for now, on exposing these folks in an effort to help you make a more informed choice about whom you get your information from. Don’t worry. I’ll get to the VC people eventually. They’re not off the hook. I just need to do more research on them first.

Back to Tumblr …

Tumblr was founded in February of 2007. If you want to take Business Insider as a credible source of information,Tumblr was not profitable as of 2012. TechCrunch reported this weekend that Tumblr has three months worth of funds available to operate. In terms of the large amount of traffic Tumblr claims to generate, Gawker claimed back in 2011 that a nice chunk of that could be contributed to Tumblr’s porn and spam problem — a problem that the company acknowledged to an associate producer at NPR. (Although in their defense, according to BusinessWeek, the problem is not as big as it used to be.)

In April of 2013, Tumblr CEO David Karp stated that Tumblr still wasn’t profitable, but readily pointed out that there were more than 70 book deals and three TV deals that came from Tumblr blogs. Unless Tumblr received profits from those book deals, that doesn’t somehow make them more profitable. That’s like saying I own an ice cream store, and a couple of my customers who were once spotted by a casting agent there are now big Hollywood stars. It doesn’t really mean anything for my ice cream store; it’s just a thing that happened. Coincidentally, I’m pretty sure this is why Channing Tatum is a thing.

There’s a whole lot more to the Tumblr-to-book, Tumblr-to-television story that often doesn’t get told —a lot of which has nothing to do with Tumblr. For example, one of those TV deals and one of those book deals belongs to Emma Koenig. Were it not for the small footnote in the story The New York Times did on her, you would not have known she was the sister of Ezra Koenig, who sings for the popular band Vampire Weekend. The story also revealed that Koenig came from a wealthy family, is based in NYC, and was found by her editor after The Huffington Post featured her blog. Suddenly that “Tumblr-to-book deal” thing doesn’t seem so magical, does it? Sure, she used the platform, but there are other factors behind her story and those of numerous others that go beyond the use of Tumblr. (On a similar note: There’s also far more to Gary Vaynerchuk’s social media success story too.)

I don’t mention all of this to knock Tumblr. I actually like the service and used to use it. I mention this because we’ve now established that Tumblr, an unprofitable company for its entire existence, was acquired for more than a billion dollars, and that this unprofitable company was extensively promoted publicly by an investor who was simultaneously selling advice on how to use that company’s services in books, speeches, interviews, and videos.

While we’re on that subject, Gary Vaynerchuk also owns shares in Twitter, which is likewise disclosed on his website. Twitter is preparing to go public, although the timing of that is the subject of rumor at this point. It’s a bit harder to know if Twitter is profitable. There was a flare-up involving a statement that Fred Wilson, an early Twitter investor, had made that some took to indicate that Twitter was profitable, which he would then later clarify and say he doesn’t know if they’re profitable or not.

Here’s what we do know: Like with Tumblr, Gary Vaynerchuk was constantly and publicly peddling Twitter in his books, presentations, and interviews. At one point, he was encouraging The New York Jets, a client of his social media consulting firm, Vaynermedia, to start a trend among Jets fans to use a hashtag of #J_E_T_S_JETS_JETS_JETS on Twitter after every touchdown. Of course, if you’re a Jets fan, you know that your fellow Jets fans are mostly illiterate, racist, and don’t know what a Twitter is, but that’s beside the point. What is the point is that Gary was using his social media consulting firm, which sells advice including how to use Twitter, to encourage a multi-million dollar brand to use a company that he owns shares in.

Although these relationships are disclosed on Gary Vaynerchuk’s website, is that sufficient enough to inform consumers of his relationship with these companies? What about Vaynermedia’s clients? Are they told what social media platform the owner of this social media consulting service has a financial interest in? Can we reasonably assume that everyone who has ever read Gary’s books, listened or watched his interviews, seen his speeches, have in turn visited his website and saw that disclosure notice? Are his investments disclosed in those books and speeches?

You might be thinking, “So what?”, or worse still, the deeply cynical “the rich get richer.” You’re right on the latter, but I think this is bullshit. It may not be illegal, but consumers should be protected from potentially deceptive practices, and know who benefits from the information that’s being provided. Especially when it comes to social media.

B.J. Mendelson has sold 7,000 copies of his book on zero budget, helped get a television show into 40 million homes on ABC, and lives in and out of hotels across America. Contact him at BJ@BJMendelson.com. Contact the editor at devon@socialtimes.com. Image by Matthias Pahl.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Boog was impressed by how much Foursquare has grown, even surpassing Pinterest in reach. Even more intriguing was that marketers are using location-based data from Instagram just like they do on Foursquare.

Finally, Boog shared how one author has embraced a new digital currency by making his new book the ”first book ever to be for sale ONLY on bitcoin.”

Press play below to listen on SoundCloud. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Image by prapass via Shutterstock. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

But here’s another fact you may not be aware of: Those same tech journalists, under the guise of reporting the “news,” often push their technology-centric agenda on you, and since this happens at prestigious outlets like The New York Times, nobody really stops to question it. That means we all have the “pleasure” of living in a world shaped by these people.

I’m not ok with that. You shouldn’t be, either. And this isn’t about being a luddite or technophobic, this is about questioning the information we’re being asked to accept, and asking who benefits by having this information pushed. The Geeks don’t, and shouldn’t, get a pass to inherit the Earth. They had their chance, and instead of going all in, they went halfway and then decided to make toys for wealthy white people instead. And then, the Geeks decided to build businesses that rest solely on advertising dollars they can’t justify having without resorting to phony metrics that crumble under any sort of scrutiny. I’m looking at you, Facebook.

That’s not to say that places like The New York Times are perfect, either. You don’t need to google beyond “Jayson Blair” and “Judith Miller” to know that much. But if you were to ask the average person who had more credibility, The Verge or The New York Times, it’s always going to be The New York Times. Even when you ask that question among people who hate The New York Times, the answer is always going to be The New York Times. That’s because The Verge lacks balls, rarely asks tough questions, and comes equipped with the same obnoxious, “we are the future of journalism” attitude that the people at BuzzFeed have. Of course, both of those places are wrong to have that attitude. They’re not the future of journalism. BuzzFeed just wants to be bought by Facebook (this too, is fact), and The Verge is more or less a giant circle jerk of feel-good stories about gadgets and consumer-facing websites with a rare bit of pessimism so they’re not confused with a rag like Mashable.

But I don’t want to belabor this point too much. Every media sector is fucked up. Each and every single one. I’m just more aware and informed when it comes to tech and social media because I’ve been observing that area since 2007.  My point here is that I strongly suspect tech journalists suck the most out of an entire galaxy of suck, and obnoxiously, for reasons partly laid out in Social Media Is Bullshit, they’re given opportunity after opportunity to force their bullshit beliefs on the rest of us under the guise of being an official voice for a mostly credible source such as The New York Times.

Which brings me to Nick Bilton at The Times. For the better part of two years, Nick has been using the Bits Blog to push for reform when it comes to being able to use your gadgets on an airplane and keeping them connected to the Internet during a flight. And while I’m sure there are people out there who want this, the coverage screams of, “I’m writing about this because I want it to happen.”

I fly. A lot. More than I ever thought or wanted. And you know what I like most about flying? The fact that there’s no Internet access when you’re in the air. (And if there is, like on Southwest, it usually sucks and is totally unreliable.) If I were an airline, I’d play that up as a perk. “Come fly with us, and while you’re in the air, you’ll enjoy a nice, relaxing, quiet period away from your annoying kids, co-workers, and boss. Don’t worry. We know you’re not as important as you think you are, and we’re not going to tell anyone that. Instead we’re going to let you drop the pretense and just relax while we safely get you to where you need to go.” See? That’s honest and compelling. It’s like a micro-vacation, and we all know how Tim Ferriss worshippers feel about that shit!

But apparently this concept of serenity in the air isn’t good enough for people like Nick. Instead you get stories about how the FAA NEEDS to reevaluate their rules and regulations, and that Senators like Claire McCaskill are pushing the possible new head of the FAA on the issue. And then, and then! In The New York Times, research produced by a lobbying firm that represents the interests of companies like Samsung and IBM is used to justify the need for change in the FAA rules because a few passengers, NOT an overwhelming majority, “forgot” to turn off their devices. Right, because people forgetting to turn off their devices is the same as an open revolt against FAA rules and regulations concerning the use of your device and its ability to connect to the Internet when in the air.

Which brings me back to tech reporters and their absolute suckage. Are we seriously relying on information from a lobbying firm representing major technology companies as a reliable source of information? Well, I guess if it helps push your agenda we are, and since that agenda is being pushed in a place like The New York Times, nobody says anything. Nobody calls it out, and sooner or later these people will get what they want.

So I hope you all enjoy sitting next to someone on the flight who’s screaming into their cell phone and burying themselves in emails that don’t matter and never will, all the while proclaiming to anyone who will listen about how busy they are. That’s the future we’re looking at, and it’s all because of a few people who are incapable of turning off the device they’re married to for a few hours and relaxing.

And we all have people like Nick to thank for this.

Image by Pressmaster.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” —Salvador Dali

Pokemon x Nicolas Cage continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

First, we discussed a woman’s campaign to get a block button on LinkedIn to fend off an alleged stalker. No such feature currently exists, but a leaked screenshot shows that something may be in the works.

Later in the podcast, we discussed how the U.S. Senate just passed a landmark sales tax fairness bill. What will this mean for online retailers?

Press play below to listen. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Image by prapass via Shutterstock. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Twitter just released its self-serve advertising suite for all users to promote their work on the social network. Meanwhile, Foursquare’s  in-app ad program could bring big changes to the network when it rolls out this summer. Yahoo has also given some of its advertising units a new look.

Press play below to listen. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Image by prapass via Shutterstock. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Facebook groups take this one step further. Everyone is added to the group initially and that’s it. No need for tagging, just share material. If you’re worried somebody might steal your work, set it to private, which let’s be honest, isn’t such a bad idea anyway.  Comments, photos, documents can all be posted within the group and only be seen the members who have been added into that particular group. Plus they’ll get notifications whenever something new is added; not seeing something is not a valid excuse!

For those of us who don’t have the luxury of having our classmates only a walk down the hallway, Facebook can be a very useful tool, particularly when it comes to complex university group assignments.  Everyone can put up specific tasks as they complete them, get immediate feedback and should another member be inclined to do so, edit them with the assistance of google documents. In 2011, 58 percent of students surveyed said they felt comfortable communicating with other students about their coursework over social media. In 2012, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth discovered through a Social Media Adoption study that 98 percent of the colleges they studied were also using Facebook to interact with students.

Facebook was also helpful in my senior year of high school, when teachers were constantly on call to ensure we students obtained the necessary marks to get into the university of our choice. Befriending teachers, particularly the younger, more tech-savvy ones, became a common way to keep up-to-date with deadlines, online resources and other exam tips. Not only could they paste reminders the night before an assessment and know everyone would get the message, they could share website links to official information regarding specific subjects.

There is definitely controversy regarding this. One survey showed that 39 percent of students thought it was inappropriate to communicate with a teacher through social media, while 31 percent said it was appropriate, and 30 percent were neutral. There are also students and teachers sharing mobile phone numbers, but that’s for another time.

Obviously, online communication cannot and never will be a true replacement for real-life, face-to-face communication. It lacks emotion and misinterpretations are certainly something to keep in mind. Four in five people in a 2013  survey said they believed that incivility on social media is on the rise, according  to VitalSmarts. In 2011, Pew Research found that 88 percent of teens had witnessed others being cruel to each other on social networking sites.

That doesn’t mean social media can’t be useful. A study published by Abilene Christian University in 2010 showed that active Facebook users were more likely to stay in school —college Freshmen who continued on to their Sophomore year had an average of 27 more friends and 59 more wall posts than students who dropped out.

For me, social networking has made things so much easier. Living over an hour away from my university, it becomes extremely difficult to make it in everyday, especially for brief team meetings that may only last for thirty minutes. It’s just not worth it. Combine this with four different groups working on four different assignments and I might have to work around 15 or so other people. Thinking about it like this, I have no idea how I’d be able to collaborate with everyone without living on campus if it wasn’t for Facebook. Facebook really is the ultimate social network.

Also Read: Has Facebook Become Beneficial or Harmful to Students [Infographic]

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sure, YouTube isn’t here to replace real school, but when I am feeling especially stuffed from overeating at the internet’s buffet of food photos, lolspeak captions, and viral dances, these amazing channels can refill my mind. Don’t you want to get your nerd on? Check out my list below. Your brain will thank you.

The RSA

NASA

Nature Video

Minute Physics

Vsauce

PBS Idea Channel

Big Think

Words of the World

Numberphile

Piano Academy

Scientific American

Justin Guitar

UC Berkeley

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

At this week’s Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo, we saw advancements in 3D printing that could change the way doctors approach reconstructive surgery, but companies will need approval from the FDA and a whole lot of funding to do it.

On Twitter, journalists are calling for new ways to post corrections after erroneous reports circulated on Twitter following the Boston Marathon bombings.

Finally, we discussed the lawsuit that indie booksellers have filed against Amazon and Big Six publishers over digital rights management practices that limit smaller retailers’ entry to the eBook market. Indie authors are a big part of the ecosystem on Amazon, but retailers say that that those opportunities do not extend to them. Boog talked about a few bookstores where self-published authors can sell their books to keep the indie spirit alive.

Press play to listen. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Image by prapass via Shutterstock. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Photo: Creativa

Google+. Where do I even start with this shit? I mean, beyond the thorough bashing of it I delivered, and in turn, also delivered to social media marketer Chris Brogan for his ill-timed and poorly conceived Google+ seminar, in Social Media Is Bullshit?

Don’t feel bad for the Google employees, though. Everyone hates Google+. Unless, of course, you’re a social media marketer and you just so happen to have a book you’re selling on how awesome it is. (See again: Brogan, Chris.) Then you don’t hate Google+. But don’t worry, social media marketers don’t matter. You remember that scene in “House of Cards” when Kevin Spacey talks to the crazy person and says that nothing the crazy person says or does matters? The social media marketers are the crazy person, and I know for a fact that at least seven thousand of you agree with me on that.

So why all the hate for Google+? There’s no purpose for it to exist. There isn’t. You know what Google+ is known for? Not being Facebook. That’s it! That’s the entire reason for its creation and continued operation. “What’s Google+?” “It’s not Facebook.” That’s it!

The hate for the pointless Google+ has been so universal that Google has resorted to misleading people about the growth and popularity of the service. Google+ didn’t even earn a mention in the early 2013 earnings call.

So, although we all hate Google+, we’re also all stuck with Google+ for as long as Google wants to prop it up.

And not only are we stuck with it, because of Google’s monopoly on search, you’re forced to use Google+ because data from the SEO people indicates that people conducting searches are more likely to click through on a link if they see the author’s photo next to it. And how do you get your photo next to your link on Google? Yup. Google+. You fill out a form to join the Authorship program. You add a link to Google+ on your website (you can see mine here), and then you add “By: Brandon Mendelson” or whatever your name is in each of your posts. See? You don’t have a choice. Because although social media is BS, SEO isn’t. And when it comes to SEO, everything Google does with search matters.

Did you know if you incorporate Facebook comments into your blog, it sends a stronger signal to Facebook’s algorithm (EdgeRank) than if someone “likes” something? Google does. That’s the whole trick to getting stuff to do well on Facebook. Post pictures with your status updates, incorporate Facebook comments into your blog, and make sure people click the share button and not the like button. And since Google knows this, they’re now rolling out Google+ Comments for your blog to act as a replacement for Facebook’s commenting system. And you better believe there’s going to be some good SEO juice given to blogs using Google+ comments because they want people to use Google+, and so far the only thing that’s been successful in getting people to use Google+? Yup, forcing them to use the platform for the SEO benefits.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

First, some praises. I love how the new redesign transitions users from mobile to web more seamlessly. This is great for user interface and it just makes sense when most users are on many different devices. The new interface looks cleaner and bigger. This doesn’t necessarily mean better because users will have varying capacity for change and many will not like it (at first). If the user interface strikes you as familiar – it’s because it looks a lot like Google+, but there’s nothing wrong in copying a great interface so long as Facebook does not want to be innovative.

Facebook 2006

Facebook 2013

Overall, the visual changes signal a lot of hype for little substance. In the process of reinventing the site no one thought to improve performance. For me, great design begins with two basic ideals – function and aesthetic.

 From Dieter Rams 10 Principles of Good Design:

Good design makes a product useful — A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

Good design is aesthetic — The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

The correlation between function and aesthetic.

What’s glaringly obvious with the new design is that Facebook completely misses a lot of great opportunities: simple privacy controls, photo organization, more intuitive private messaging that rivals Gmail. If we use the graph above it is situated somewhere between Kitsch and Trash. Style lies in personal taste, but most everyone can agree on function.

What does it take to get Facebook to the upper right quadrant of social network design gold, i.e. Beauty? I’ve already started a list. It’s not a definitive list by any means, but a programmatic approach to design that focuses on the complaints I’ve heard the most from users — if you have some great ideas, share it in the comment section!

Changing your privacy policy? Show me in my notifications.

From my perspective it seems that the majority of the uproar from users typically stems from a lack of oversight for privacy features and the inability to easily access them. Facebook should notify users when changes are made to privacy policies, preferably before another source. This is just good customer service. I don’t read Facebook’s blog so give me a little notification and let me choose to read it along with all of those event invitations.

Facebook should simplify and maintain privacy interfaces that are constant.

This low hanging fruit is a given, but I don’t think Facebook understands how crucial this step is. Privacy should be designed to feel comfortable and safe – even if it is in flux. This means keeping it relatively similar throughout all design changes.

Everyone, myself included, feels extremely uncomfortable when years of personal data is suddenly freed for public viewing. Obviously, a little change to a design will inevitably shift privacy settings, but Facebook should implement the new privacy settings before the new designs take effect. This amount of time will allow users to adjust to the change and give them more power, and therefore more comfort.

Use filters for viewing streaming content.

Whatever happened to Facebook using Hashtags? There are days when I want to temporarily turn of politics or babies or… (insert annoying meme that everyone has shared every hour). The ability to tag content makes searching and sorting much easier to browse that ocean of conversations.

News Feed was cluttered because there was not a way for users to quickly browse and systemically change the information intuitively. Changing a feed’s media from photos to videos doesn’t solve this problem.

Improve photo albums with re-sorting options.

A lot of users on Facebook are sharing photos and the application simply does not work. In fact, I find Facebook photos to be cumbersome and unmalleable. I literally deleted all of my photos one week a few years ago out of frustration. Have you ever tried to move a photo from one album to the next? Or change privacy settings for a few albums and not all? It’s not worth it. Adding Instagram to my photo set doesn’t make me like you better Facebook Photos…

Make private messages more user friendly.

There are plenty of days when I need to send a private message on Facebook to friends but dread the act. It’s even worse if I have to find a message because it can never be located. There’s a special place where my messages go to hide and they are invisible to Facebook’s search engines. The new Chat Heads are the greatest thing for Facebook mobile but on desktop, I’m sticking to Gchat.

Don’t change the navigation bar unless the old one really, really, really sucks.

Now that Facebook has a new navigation bar I must emphasize that it should stay there for a very long time. Possibly forever. Changing the location of your most used features every few years is ok but not wise. A great design will withstand the test of time. Look at the operating system for Mac and Windows and you get what I mean. Sure, the web is more fluid but don’t waste time by getting this wrong. It’s worth investing in so now that you’ve found something you like… let’s stick to it.

Make sure your product look better than the competition.

Facebook is large enough to have an attentive and willing audience that have already redesigned their entire site. Twice. It’s just floating out there in the interwebs and most of the designers I talked to at the time almost always liked the redesigns better than Facebook.

It’s perfectly OK to copy a visual palette from the competition, but you also have to improve it.

Facebook Prototype – Conceptional Approach from Fred Nerby on Vimeo.

Facebook Facelift – Home & Profiles from Barton Smith on Vimeo.

You’re never going to make everyone happy, but you should at least pacify a few critics.

I’m going to be completely honest here – the designer in me wants everyone to love my work. Everyone. That’s a hard task when you are designing a social network for over a billion monthly users. So, what’s a designer to do when backlash is inevitable and most of the world hates your product?

Simply asking what users want will earn credibility bonus. That’s a lot of people, so maybe it’s time to start looking and listening.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It appears not. Many teenagers, particularly younger adolescents, are seeking alternative social networking sites in order to escape their parents and other family members. That’s not to say they have given up on Facebook altogether; in fact, many people I know keep their Facebook account active while using a variety of other programs.

The truth is that now, with the range of age groups on Facebook, we have to be extremely careful about what we post. What was once a platform upon which teens could openly voice thoughts and opinions has become a censored sharing zone for friends and family alike. I mean, I even have my grandma as a friend on Facebook! I don’t want her seeing any photos of me that are less than angelic. Imagine if someone had their grandparents and their parents and their aunts and uncles as friends on Facebook and a friend tagged a photo of them intoxicated at a nightclub with their skirt above their belly button. Certainly not appropriate. Then again, I wouldn’t want anyone seeing me like that, photo or otherwise.

My point is there are things we say in front of our grandparents and things we don’t. I wouldn’t dare swear when in conversation with dear old Nan but dropping a few profanities in conversation with a friend is perfectly acceptable. That’s perfectly normal. There are ways we talk to our friends, ways we talk to our parents and ways we talk to our grandparents, and that goes for online conversations too. There are some things that we might post that simply aren’t appropriate for all age groups on Facebook, thus the trend towards other forms of social media.

Snapchat has become a popular one of choice, particularly among young teens. I have three sisters, aged 14-18, and all of them are constantly snapchatting their friends and boyfriends. If I’m being completely honest, Snapchat isn’t for me. In fact, up until recently when a few of my friends in their late teens/early twenties got Snapchat, I thought it was an app mainly used by 12-year-olds who had all this spare time to sit there sending constant streams of random photos. Sending a photo that can be viewed for no longer than ten seconds just doesn’t make sense to me. Especially when so many people only send random images and set them to be viewed for one, three, five seconds. Time filler? I think so.

In a way I guess it’s just a result of technological change. Teenagers have always wanted to be connected with their friends. Thirty odd years ago it was our grandparents wondering what our parents and their friends possibly had to talk about on the phone when they had seen each other all day and would see each other all day the next day and all day the day after that. Then it was constant texting, before smart phones, when it was either that or the snake game on the early Nokia phones (Apple was yet to release the iPhone) to cure boredom. A few years ago it was MSN chat. Now I guess it’s Snapchat.

As for Facebook alternatives, there also seems to be a lot of movement towards Twitter. I know plenty of people who have had a Twitter account for ages, but have only started using it in the last six months. Even my local football club has introduced Twitter as the place to post training times and other notifications rather than use Facebook groups.  Signal an overuse of #clubtwitterinvasion, which is highly annoying, but hashtags are another story!

We now have to censor the content on our Facebook pages and because of this many teenagers are opting to use alternatives. I think it’s great that people of all ages can connect online, sharing statuses, photos and check-ins and I honestly believe that Facebook will continue to be a popular social media site for years to come. However, teens, particularly young teens, are curious beings. Combine this with the fact that they enjoy having an outlet for themselves and their peers without parental supervision and we are going to see them continuing to look for different places to connect online. It’s not a bad thing; it’s just the way it is.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

First on the list was Google’s person finder tool, which was set up immediately following the explosions to help families and friends locate loved ones.

The Boston Marathon also tracked runners by name and bib number as they navigated the course. Runners or families looking to retrace their steps back to when the explosions occurred can still find their finishing times on the Boston Marathon website under “Athlete Tracking.”

Finding a place to stay after a big event like a marathon is hard enough in itself, but yesterday’s tragedy left many people stranded in the city. We talked about a site where people can offer their homes to  Boston Marathon attendees.

Finally, we discussed library resources to help parents talk to kids about the traumatic event while disturbing images and stories flood their phones, computers, and television screens.

Press play below to listen on SoundCloud. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Image by prapass via Shutterstock. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

On the subject of Amazon, we discussed the publisher that took to social media to improve the platform’s limited language range for digital books.

Finally, we discussed highlights from this year’s Shorty Awards for the best social media content of the year, whether it’s coming from a college campus or the inside of a prison cell.

Press play below to listen on SoundCloud. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Image by prapass via Shutterstock. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.