Facebook: Are you the customer or the product?

'If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you are the product being sold.' -- Andrew Lewis, under the alias Blue_beetle, on the site MetaFilter

 In the era of social media, we all enjoy using social networks for personal or professional reasons. Facebook seems like the ideal network. Everyone is using it. Communication gets easier than ever, borders have disappeared and the world feels closer to you. You're even more excited by the fact that everything is in your own hands for free, without paying for its use. Is it so? Is it really free?

The Internet effect on Generation Y (a.k.a Millennials)

WHO are they (we)?

Generation Y, or Millennials, is referring to the demographic of people born between the '80s and the early '00s. It mostly refers to teens and young adults and is considered the most tech-savvy generation. Most of them grew up along with the Internet and this makes them an interesting generation to study on the use of social media.

Facebook Graph Search Includes Posts and Status Updates

Facebook has decided to extend its Graph Search by incorporating on its search engine the ability to look for posts, status updates, or comments.

This makes Graph Search more powerful than ever, since users will be able to find any post/comment of their favorite artist/TV show, they could spot their status updates from last year, or the comments they did. What's more, marketers will have an even better idea of their audience and would be able to trace every single mention of what they are looking for.

Is it time to unplug from social media?

Do you live and breathe on social media? Do you enjoy discovering new networks and communicating with your friends and coworkers through the Internet? Even more, are you working on digital media? Time to question yourself, when was the last time that you unplugged?

We live in the era of constant connectivity, of fast paces and of 'over-plugging'. A power outage can drive us crazy and a day with no Internet is like our worst nightmare. We love using the Internet and we appreciate its usefulness. However, we all have a time when we feel like we need a break. And that's when unplugging is required.

Facebook email on proposing updates to our Data Use Policy

Just received a mail from Facebook, referring to the proposed updates on the way they collect our data and the rules of the Facebook usage. Although I was cautious at first on the vailidity of the mail, as it seems, according to the redirecting links on the Facebook Site Governance Page, it is something that we must all carefully read.

I still haven't read all the documents, but I'm keeping this as a start:

"we may share information with service providers when they help us provide services."

Being a Social Media Manager in your 20s

I was born in the late 80s, I grew up with the modem sound, I played Pinball, I had a Playstation and a Game Boy, I left my walkman for a CD player and then turned to iPod. I played Snake on my first Nokia phone and I now play Angry Birds on my smartphone. Most people that were born on that decade can relate with me and many of us have a common digital passion.

I always loved writing and popular culture, so I started blogging on my own 5 years ago, doing what I loved. I learned about Wordpress, SEO, HTML for my own curiosity and ultimately got into online journalism. And then came social media. I started with Facebook back in 2007 and just like everybody else, I got hooked to the bait of social networks.

Facebook Pages Manager updates for iOS

Pages Manager is a useful application that allows you to manage your Facebook pages on the go. As it seems, a brand new update for iOS improves the features that you will be able to manage from your smartphone, with some useful additions.

From now on you can:

• Upload multiple photos simultaneously at the same post
• Add page admins from the app
• Edit the cover photo of your page
• Take advantage of the improved insights
• Create a new event from your iPhone
• Create a new page

How to use Gmail tabs properly

If you are a Gmail user, you must have already used the new feature of tabs that splits your messages into categories, according to their type of mail. This feature was introduced by Google in order to help us organize our mails, without feeling overwhelmed  by them.

And it actually kept its promise. If you spend some time to organize your tabs with the appropriate mails, you are able to set a priority for each tab and check it accordingly. Hence, you can only check your "Primary" tab during the day and maybe have a look on the "Promotions" on your spare time. However, there is always the danger of the wrong category, which might cost you with a delayed answer to an important mail. What's more, if you are a control freak, just like me, how long can you leave this sign of a new mail (even in an other tab) without opening? 

New Gmail is trying to show us a new way to use our inbox and it is a step forward. If we adapt to it, we'll explore its benefits. Since then, we'll be more careful for the organizing of the tabs and we'll try to win our obsession with any notification that pops up.

Blogger comments integrate Google Plus for your own good!

One thing I love about using Blogger for my articles is the integration it features with Google+. Google wanted to cross-use their services- in order to promote G+, but also in order to broaden our reach in an easy way.

Hence, when using Blogger as a platform, you don't need to worry on the commenting system, on whether to install Discqus, Livefyre or any other service. All you have to do is use your Google+ account and just like that, the comment you make also appears on Google's social network.

All the updates on Facebook News Feed

Facebook has decided to leave aside the Edge Rank algorithm that defined the posts that are visible on each one's News Feed, in an attempt to reward the quality posts and allow us not to miss a thing from the people we want.

As for now, Facebook introduces:

• Story Bumping: It's not just about the most recent posts, but also about the most relevant ones. If you missed an interesting post from a friend that was posted some hours ago, it will still appear on your newsfeed. This will replace quantity over quality, matching your interests and your relationships. This will be great for Facebook Pages, since an interesting post will have higher visibility, providing that there is engagement and that the user really finds it interesting.
• Last Actor: If you still like to check the most recent posts, but mostly from the people that matter to you, Facebook tracks your most frequent interactions, in order to notify you about their updates. They thought that if you interact a lot with somebody, it means that s/he belongs to your closest relations and thus, you want to know all their news.

How does the updated News Feed Algorithm work, though?