Google, Facebook and Twitter have fallen short of their pledges to combat fake news, three months before key European elections, the European Commission said on Thursday.



The tech companies and trade bodies representing the advertising industry signed up to a voluntary code of conduct in October to tackle the spread of fake news, aiming to stave off more heavy-handed legislation.



Brussels is keen to address the threat of fake news or foreign interference during campaigning for the European Parliament elections in May and also for national elections in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Poland, Portugal and Ukraine in the coming months.



Europe’s Security Commissioner Julian King criticized the lack of progress on cracking down on fake news made by the three companies based on their monthly reports.



“Sadly they have fallen further behind. They need to live up to the standards we are asking of them, and that they signed up to,” King said in a tweet.



Facebook has not provided details of its actions against political ads in January nor the number of fake accounts deleted due to malicious activities targeting the European Union, the Commission said.



The Commission also found that Google’s measures on political ads were not specific enough nor did the company clarify the extent to which its actions were taken to address fake news or other reasons. It did not provide concrete evidence to show that it had carried out its policies in January, the Commission said.



The EU executive also criticized Twitter for failing to provide benchmarks to measure its progress on monitoring political ads. -Reuters



&#8211; Foo Yun Chee

INDIA-US-INTERNET-FACEBOOK

Google, Facebook, Twitter Fail To Live Up To Fake News Pledge

Mark Zuckerberg may have been feeling vindicated on Wednesday.&nbsp;



After what’s been a horrible year for his&nbsp;company’s reputation, Facebook surprised Wall Street&nbsp;by posting record profits for its fourth quarter, and revenues that beat expectations.



The company reported earnings per share of $2.38, up from the $1.44 it reported a year earlier and also&nbsp;ahead of forecasts&nbsp;for $2.17. Net earnings for the quarter&nbsp;totalled&nbsp;$6.9 billion.



The company’s shares were up more than 8% to $162.3 in after-hours trading in New York, which will come as some relief to investors—Facebook’s stock has declined by roughly 30% in the past six months.



“We’ve fundamentally changed how we run this company,” Zuckerberg said on an earnings call, adding that Facebook had invested “billions of dollars in security.”



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/01/29/zuckerberg-to-integrate-whatsapp-instagram-and-facebook-messenger/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Zuckerberg to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger (opens in a new tab)">Zuckerberg to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger</a>



Wednesday&#8217;s results were in strong contrast to the flurry of criticism levelled at the company recently around its privacy practices, including from tech giant Apple. This week&nbsp;the iPhone maker blocked Facebook&nbsp;from distributing internal iOS apps that its staff used for testing new services, a major shot across the bow in what’s becoming a tense battle over privacy standards.&nbsp;



But none of that seems to matter to Wall Street right now. Not only&nbsp;is Facebook’s bottom line rising, its user base is still growing too, countering much of the recent discourse about an exodus of users from the platform.



The company said Wednesday that 2.32 billion people were active each month across its platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram, versus 2.27 billion the previous quarter.



The number of people using Facebook daily was up 9% from last year to 1.52 billion, led by growth in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, the company’s chief financial officer David Wehner said on an earnings call on Wednesday.



Wehner also sought to downplay the impact of critical press articles over the past year on Facebook’s business and growth. “I’d let the numbers stand for themselves,’ he said. “We are growing in all regions.”



Zuckerberg said that the Stories feature on Facebook and Instagram would be where some of the greatest potential lay for generating more advertising dollars, by also using artificial intelligence-powered software to target Facebook users more accurately. “Stories on FB is growing quickly,” he said, though he also admitted, “We started a bit later and execution wasn’t as great as it needed to be.”



Wehner evaded a question on the earnings call about how much time people spent on Facebook versus Instagram, sidestepping concerns that its flagship network is falling out of favor.



“The daily active user trends that we’re giving do paint the picture, which is stability in the developed markets and growth for Facebook Blue in developing markets,” Wehner said. “Time spent is not our focus, and our focus is meaningful social interactions. Daily active user trends tell the story broadly.”&nbsp;



Advertisers, however, tend to spend more money on targeting users in developed markets, so even while signups to Facebook are growing in developing markets and even in the U.S., there may still be some concerns about return on investment if users in North America and Europe are spending only fleeting moments on the site. For now though, investors seem pleased enough with the growth numbers and the revenue beat.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5c52273531358e522e540e85/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Facebook's monthly active users continued to grow, reaching 2.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. "/><figcaption>Facebook&#8217;s monthly active users continued to grow, reaching 2.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. GRAPHIC VIA FACEBOOK</figcaption></figure>



&#8211;Parmy Olson Forbes Staff

Global Technology Leaders Attend “Tech for Good” Meeting With France’s President Emmanuel Macron

Facebook Profits Defy Critics – Zuckerberg Vows Company Has Changed

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is planning to unify the underlying messaging infrastructure of the WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger services and incorporate end-to-end encryption into these apps, the New York Times reported.



The three services will, however, continue as stand-alone apps, the report said, citing four people involved in the effort.



Facebook said it is working on adding end-to-end encryption, which protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in a conversation, to more of its messaging products, and considering ways to make it easier for users to connect across networks.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“There is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work,” a spokesperson said.</blockquote>



After the changes, a Facebook user, for instance, will be able send an encrypted message to someone who has only a WhatsApp account, according to the New York Times report.



Integrating the messaging services could make it harder for antitrust regulators to break up Facebook by undoing its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, said Sam Weinstein, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.



“If Facebook is worried about that then one way it can defend itself is to integrate those services,” Weinstein said.



But Weinstein said breaking up Facebook is viewed as an “extreme remedy” by regulators, particularly in the United States, so concerns over antitrust scrutiny may not have been a factor behind the integration.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">MAJOR TRADEOFFS</h4>



Some former Facebook security engineers and an outside encryption expert said the plan could be good news for user privacy, in particular by extending end-to-end encryption.



“I’m cautiously optimistic it’s a good thing,” said former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now teaches at Stanford University. “My fear was that they were going to drop end-to-end encryption.”



However, the technology does not always conceal metadata &#8211; information about who is talking to whom &#8211; sparking concern among some researchers that the data might be shared.



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2017/07/24/really-easy-anyone-censor-whatsapp/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Why It’s Really Easy For Anyone To Censor WhatsApp (opens in a new tab)">Why It’s Really Easy For Anyone To Censor WhatsApp</a>



Any metadata integration likely will let Facebook learn more about users, linking identifiers such as phone numbers and email addresses for those using the services independently of each other.



Facebook could use that data to charge more for advertising and targeted services, although it also would have to forgo ads based on message content in Messenger and Instagram.



Other major tradeoffs will have to be made too, Stamos and others said.



Messenger allows strangers to contact people without knowing their phone numbers, for example, increasing the risk of stalking and approaches to children.



Systems based on phone numbers have additional privacy concerns, because governments and other entities can easily extract location information from them.



Stamos said he hoped Facebook would get public input from terrorism experts, child safety officers, privacy advocates and others and be transparent in its reasoning when it makes decisions on the details.



“It should be an open process, because you can’t have it all,” Stamos said. -Reuters



-Munsif Vengattil, Jan Wolfe and Joseph Menn 



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/29/zuckerberg-bezos-fortunes-shed-billions-amid-tech-stock-slide/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Zuckerberg And Bezos Fortunes Shed Billions Amid Tech Stock Slide (opens in a new tab)">Zuckerberg And Bezos Fortunes Shed Billions Amid Tech Stock Slide</a>



<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/20/latest-pr-nightmare-mark-zuckerbergs-net-worth-drops-5-1-billion-hours/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="After Latest PR Nightmare, Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth Drops $5.1 Billion In Hours (opens in a new tab)">After Latest PR Nightmare, Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth Drops $5.1 Billion In Hours</a>

MALAYSIA-US-INTERNET-SOCIAL-APPS

Zuckerberg to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger

Facebook Inc shares sank on Wednesday as concerns about its ability to safeguard user data sparked a government lawsuit, criticism in the U.S. Congress and a New York Times report on how it had shared data with other companies. 



The stock of the world’s largest social media company fell 7.25 percent, its biggest intraday drop since July, taking losses for the year to about 24 percent. Investors are concerned about snowballing legal and regulatory efforts over data use polices that have upset many customers and could carry significant penalties and costs.



In particular, the Silicon Valley firm has drawn global scrutiny since disclosing earlier this year that a third-party personality quiz distributed on Facebook gathered profile information on 87 million users worldwide and sold the data to British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.



Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine said the U.S. capital city was suing Facebook, accusing it of misleading users because it had known about the incident for two years before disclosing it.



It further alleges Facebook misled users by allowing several app makers it called partners “to override Facebook consumers’ privacy settings and access their information without their knowledge or consent.”



Facebook said in a statement, “We’re reviewing the complaint and look forward to continuing our discussions with attorneys general in D.C. and elsewhere.”



The New York Times reported new details on Tuesday about the user data that remained available to such partners years after they had shut down features that required them. Facebook acknowledged the lapse in a blog post but said it had not found evidence of wrongdoing by those partners.



In response, both Democrat and Republican lawmakers criticized the company and queried whether Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg had lied to Congress in hearings earlier this year.



The incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, Representative David Cicilline, tweeted: “Zuckerberg told Congress that Facebook users had ‘complete control’ over their data. Sure looks like he lied.”



Incoming Republican senator Josh Hawley made similar comments about Zuckerberg’s testimony.



The stock slide was the worst since the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram warned in July that profit margins would erode in coming years because of consumer and government pressure to better guard data and suppress objectionable content.



“Facebook could have prevented third parties from misusing its consumers’ data had it implemented and maintained reasonable oversight of third-party applications,” according to the lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.



The court could award unspecified damages and impose a civil penalty of up to $5,000 per violation of the district’s consumer protection law, or potentially close to $1.7 billion, if penalized for each consumer affected. The lawsuit alleges the quiz software had data on 340,000 D.C. residents, though just 852 users had directly engaged with it.



<h5 class="wp-block-heading">‘CONFUSING SETTINGS’</h5>



Facebook offered separate privacy settings around 2013 to control what friends on the network could see and what data could be accessed by apps, enabling the quiz and other services to collect details about users’ Facebook friends without many of them realizing it, according to the lawsuit.



Racine told reporters that Facebook had tried to settle the case before he filed suit, as is common during investigations of large companies, but that a lawsuit was necessary “to expedite change” at the Silicon Valley company.



Britain’s data protection authority in July fined Facebook 500,000 pounds ($631,000) for breaches of data in the Cambridge Analytica incident.



Since then, Facebook has disclosed a pair of security breaches involving profile data and posts of up to 29 million users and 6.8 million users, respectively.



At least six U.S. states have ongoing investigations into Facebook, according to state officials.



In March, a bipartisan coalition of 37 state attorneys wrote to the company, demanding to know more about the Cambridge Analytica data and its possible links to U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign.



At the same time, the Federal Trade Commission took the unusual step of announcing an investigation into whether Facebook had violated a 2011 consent decree, exposing the company to a multi-billion dollar fine.



State attorneys general have found some success taking on technology companies over data privacy. Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] in September agreed to pay $148 million as part of a data breach settlement with 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C..



Facebook says users knew of tech firms&#8217; data access



Agnieszka McPeak, a professor at Duquesne University School of Law, said states will likely make claims similar to those of D.C., pressuring Facebook into a settlement that involves both a monetary fine and modified business practices.



“If a company faces 51 separate actions around the country for deceptive practices, that can have a real impact,” McPeak said. -Reuters



<ul><li>Lisa Lambert, Paresh Dave, David Shepardson and Jan Wolfe </li><li></li></ul>

Facebook  Friends Finance

Facebook Shares Drop as Data Privacy Fallout Spreads

After a turbulent few days on the stock market, fueled by rising tension between China and the U.S. over trade agreements as well as hostile attention towards tech companies for its data-use standards, technology shares continued its decline on Tuesday. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.9%.
The fortunes of two of the world&#8217;s biggest tech titans suffered big losses. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/facebook/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook&#8217;s</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a> closed Tuesday $3.1 billion poorer while Amazon&#8217;s <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jeff Bezos</a>, the richest man on Earth, ended the day down $4.6 billion, at $124.1 billion.
Since March 17, when news first broke about the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica’s improper use of data gathered via Facebook, Zuckerberg’s fortune has fallen by nearly $13 billion. Forbes pegs his net worth at the close of markets Tuesday at $61.3 billion. He’s ranked seventh richest in the world, down from fifth richest as of mid-February.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/20/latest-pr-nightmare-mark-zuckerbergs-net-worth-drops-5-1-billion-hours/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: After Latest PR Nightmare, Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s Net Worth Drops $5.1 Billion In Hours</a>
Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in several British and American newspapers on Sunday to apologize for the social media giant&#8217;s role in Cambridge Analytica data incident. &#8220;This was a breach of trust, and I&#8217;m sorry we didn&#8217;t do more at the time,&#8221; the ad reads. &#8220;We&#8217;re now taking steps to ensure this doesn&#8217;t happen again.&#8221;
Amazon&#8217;s stock, meanwhile, fell alongside other tech stocks on Tuesday. After closing Monday in the green, Amazon stock dropped 3.7% on Tuesday. Bezos, who founded the e-commerce giant from a Seattle garage in 1994, owns 16% of the company&#8217;s stock.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/07/forbes-billionaires-2018-meet-richest-people-planet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Forbes Billionaires 2018: Meet The Richest People On The Planet</a>
Bezos overtook <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a> co-founder <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bill Gates</a> as the richest man on Earth in October 2017. He is also the only centi-billionaire on the Forbes billionaire rankings. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Angel Au-Yeung</a>, FORBES STAFF

Zuckerberg And Bezos Fortunes Shed Billions Amid Tech Stock Slide

After another public relations debacle for Facebook—in which a Trump-affiliated data firm was accused of improperly gleaning information on more than 50 million users—the company’s stock plummeted nearly 7%, through 1pm Eastern Time on Monday, erasing $37 billion of market value. The decline had the biggest impact on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s cofounder and CEO, whose net worth fell $5.1 billion.
Zuckerberg, who owns about 16% of Facebook&#8217;s shares, is now worth an estimated $69.5 billion, according to Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">real-time</a> rankings of the world’s billionaires. He is currently the seventh-richest person on the planet, down from fifth, after falling behind Zara cofounder Amancio Ortega and Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico’s richest person.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/07/forbes-billionaires-2018-meet-richest-people-planet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Forbes Billionaires 2018: Meet The Richest People On The Planet</a>
It’s the latest in a string of bad news for Facebook. Last year it was blamed for, among other things, facilitating misinformation, contributing to polarization in Britain, Austria, Italy and elsewhere and enabling foreign political interference. Already, 2018 has been no less turbulent.
On March 17, news broke that data firm Cambridge Analytica—which worked as a consultant for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—allegedly ”harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission.” The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html">report</a>, published in the New York Times, has exacerbated concerns that the social media giant can be exploited for partisan gain. On Sunday, March 18, lawmakers in both the United States and United Kingdom <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/us/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-data.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/us/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-data.html">pressed Facebook</a> for more details on the matter.
In the Times report, Facebook&#8217;s deputy general counsel, Paul Grewal, called the incident &#8220;a scam — and a fraud.” “We will take whatever steps are required to see that the data in question is deleted once and for all — and take action against all offending parties,” he added. Cambridge Analytica was suspended from the platform soon after.
The data consultancy has been in the headlines since Trump’s victory in November 2016. The firm had targeted voters and helped tailor political messaging for his campaign. Amid the post-election upheaval Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2017/12/09/trump-campaigns-data-vendor-cambridge-analytica-says-it-is-moving-away-from-u-s-politics/#a86615a584af" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Forbes</a> in December 2017 that the company would de-emphasize its political work in the U.S. He further stated that the business had “no involvement with Russians,” an assertion that was also disputed in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-russia.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-russia.html">Times</a> this week.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2017/09/08/facebook-says-fake-accounts-likely-tied-russia-bought-100000-political-ads/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Facebook Says Fake Accounts Likely Tied To Russia Bought $100,000 In Political Ads </a>
Zuckerberg, 33, founded Facebook in 2004 as a 19-year-old student at Harvard. He dropped out during his sophomore year to focus full-time on the company, which quickly expanded past its initial niche on college campuses. Today Facebook boasts more than 2 billion monthly active users.
The business’ revenue has swelled in turn, to $40.7 billion in 2017. Together with Google, Facebook accounts for over 60% of online advertising dollars, according to <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/12179/google-and-facebook-share-of-ad-revenue/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.statista.com/chart/12179/google-and-facebook-share-of-ad-revenue/">Statista</a>. As the firm’s financial and social power continues to intensify, some have called for regulatory intervention. This week’s tumult will do nothing to ease that pressure. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Noah Kirsch</a>, FORBES STAFF

After Latest PR Nightmare, Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth Drops $5.1 Billion In Hours

The Instagram influencer marketing industry is expected to exceed $1 billion by the end of 2017, and more than double by 2019. A Santa Monica-based influencer marketing industry Mediakix forecast these figures by studying the #spon #sp and #ad hashtags on the platform, which saw over 9.7 million posts tagged in 2016, with 14.5 million expected for 2017.
While South Africa may be late to the party for most things digital, there are a fair amount of influencers making waves locally. No matter the niche, there are bloggers and influencers who, through their combined digital platforms, are regarded just as important as journalists when it comes to making an invite list; or taking part in a campaign best aligned with their brand. It is predominant with fashion, beauty and lifestyle bloggers in South Africa where some have quit their full-time jobs to focus on being an ‘influencer’.
<div id="attachment_34458" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34458" class=" wp-image-34458" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Aqeelah-Harron-Ally-200x300.jpg" alt="Aqeelah Harron Ally" width="300" height="450" />Aqeelah Harron Ally (Photo supplied)</div>
Aqeelah Harron Ally, a 27-year-old fashion, beauty, and travel blogger at <a href="http://fashionbreed.co.za/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FashionBreed</a>, from Cape Town, worked full-time for five years before quitting her job, and tells us she could have afforded to leave sooner, but didn’t have the courage.
Ally, who has been blogging for seven years, initially started her blog so she could work for a magazine to ultimately become a fashion editor. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film, Media &amp; Writing, and Drama from the University of Cape Town; and a Diploma in Make Up Artistry.
The decision to quit her job has worked out well for Ally, who says she is much happier now, even though being her own boss can be stressful at times.
“I’ve been lucky because for the last two years, I’ve landed many contracts which span over four, six, or even eight months; this helps a lot with stability, however I’m also fine without those kinds of jobs.”
She has other once-off campaigns that are booked a month or two in advance, and out of the events she attends, about 60% are paid attendance, which is generally tied to a campaign she is already creating content for.
“I seldom get paid just to attend an event and cover it, but I have done it in the past.”
Another digital content creator who quit her full-time job after five years is 26-year-old Anna-Belle Durrant from Parktown North in Johannesburg. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand. She started her blog <a href="https://shesaid.co.za/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SheSaid</a> back in 2013 initially to share her love for Johannesburg, but it has blossomed into stories about travel, fashion, healthy living and design.
“So far it’s worked out incredibly well; I love that I am the master of my own time and creations, and I’m still very fortunate to work closely with agencies like Cerebra [previous employer],” says Durrant.
To her, blogging is like freelancing; work comes in when it comes in and you just have to go with the flow. “However, I do work with brands on a retainer basis to create content around their offerings; and my campaigns run across all my social channels and blog. When you become a blogger, your mind-set changes completely, what you earn is in line with how much you work… so work hard and you should be ok,” she says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/10/06/sharing-economy-400000-guests-home/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Sharing Economy: 400,000 Guests At Home</a>
However, the industry has been marred by a fake follower problem where users deceive brands into paying them for being an influencer. Mediakix ran an experiment on two accounts proving how easy it is by purchasing fake followers from as little as $3 for 1,000 followers and $4 for 1,000 likes. Once these accounts reached a threshold of 10,000 followers, they signed up for campaigns – and got accepted for two paying jobs each.
The onus of this falls on PR companies or marketing agencies who need to ensure they’ve done thorough research before approaching an influencer. A quick search on Memeburn.com for an article titled Fake followers are a massive problem, as SA duo proves shows the extent of it in South Africa.
Ally says what they’re doing is illegal.
“It is straight-up fraud because you’re telling a brand to pay you for something you can only pretend to offer. Buying followers is selfish and entitled, but more than anything it’s a charade they won’t be able to keep up with because there are so many tell-tale signs that reveal the cracks in the lie.”
<div id="attachment_34459" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34459" class=" wp-image-34459" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Anna-Belle-Durrant-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="450" />Anna-Belle Durrant (Photo supplied)</div>
Durrant on the other hand feels that while you can cheat anything in life, rather focus on your own content and what you need to do to build your brand as the truth always comes out in the end.
Both Ally and Durrant work extremely hard at being full-time bloggers and share similar sentiments that it’s not all freebies, fame, travel and parties. “You’re a stylist, photographer, writer, curator, art director, model, negotiator/businesswoman, social media manager, video maker; the ultimate definition of a jack-of-all-trades,” says Ally.
Durrant compares it to running a magazine that needs to be published constantly except she’s the CEO, photographer, stylist and janitor, all while fighting for invoices to be paid. “It’s a lifestyle of work hard, play hard.”
Ultimately, both find it very rewarding. For Ally, it’s all about the relationships with her readers, and stresses on how much she values it. “YouTube really extended my reach in this sense which has been so great. It’s also been rewarding growing as a content creator and actually getting paid for it. I’m really thankful for this because creatives don’t often get to say that. It’s really special being able to work for brands I grew up loving and respecting, even more so when their international teams fly to South Africa and get closely involved in what we do.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/07/11/workplace-future-now/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Workplace Of The Future &#8211; Or Now?</a>
Durrant loves that she gets to do things and go to places she could only have dreamed of.
“A highlight was exploring a music festival on the coast of Wales last year. Traveling makes me happy, I get to do that for my job; I honestly couldn’t ask for anything more. I also get to meet really incredible people and work with truly inspiring charities and brands, I have inspiration around me 24/7.” &#8211; Written by Nafisa Akabor

When It Pays To Be Online

Hundreds of fake Facebook accounts and Pages that were likely affiliated with one another and operated out of Russia bought $100,000 in political advertisements on the social network over the past two years, Facebook said in a statement. Facebook shared its findings with U.S. authorities investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The fake accounts and Pages were allegedly connected to a “shadowy” Russian company seeking to target voters, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/facebook-says-it-sold-political-ads-to-russian-company-during-2016-election/2017/09/06/32f01fd2-931e-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html?utm_term=.d0be98616b7a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to a report in The Washington Post </a>on Wednesday. The company, called the Internet Research Agency, is known for using fake accounts to comment on news stories and post on social media. U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that the likely backer of the Internet Research Agency is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are probing allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election and possible coordination with members of President Donald Trump&#8217;s campaign. In January, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government, under orders from Putin, hacked Democratic targets in an effort to hamper Hillary Clinton’s election prospects and aid Trump’s.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2017/08/14/even-minor-nuclear-war-ecological-disaster-felt-throughout-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Even a &#8216;minor&#8217; nuclear war would be an ecological disaster felt throughout the world </a>
While the ad spending figure is small, Facebook’s findings raise questions about the extent of Russian involvement in the U.S. election and how misinformation on social media may have affected voters. Under federal law, foreign governments and foreign nationals are prohibited from making contributions or spending money to influence a federal, state or local election in the U.S. Facebook briefed the House and Senate intelligence committees about the findings on Wednesday.
These 470 fake accounts and Pages purchased approximately 3,000 ads focused on divisive social and political topics such as LGBT matters, race, immigration and gun rights, Facebook <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/09/information-operations-update/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said in a blog post</a> by chief security officer Alex Stamos. The large majority of the ads did not specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting or a particular candidate. The ads were purchased between June 2015 to May 2017, and about a quarter of the total ads were geographically targeted. Facebook shut down the inauthentic accounts and Pages that were still active, because fake accounts violate the social network’s policy, the company said.
“There have been a lot of questions since the 2016 US election about Russian interference in the electoral process,” Stamos wrote in the blog post. “One question that has emerged is whether there’s a connection between the Russian efforts and ads purchased on Facebook. These are serious claims and we’ve been reviewing a range of activity on our platform to help understand what happened.”
Facebook said it has also done a broad search for ads that might have originated in Russia, for example, ads purchased from accounts with U.S. IP addresses but with the language set to Russian. In this search, Facebook said it found an additional $50,000 in advertising spending with a potential Russian connection across about 2,200 ads.
Facebook has taken a series of new steps since the U.S. presidential election to crack down on the spread of misinformation on the social network, including launching a third-party fact-checking program and improving artificial intelligence technology that can detect fake accounts. In August, Facebook said it will no longer allow Pages that repeatedly share false news to advertise on Facebook. The company also curbs the spread of stories from sources that consistently post clickbait headlines. In the past few months, Facebook has taken steps to block fake accounts in Germany and France.
Stamos said Facebook is looking into a range of improvements to keep inauthentic accounts and bad actors off of its platform. For example, Facebook is testing ways to use its technology for detecting fake accounts to better detect inauthentic Pages and the ads they could run. The company is also experimenting with tools to stop the creation of inauthentic accounts at the time they are formed. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kathleen Chaykowski</a>, FORBES STAFF

Facebook Says Fake Accounts Likely Tied To Russia Bought $100,000 In Political Ads

In June, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, claimed that more than two billion people now use the social network every month.
Facebook continues to grow at a spectacular rate and is the most popular social media platform. Due to this, Facebook has become a vital tool for marketing. Facebook marketing can target new customers and increase brand loyalty. However, in order to create a successful Facebook campaign, one needs to provide contents that are unique, creative and engaging.
Facebook marketing is essential for both small and large businesses. It helps them effectively and efficiently promote their brand online.
While running a Facebook marketing campaign, one must consider the following seven tips to convert your target audience to customers.
1. Choose the right images for your campaign and obey the rule of 20% image text: Images are essential in creating a Facebook Ad. However, try to avoid stock photos as much as possible. Focus on images that your audience can easily relate to. But bear in mind, no matter the type of ad you want to create, your image needs to be visually appealing.
2. Keep you campaign short and simple: Make the title as attractive as possible, but do not make false claims. In cases where you cannot edit the title (like when advertising a Facebook page), you can enter the URL of the page and then edit the title. However, if you do this, you will get limited Facebook ad analytics. Keep this short and crisp. Always end this with a ‘call to action’. In terms of importance, this is less crucial than images and title. In terms of the entire description, the call to action is the most important part.
3. Run different campaigns for the same product/service: Instead of creating different ads and split testing them, create variations of ad that performs best, and change one element at a time. For example, take your best ad, make copies of it and change the headline of each version. You now have multiple ads that are identical, except for the headline that you can test. After you determine which ad gets the best response, make copies of it and test another element like description or image.
4. Your ad must be relevant: This is the most important factor for an ad to perform well. Your target audience must be able to relate to the ad. Only once your audience connects with the ad, will you gain the most from advertising on Facebook. Relevancy can be obtained in many ways and there are no set rules on ‘how to be relevant.’ You need to ask yourself if the majority of your audience will click on this ad? If the answer is yes, then your ad is relevant.
5. Be engaging with your audience: Don’t automate everything. If you want people to engage your Facebook campaign, you need to create highly engaging content that is simple. “Highly engaging” means the content is relevant to your audience and compels people to click on it. Your content should make people stop in their tracks. When your audience stops to read your content, they should feel encouraged to engage with it.
6. Follow the 80/20 rule for posts: Keep 20% of your campaign content relevant to the product or service of your business while 80% of the campaign content should be social, but relate to your business and the targeted audience.
7.    Use Geo-targeting: If you’re looking to connect with potential customers in a specific location, it’s a must-have to use geographic targeting. To find the right customer base for your brand, provide content to your desired audience and also generate leads, one needs to set up ad according to geographic target areas. &#8211; Written by Wale Bakare
<div id="attachment_33083" style="width: 683px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33083" class=" wp-image-33083" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Facebook-infographic-e1502450117421-300x168.png" alt="" width="673" height="377" />Source: Google</div>

Seven Tips For Mastering Marketing On Facebook

In the last few months, three global tech giants have visited Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella; Facebook&#8217;s Founder, Mark Zuckerberg; and Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, have all set foot on Nigerian soil recently. Is Africa really becoming the future hub of global growth, as Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2016/09/01/africa-will-build-the-future-says-zuckerberg-visits-kenya-on-first-african-trip/#12517d6f70b2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">asserted</a>?
There are many indications this is so, and the rising focus on the continent’s digital economy is a clear pointer.
While everything is all about helping Africa progress up the ladder of digital opportunities, Google’s visit comes with a pledge to empower 10 million African youths with salient digital skills. &#8220;Thrilled that we&#8217;re expanding our digital skills program to train 10M Africans over the next 5 years #GoogleforNigeria,&#8221; Sundar announced on <a href="https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/890607610423947264" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter</a> while in Nigeria for the Google for Nigeria Conference at the end of July.
However, one might question the feasibility of this goal. Interestingly, Google has just completed an incredible test run with <a href="http://digifyafrica.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Digify</a>. In the last year, one million Africans (400,000 Nigerians, 300,000 South Africans, 200,000 Kenyans and 100,000 from other countries) have benefited from the initiative poised to entrench digital skills and technological innovations in the sub-Saharan region.
To understand what this means for Africa, here are some important programs/plans to be aware of:
<ol>
<li>Training of 100,000 software developers</li>
</ol>
If Digify has exposed a million young Africans to various digital skills, as stated by Google South Africa country director, Luke Mckend, new plans are now in place to take things a notch higher.
In the next five years, Google plans to prepare 10 million African youth for &#8220;jobs of the future&#8221;. More importantly, the tech giant will be training 100,000 software developers. “We’ll also be providing mobile developer training to 100,000 Africans to develop world-class apps, with an initial focus on Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa,” says Google.
<ol start="2">
<li>Google grants</li>
</ol>
Funding is a tough challenge faced by start-ups everywhere. In Africa, it’s even tougher. Concerned about this, Google is committing $20 million to causes targeted at improving lives across Africa and $2.5 million initial grants, in particular, to the non-profit arms of African start-ups, <a href="http://www.gidimo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gidi Mobile</a> and <a href="https://www.siyavula.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Siyavula</a>.
Google is doing this “to provide free access to learning for 400,000 low-income students in South Africa and Nigeria” and enable them to develop new digital learning tools that would be enjoyed by other users for free.
<ol start="3">
<li>Launchpad Accelerator Africa</li>
</ol>
There’s a strong nexus between “future jobs” and the “future of Africa.” And the boggling aspect of it is the dependence of the latter on the former. As it is, Africa needs to maximize the exponential potential of technology and tech entrepreneurship more.
With Launchpad Accelerator, Google plans to support African entrepreneurs in building successful technology companies and products. This initiative, according to Google, will provide more than $3 million in equity-free funding, mentorship, working space and access to professional advisers to more than 60 African start-ups over three years.
<ol start="4">
<li>YouTube Go</li>
</ol>
Data cost is a major hiccup in Africa’s Internet of Things. From one country to the other, there are continuous agitations for low data cost to foster internet activities. Luckily, Google is here to help in a way.
With YouTube Go – a new app that will make watching videos with a slower network a possibility – users now have control over the amount of data used on streaming or saving videos. This means watching YouTube videos won’t be as expensive.
<ol start="5">
<li>Faster web results</li>
</ol>
The previous points are great, but not enough if the benefit is exclusive to YouTube. Great news: Google is giving an additional offer.
“We previously launched a feature that streamlines search results so they load with less data and at high speed. Today we’re extending that feature to streamline websites you reach from search results, so that they load with 90% less data and five times faster, even on low storage devices,” says Google on giving a better experience for users with 2G-like connections or low storage devices.
The benefits for Africa
Let’s put everything into context…
Africa’s growing demography has huge potential. Yet, it’s a cause for alarm. According to recent statistics, there are only between 3 and 4 million jobs created annually in a continent that will have the world’s largest population of youth (1.1 billion) by 2034. Apparently, the creation of thousands of millions of jobs is urgent.
But not just jobs. Africa needs “future jobs” that will meet future needs.
Given this demand, in an evolving digital world, acquiring the skillsets that will empower Africa’s innovative minds and consequently help them grow businesses, create jobs, and boost their respective economies is a viable way to make Africa the true future of global growth. &#8211; Written by Shakir Akorede, writer and founder of <a href="http://501words.net" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">501Words</a>

What The Google CEO’s Visit To Nigeria Means For Africa

When <span class="quotecard ng-isolate-scope" data-ticker="FB" data-exchange="NASDAQ" data-type="organization" data-naturalid="fred/company/15317" data-quotes-closing="153.91" data-quotes-now="153.4011" data-link="/companies/facebook/" data-name="Facebook"><a class="ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/companies/facebook/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a> filed to go public in early 2012, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mark Zuckerberg</a> noted that the social network wasn’t originally designed to be a company. “It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected,” Zuckerberg wrote in Facebook’s S-1 filing, presenting the business as an engine supporting this goal.
Now, five years later, the social network’s CEO still believes Facebook’s primary purpose is a social one, but he’s ready to update this mission for the first time. At at time when Facebook has come under scrutiny for not adequately curbing the spread of false news and extremist activity on the social network, Zuckerberg is committing to making the world closer. On stage on Thursday at Facebook’s first Community Summit, a gathering in Chicago of leaders from 120 different Facebook Groups, Zuckerberg unveiled Facebook’s updated purpose: “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
Facebook’s new mission, Zuckerberg said in an interview at the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters last week, doesn’t mean that the company is shifting away from connecting friends and family, but rather, that it’s broadening its focus to enabling people to connect with meaningful communities, too. Why do these communities matter, Zuckerberg’s case goes? They help users find common ground, which helps people engage with new perspectives and become aware of different issues. Groups also offer individuals personal support, which gives them bandwidth to look outward and address the biggest human problems, like climate change and global health issues. Being exposed to common information and ideas isn’t enough to bring individuals together, the thesis continues &#8211; they need to identify with people who seem different from themselves to adopt new perspectives.
<blockquote>“For 10 years, we focused on doing everything around connecting people with their friends and family,” Zuckerberg said. “Now I think that there is a whole lot of similar work to be done around communities: Meeting new people, getting exposed to new perspectives, making it so that the communities that you join online can translate to the physical world, too.”</blockquote>
Zuckerberg described the new mission as an extension of Facebook’s original mantra, as opposed to an entirely new direction, and a focus that will guide the company over the next decade. The new mission is intended to reflect that Facebook’s responsibility has “expanded,” Zuckerberg said.
“We’ve been thinking about what our responsibility is in the world,” Zuckerberg said in an interview. “Connecting friends and family has been pretty positive, but I think there is just this collective feeling that we have a responsibility to do more than that and also help build communities and help people get exposed to new perspectives and meet new people &#8211; not just give people a voice, but also help build common ground so people can actually move forward together.”
A Decline In Community
The new mission was inspired by a shift that Zuckerberg said has become more pronounced over the past few years. When Facebook started, the idea of connecting the world wasn’t controversial. But increasingly, some movements in the world work against globalization, whether the exchange of policies, goods or ideas, and prevent the globe from coming together. Simultaneously, Zuckerberg noted, participation in communities has been declining around the world, in some places by as much as one quarter.
The decline in community activity is concerning, Zuckerberg noted, because while people can get personal and economic support from families and governments, people’s needs have historically also been filled by participating in other networks, revolving around everything from religion to sports, neighborhoods, health or shared values. Zuckerberg said the importance of community groups and leaders, like pastors and local advocates, and the impact of declining community membership, has been visible to him on his “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/technology/zuckerberg-harvard-commencement-road-trip.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">50 states tour</a>,”  which will ensure he meets people in every U.S. state to better understand how social networks affect their lives.
“I’ll go talk to people in a church, and a pastor will say, &#8216;I know that when a factory closes down in town, I’ll be doing marriage counseling with a lot of people in a month&#8217;,” Zuckerberg said. “Someone needs to do that, but that’s happening less and less. People’s support structures are going away.”
Common Ground
One of the primary benefits of being part of “meaningful groups,” Zuckerberg said, is the potential for that network to help members from a range of backgrounds and perspectives connect over shared values. Access to information alone isn’t a cure-all to helping people care about a broader set of global issues, Zuckerberg said. People often hone their perspective and become interested in new causes as a result of personal relationships.
Research suggests, Zuckerberg said, that in order for people to productively debate an issue, they need to first find recognize their common interests or beliefs. As the world’s largest social network with nearly 2 billion users, Facebook could have an unprecedented opportunity to promote these connections.
“People share more information, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that understanding is shared &#8211; that doesn’t mean the perspectives people have are getting closer together,” Zuckerberg said last week. “We can help you connect over things that you share before exposing you to debates that are really important to have productively.”
Community Tools
Currently, 1 billion Facebook users are part of groups, but only about 100 million are part of groups they would describe as meaningful, Zuckerberg said. For many, these groups can range from support networks for people experiencing or recovering from drug or alcohol addiction, like Affected by Addiction Support Group, to religiously-focused groups like Original Free Will Baptist Church group, run by a minister in Decatur, Georgia, who uses the app to chat with congregation members and share live videos of sermons to allow people to watch from their homes. Zuckerberg said Facebook has set a new goal to help 1 billion people join meaningful groups.
“A billion is a pretty important number in that, if we can do that, that will essentially reverse the whole decline in community membership around the world and start regrowing it to a point where it will have positive social effects,” Zuckerberg said.
Moving forward, a major new area of emphasis in Facebook’s product roadmap is building features that encourage users to find and join more groups that will be meaningful to them, as well as to make it easier for community leaders and Group admins to run groups and create new ones. It isn’t unusual for admins of large groups to spend several hours per day managing tasks like vetting requests from users to join, approving posts or addressing flagged content.
Facebook debuted a suite of new tools for Group admins on Thursday, including a new panel of real-time metrics called “Group insights”; a membership request filtering tool, which allows admins to organize requests through categories like gender and location; a “Removed member clean-up” tool, which makes it easier for admins to make groups safe by automatically deleting former users’ content; a post-scheduling tool to save admins and moderators time; and “Group-to-group-linking,” which allows admins to recommend similar or related groups to their members, aimed at helping sub-communities interact.
“The admins themselves are so critical because each group needs someone who’s going to look out for people,” said Zuckerberg, who noted that Facebook plans to continue rolling out additional tools to support admins over time. Facebook has also adjusted its algorithm to suggest Groups to people based on how meaningful the user will find the Group, as opposed to how likely that user is to join a particular Group.
As Facebook’s user base and the size and number of Groups continues to grow, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company will need to continue improving its tools and policies for addressing bad actors and harmful activity. Addressing issues around harassment, discrimination and issues like recruiting by terrorist groups, requires a combination of human policies and moderating as well as artificial intelligence.
“There are boundaries,” Zuckerberg said. “Hate speech is certainly not allowed, terrorism is absolutely not allowed.”
Tackling Global Problems
Zuckerberg&#8217;s focus on community building ties back to the nearly 6,000-word manifesto he shared earlier this year, which pitches Facebook as digital social infrastructure that can be leveraged for good. Although the company&#8217;s new mission emphasizes community, Zuckerberg seems to view the individual as the immediate, critical unit for change at scale. Communities are important, Zuckerberg said, in large part because they help give people more bandwidth to look beyond their immediate surroundings and concerns.
“A more connected world is going to be necessary to take on the greatest opportunities and challenges for the next generation, everything from stopping climate change, to stopping pandemics, to funding research,” Zuckerberg said in an interview. “These are not fundamentally national problems anymore. In order to get there, you need to build a world where every person has a sense of support and purpose in their life so they don’t just focus narrowly on what’s going on in their lives, but can think about these broader issues as well.” &#8211; Written by <a class="link preload-hidden ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/" target="_self">Kathleen Chaykowski </a>, FORBES STAFF

Mark Zuckerberg Gives Facebook A New Mission

You wake up each morning but before getting out of bed you’re already caught up with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. By the time you’ve reached the office, you know exactly what’s trending, which celeb made a faux pas, and what your virtual friends are wearing to work. Sound familiar?
According to the SA Social Media Landscape 2017 report issued by World Wide Worx and Ornico, there are 14 million South Africans on Facebook, 7.7 million on Twitter, 5.5 million on LinkedIn and 3.5 million on Instagram. It’s unclear how many are on Snapchat as users themselves don’t know what their follower count is; however, the last global estimate stood at 2% being South African.
Being on multiple social media platforms is the norm, but how has it changed our behavior? Gregory Eccles, a counselling psychologist practicing in Greenstone Hills, Johannesburg, says social media allows us to share far more of our lives with a large audience than we typically would have, creating opportunities for both greater inclusion of others in our lives, as well as for overshare or compromised privacy.
“Like any other communication tool, it gives us the power to affect change in our lives in good and bad ways, but it is our choice of how we use it that ultimately decides its impact,” says Eccles.
“It also allows us to indulge our inherent narcissism more fully than we otherwise may have been able, but those are desires that were there prior to social media.”
Saaleha Bamjee, a 33-year-old writer and photographer based in Johannesburg, who has since deleted her Snapchat account, says she used to catch up on the network in the mornings and evenings, and when not busy, in the afternoons.
“I joined out of a sense of FOMO [fear of missing out], and at first, followed the popular accounts,” she says. “It soon got tiresome, none of what people were sharing was of any value to me personally.”
There have been reports over the years of people going into debt to maintain an online presence and image, while a fair amount of ‘influencers’ overseas have quit Instagram altogether because they couldn’t keep up with the pressure of leading “fake” lives. Eccles says there is certainly pressure to maintain a certain type of social image, and the same applies to our social media presence.
“While some people may experience that pressure as quite overwhelming, it is ultimately still an action of choice for the most part as to how we present ourselves through social media.”
Bamjee says she made purchases on cosmetics and haircare appliances based on the recommendation of a local beauty blogger, while other purchases were tied to being a photographer.
“On Instagram, if I want to be hired or promote my services effectively, I have to upload quality images; this often involves shopping for food ingredients and props.”
Eccles thinks that social media doesn’t actively force us to make purchases. He says that the one aspect of social media when compared to other communication methods is that it allows us greater control over what we present, but we do not always take that into account when viewing posts from other people – an oversight which potentially mars our perspective of our status relative to others.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen an increase in new hardware such as better technology in smartphones like higher megapixels on the front-facing cameras, and 360-degree cameras, which Facebook has been supporting for quite some time now. These technologies enable us to share more than ever because it’s no longer just a photo; it’s now full-on livestreams through Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, and 360-degree photos and videos of every aspect of our lives.
While the availability of these sorts of tools can make it easier to indulge in our vices, Eccles maintains it is not the tools that are to blame.
“We need to look at our own motivations for why we use all of these tools the way we do, and think carefully about what other options we may have to achieve similar results (sense of social connection) and what the consequences of each method are.”
Eccles believes the problem is deeper than what it appears, and thinks that while consumer culture has an influence on our need to be connected all the time, the bigger influence are our own feelings of social connectedness or isolation.
“The truth is we all have a strong desire to connect socially with others, and social media is often the easiest way to do so. Unfortunately, our interactions through social media are quite superficial, forcing those who choose to fulfil their need for social interaction through social media to require more of it.”
Bamjee subsequently stopped following Snapchat accounts that had a “sameness” about it – a preoccupation with affluence and image.
“I soon realized that I didn’t want to see even more than what was already being shared on Facebook or Instagram. I missed having a conversation where I could ask ‘hey, what’s new’ and actually hear something I hadn’t known about previously.”
Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate our reasons for being on social media and the behavior it dictates. “We have a common urge to place blame outside ourselves – Facebook does this to us or smartphones do this to us, but while they often make it easier to behave in ways that may not be particularly healthy, such as ignoring the outside world in favour of spending all your time on your phone, we cannot ignore our own agency in all of this,” concludes Eccles.
While her time is still being monopolised by other social media platforms, Bamjee says she is happier in the sense that she no longer feels she has to know what’s going on with everyone all the time.

shutterstock_520529596

The Social Media Disconnect

The first thing you notice at Imgur’s new San Francisco office are the giraffes. They’re everywhere: inflatable giraffes, posters of kissing giraffes, a massive mural of a giraffe donning a monocle and top hat. “That’s our mascot, Imgurafe,” says 27-year-old founder and CEO Alan Schaaf. “It started as an April Fool’s joke when we added a giraffe theme to the site for a day and got e-mails for six months begging us to bring it back.”
For Imgur—the Web host of most of the Internet’s memes, GIFs, jokes and tropes—the giraffe is a perfect mascot: strange, awkward and huge. Each month Imgur (pronounced “imager”) attracts more than 150 million unique visitors, more than 5.5 billion page views and 45 million new images. Since 2009, when Schaaf built the site in his Ohio University dorm, Imgur has become the default launchpad where content is uploaded before blasting off across Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and the blogosphere.
But Imgur is increasingly shifting from being an image host to a prime destination of its own.
Roughly 30% of its audience (largely young and geeky) now views content directly on the Imgur home page and mobile app.
That trend helped Schaaf raise $40 million from the venture capitalists at Andreessen Horowitz in April 2014, after bootstrapping the site for its first five years. “It’s an incredible community,” says Andreessen partner Lars Dalgaard.
“Users are building meaningful relationships with people they might not ever see and are finding people that they have more in common with than anyone at work or school.”
Imgur now has to start making real money of all that traffic while dealing with a social network unlike Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
Imgur’s content isn’t shaped by friends or follows. Everyone sees the same images on the home page, ranked by popular vote. Top posts can get thousands of comments and tens of thousands of votes. “Imgur is a shared experience,” says Schaaf. “I don’t see posts because I follow a certain person but because it was voted up through a democracy.”
Navigating the site feels like channel surfing on public access television: a GIF of a bear playing in hay; a tutorial on how to use a battery and gum wrapper to start a campfire; a visual story of how one Imgur user helped another Photoshop away surgical stitches in a photo of her grandfather. “It’s impossible to go on Imgur for less than five minutes,” says Schaaf. “It’s true discovery. You start without wanting to see something in particular but find stuff you like every single time.”
Schaaf knows what the Imgur horde loves because he is one of them. As a shy and introverted kid growing up outside of Tampa, Fla., he moved to Ohio at age 10 and found his community on Web forums for games such as World of Warcraft. In high school he helped run the student IT support team and the school’s website.
As a computer science major at Ohio University he got into college radio, hosting a tech talk show and spinning electronic music: “I like to sit in my room, and I communicate out.”
Around this time he got heavily involved in another platform—the massive Web bulletin board Reddit. He loved the site but hated the tedious process of uploading images.
“It wasn’t Reddit’s problem but the Internet’s problem,” says Schaaf. “I thought, ‘I can do better.’” Schaaf, at the time a college junior, built an upload tool in two months. It was simple and sparse and could turn pictures into Web links with the press of a button. He shared his project with Reddit. It took off – and crashed. He moved to a larger Web-hosting service – it crashed that, too. He burned through four server sites before eventually turning it over to Amazon Web Services. “I had no experience handling traffic, but I had to learn. If I didn’t fix it then, Imgur wouldn’t exist,” says Schaaf, who credits Imgur’s survival on the self-reliance he had learned from his mom, Jean Hoyt. “She built her own company [real estate appraisal], and when something breaks in the house, like, ‘We need a new toilet,’ she installs it.”
Small ads on Imgur covered server fees and the occasional pizza through graduation. Schaaf shrugged off job offers from Facebook and Google to move home and run Imgur out of his bedroom. By 2010 Schaaf was making enough to rent an apartment and hire Matt Strader (an M.B.A. student whom Schaaf met through an Ohio University investment fund) to focus on the business side. In 2011, with Imgur getting 30 million monthly uniques, Schaaf and Strader (now Imgur’s COO) moved to San Francisco and hired four employees.
That number has grown to 45 since the $40 million venture round last spring. Schaaf says he’ll hit 90 employees by the end of the year as Imgur attracts a more mainstream audience through its new iOS app, launched in March.
Plans are afoot to jump to Web-connected TVs.
Says Andreessen Horowitz’s Lars Dalgaard: “This is amazing content that is not being seen by even a percent of the people who’d be elated and ecstatic if they knew it existed.”
The bulk of Imgur’s revenue today comes from the single ad on each page. To fuel more growth, Imgur is building an in-house agency that will create and publish branded images, so-called native ads, designed for viral sharing. Schaaf says these ads will mesh with the style and tastes of the site. Test campaigns for films and games (Grand Theft Auto V) were a hit with users, with some ads getting liked and shared by an average of 4% of the audience. Imgur must tread lightly. Online clans, especially those emboldened by their anonymity, can protest viciously about commercials in their feeds. “The most valuable thing about Imgur is the community,” says Schaaf. “Only we can take the community away.”

The Anti-Social Network

August is not the only space dominated by woman. Internationally, experts concur that social media and its expansion is driven by women. In fact, had social media been around in 1956, the August 9 nation-wide women’s march against the apartheid passbook laws would most probably have been organized and gained momentum from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
According to Hootsuite, more women use social media than men in North America, and with online dominance comes influence. In the ‘Top 20 Women Social Media Influencers’ list published by Forbes in the second quarter of 2013,
@AnnTran tops the list with 100,000 tweets. She blogs and tweets about travel and leisure, providing advice to her 326,000 plus Twitter followers.
It’s this strong social media dominance that gives women power to influence online opinion and also sees them driving online shopping.
As women tend to be the more social than men, they naturally gravitate towards platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which allows for engagement that could lead to business.
Pinterest—a social media platform that baffles most male minds—is dominated by female users, who make up over 90%. They pin anything from holiday plans, party ideas, wedding inspirations to the latest fashion accessories and even plan their events on this archive of virtual pinboards.
Mommy Blogs have become quite the online phenomenon, with 14% of American mom’s blogging according to US tax preparation company H&amp;R Block. Mothers-to-be, who are on maternity leave, or stay-at-home mothers have taken to the likes of Blogger and WordPress to share their experiences, tips and insights into being a mother. According to
Babble.com, Rebecca Wolf—a mother of four whose blog is called ‘Girls Gone Child’—tops the list of roughly 500 Mommy Blogs that have considerable power and reach.
As in the offline life, all is not roses and puppies. Because of their widespread online presence, women also suffer from the darker side of social media. It consists of girlfriend-spa-trip-envy, Twitter update jealousy and Instagram vanity. Age-old social pressures—now distributed across global social media platforms—may send some female users into a spiral of envy and depression, after they see a friends’ relationship status change to ‘engaged’ or ‘married’ while they are single; after looking at gym-carved bodies or becoming victims of spiteful Facebook postings.
Author Julie Spira coined the term Social Media Anxiety Disorder (SMAD). This unofficial, non-medical condition describes those who feel aggravated after not receiving an immediate Twitter @reply. They may become depressed each time someone unfollows or unfriends them. And may continuously refresh their social media tabs awaiting an update. They cannot live without their smartphones and surprisingly become annoyed when others text or check their social media updates during meetings or social gatherings.
Where does this leave men? Where the online world has always kept them: entertained for hours in front of YouTube, watching sports re-runs and funny commercials.

Women Media-ing It Up

Before that first cup of coffee and the morning newspaper; you’ve probably checked your smartphone, taken your tablet from the bedside table and logged on. More and more brands are using social media as an inexpensive marketing tool. So, which brands are leading the pack in Africa?
Our methodology considered African brands and international brands operating in Africa. They had to be present on: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Initial data from socialbakers.com—a social media and digital analytics company—was compared with howwemadeitinafrica.com and africantoptwitterusers.com. The list was compiled on November 8.
The following indicators were considered, according to a percentage ratio: Facebook likes; the number of people ‘talking about’ the brand, which was also considered as a percentage of Facebook likes; Twitter followers and tweets and the number of YouTube views and subscribers.
Facebook likes are accumulated on an ongoing basis, whereas ‘talking about’ illustrates user-engagement, over a month, without any long-term following. In short, the ‘talking about’ as a percentage of Facebook likes category resolved the temporal discrepancy.
In 2011, Portland Communications and Tweetminster analyzed more than 11.5 million geo-located tweets, unearthing that Africa’s wealthiest countries dominate social media. South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco make up the top five in order of Twitter activity.
FORBES AFRICA found that although South Africa dominates Twitter activity; Northern Africa is the continental leader, in terms of brands with the greatest social media footprint. Seven of the top 20 brands are located in Egypt; four are located in South Africa and Morocco; three in West Africa and one in both Algeria and Kenya.
Social media was used extensively during the Arab Spring uprising, which erupted in December 2010. The fact that social media usage remains high in Egypt and Morocco and could be the lasting legacy of this historic moment in world and online history.
The telecommunications sector—be they manufacturers or service providers—has latched onto the internet capabilities of most mobile devices; 57% of tweets from Africa, are sent from a mobile phone, according to Portland Communications.
“…Telecommunications are intricately connected to the daily life experience of today’s consumer. Almost everything we do is supplemented by our mobile phones in some way… For this reason, consumers are always looking to get the best value from their telecommunications providers and they’re interested in what these companies have to say,” says Catherine Scott, social media manager at Quirk.
Twelve of the brands on the list were from the telecommunications sector; two from media and finance; one from retail and the food and beverage sector. Surprisingly, the fourth leading brand is a non-governmental organization—One Campaign, which works towards eliminating poverty in Africa.
The question remains: is customer engagement with these brands based on compelling content; mass-media marketing or the opportunity to voice discontent?
The brand with the highest number of Facebook likes and user-engagement by means of the ‘talking about’ category was Vodafone Egypt with 2,071,890 and 153,115 respectively. It also has the highest ‘talking about as a percentage of Facebook likes’ ranking, at 49%. Al-masry Al-youm, an Egyptian media channel, has the highest number of Twitter followers—979,455; yet Safaricom of Kenya had the greatest number of tweets—148,208. Tahrir Channel, of Egypt, has the greatest number of YouTube subscribers (97,782) and views (25,527,629).
Many a dinner table may speculate if social media can kill the mainstream media advertising star; the list indicates such a possibility.
Is the success of social media due to the vision of early adopters; its capability to mobilize social causes or the work of smart agencies, be they advertising or strategic? Could social media mean the death of the billboard? Take a look at the numbers.

Tag: Facebook

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA