The furore over #BlackHermione should surprise no one who uses the Web everyday

Yesterday, Twitter exploded with the news that Hermione Granger, the female character at the heart of the Harry Potter franchise will be played by Noma Dumezweni, a 45-year-old Swaziland-born actress in a new play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Noma is black.  Yeah, this isn’t going to work…. It’s #HarryPotter & a new-look Hermione https://t.co/xHfLvtjmGX via @DailyMailCeleb — LadyConserv (@LadyConserv) December 20, 2015 i’m offended by the casting of #CURSEDCHILD hermione is a white character. we may not make poc characters white so white should not be poc — Michelle (@1006michelle) December 20, 2015 @Hypable why would they make Hermione…

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What the most popular posts on Instagram in 2015 say about us

With the end of every year tech companies produce a slew of round-ups attempting to distil the past 12 months into a neat and tidy data-driven package. Spotify has done it, so has Google. Instagram too joined the bandwagon with its most liked photos. But instead of just re-publishing the 10 photos that users of the social network went crackers over, I wanted to try to find out what it says about Instagram and the Web more generally. Why did the following ten photos of female celebrities mean more to us than anything else that happened in 2015 on Instagram? Model…

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Uhh you guys organized 35,000 Star Wars events on Facebook this month

Star Wars fans organized some 35,000 events this month to celebrate the landing of the latest episode in the franchise. And, more than 53 million people used the social network to discuss their thoughts about the world’s favorite film franchise, according to the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg. This figure represents around 1 in 20 people on Facebook. In the company’s 2015 review, the team already revealed that ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ was the most widely discussed film of the year, now we know just how much we all went on about it. One of the film’s biggest fans is the founder of Facebook himself Mark…

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How 2015’s most iconic image on the Web changed the debate on refugees

Warning: Some readers may find the images in this post upsetting.  This year’s most iconic image kickstarted a debate that would become 2015’s most divisive. On September 2, the body of a three-year-old boy was found washed up on a beach in Bodrum on the southern fringes of Turkey. The boy was discovered by Turkish journalist Nilüfer Demir who decided to document what he saw on the beach that morning. Within 12 hours of Demir’s photos being published, they had been seen as many as 20 million people. This picture of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee whose mother and brother…

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ISIS is using IP addresses the UK sold to Saudi Arabia

IP addresses being used by ISIS and traced by teenage computer hackers back to the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions are likely to be among those sold to Saudi Arabian telecoms companies this year, the British government has claimed. In a convenient admission given the charge levelled at the UK government by the VandaSec hacker team that someone at DwP has set up ISIS Twitter accounts, the Cabinet Office now says it’s been selling off IP addresses to make money for taxpayers. The world ran out of IPv4 addresses completely in July of this year, raising the value of addresses significantly and triggering a land-grab…

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Twitter is testing showing timelines in a non-chronological order and it’s confusing people

It’s now news to learn that people don’t like change. Consider any of your favorite online services and any change that they’ve recently made – I bet a whole lot of people made a fuss. Changing from Twitter’s ‘favorites’ to its new hearts certainly caused a bit of a stir for the social network. However, its most recent test is one that’s confusing the hell out of people, as it’s showing people their timelines in a non-chronological order. Dear @twitter Why is my timeline randomly out of order all of a sudden? Sincerely, A concerned Tweeter. http://pic.twitter.com/5CIMBiiMlD — Jonathan (@jdgallagher)…

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Brazilian group turns racist online comments into billboards in commenters’ neighborhoods

A group in Brazil has taken racist comments and turned them into billboards to raise awareness of the real-world impacts, reports Visual News. The campaign, “Virtual racism, real consequences” was created by advocacy group Criola to encourage people to speak out and report racism on social networks. The group collects comments from Facebook or Twitter and uses geolocation tools to find out where the people who have posted them live. They then buy billboard space nearby and post the comments, although names and photos are pixelated. “Those people [who post abuse online] think they can sit in the comfort of…

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Twitter Moments is being used to call out politicians tweeting about mass shootings

Twitter Moments is oft considered a place to get an overview of the news around an event in one place, or a way to catch up on all the crap Justin Bieber has been doing. One way or another, it’s often used for bad news. The most recent is another mass shooting, this time in San Bernadino, California. Following the attacks in the US, Igor Volsky, director of video at ThinkProgress, put the Moments feature to work in a new way – he used it to hold politicians to account for their public statements on mass shootings versus the actions they’ve taken while…

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(RED) taps Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube to help raise funds for World AIDS Day

December 1st is World AIDS Day. To help build awareness and raise money for AIDS research, nonprofit group (RED) is partnering with Snapchat for a new geofilter that will raise $3 for every snap sent on Tuesday. The donation will come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the filter will go live at midnight PT for the following 24 hours. The three (RED) filters feature words like “World AIDS Day” and “Join the fight.” The Gates Foundation will donate up to $3 million, which should be an easy figure for Snapchat users to collectively reach. In addition to Snapchat, the foundation will also donate $1…

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Racist trolls are being shamed with billboards showing their abusive messages near their homes

Dealing with online trolls is never a fun thing to have to do. Indeed, many people will recommend you don’t pay any attention to them, as all that’s likely to do is incite further trolling. It’s a vicious circle that, regardless of circumstance, pretty much leaves the victim at the hands of the trolls’ comments. Racist comments are hardly a rarity online – unfortunately, equal access for all means equal access for the abusers too; that’s the price of freedom in this case. However, anti-racism campaigners in Brazil are dealing with online comments in a way that should really hit…

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Snapchat and Instagram experiment update: Turns out this is harder than the kids make it look

About six weeks ago, I started a mini experiment to find out if I was too late (or too old) to hop on the Instagram and Snapchat trains. As a mid-thirties male, I’m not really in the demographic for either product, or I certainly don’t feel like I am. Nonetheless, it’s time to take a look at if or how my habits have changed during that time. Well, the fact that it’s been six weeks rather than a month should be a hint towards my success thus far – like the rest of the world, I’m short on time and have an awfully…

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Cheerleaders bring more confusion than cheer to startup pitch day in London

The crowd at Telefónica’s Wayra accelerator Demo Day 2015 in London was rather bizarrely treated to a midway cheerleading show before the second half of 16 startups pitching their winning ideas today. On Twitter at least, the event very easily looked like it had descended into a how-could-you-not-forsee-this, very-stereotypically-gendered tech event, with one audience member, who runs an all-female social enterprise, tweeting: And so begins 2nd half #WayraDD15 catering for the lads, when tech is 50/50 can we have male cheerleaders too pls?! http://pic.twitter.com/SC5Pk2G2KQ — Kathy Smart (@smartredkitty) November 25, 2015 Having got in touch with Wayra for clarification, a spokesperson said: “This has…

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Give us a break KitKat, emojis ain’t free ad slots

KitKat is heading towards hitting its rather conservative petition goal on Change.org aimed at convincing the Unicode Consortium to accept a new /‘\ emoji, a snapping KitKat, as the universal symbol for taking 10 minutes away from your desk. This isn’t the first emoji stunt created by a brand and facilitated by the world’s petitioning platform, Taco Bell fought and won its attempt to get the traditional Mexican dish that has made its name accepted in the Unicode 8.0 update in June this year. More than 32,000 people signed their name to the ’cause’ and the Unicode Consortium duly took notice. In a bid…

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How to find your startup’s first customers on social media

Your first customers are your most important ones. They’re there with you from the beginning. They’re the ones that see you at your worst and watch you grow. And that makes them invested. They’ll often become your most loyal and vocal advocates. Because they’ve been there the whole time. Like the great aunts that can’t stop talking about how cute you were when you were still in diapers. It’s an important role to fill for your company. You want to make sure you’re filling the position with people who are worthy. The perfect customers. But if you want perfection, you…

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Social media can assure in times of disaster

Now that so many people use social media – Facebook claims more than 1.5 billion users – it makes an excellent, swift, alternative means of communication. This can be useful in times of terrorist attacks, such as in Paris, during events such as the Arab Spring or elections in countries with state-controlled news outlets, or in the event of natural disasters. For example, Facebook launched its Safety Check service in October 2014, inspired by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. Japanese engineers developed a prototype that allowed users to quickly notify their friends they were safe. The service…

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4 tools for building a social media empire

This post was brought to you by SEO Power suite.

In a business world, not so very long ago, many debated the pros and cons of integrating social media into their company’s marketing plan. A few enterprising leaders championed strategy and took the brave leap into conquering the brand presence on a variety of social media networks. The bricks were laid to the castle of benefits that come with a strong social media presence — improved SEO, customer insights, brand authority… the list goes on. Those days are now long gone. Your business, no matter if it’s a fledgling startup or international enterprise, is on social media winning battles for…

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9 ways to bring more traffic to every blog post

You’ve written a fantastic blog post. Now . . . how are people going to find it? It’s a question most of us bloggers deal with every single time we hit “Publish.” Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a list of things that we could do tobring in some traffic right off the bat—even if the post wasn’t a super-brilliant infographic or 5,000-word masterpiece? Maybe there is. I’m excited to share a list of nine ways I’ve found to drive traffic to new blog posts: a checklist of sorts that can help you see how to bring some lift to every…

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Snapchat tripled its daily video views to 6 billion in 6 months

Snapchat is quickly gaining ground in the battle for dominance in video on social networks: it now claims a whopping six billion daily views, or triple the traffic it got in May, reports the Financial Times. For comparison, Facebook counts about eight billion views per day on both desktop and mobile. Snapchat is catching up quick and managing to do so with only a mobile app. With marketers pouring more ad dollars into video, it’s an important milestone for Snapchat. eMarketer forecasts a 42 percent increase in digital video revenues this year to over $7.5 billion in the US alone. Snapchat CEO Evan…

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Why formatting is the secret to shareable content

I try to read as much as I can, and every morning I put aside 30 minutes to check out the latest posts from my favorite blogs and writers. In 30 minutes, you can only take in so much. Some posts I read thoroughly, others I open and close again within a matter of seconds. My favorite ones, I load into Buffer and share. Often, my decision to read a post and then subsequently share it relies a lot on the formatting: Is it easy to read? Can I scan through? In this post, I’m excited to share with you…

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Estée Lalonde: The good, the bad and the ugly side of life as a YouTuber

As a YouTuber, hitting one million subscribers is a massive milestone and so is getting picked up by one of the most recognized modelling agencies in the world and having your own branded merchandise. Estée Lalonde has achieved all of the above but recently she did something quite radical – she decided to shake things up and rebrand her social channels and website with a new name and editorial focus. Her experience is representative of how YouTubers have longevity in their careers if they can garner a loyal following through staying true to what they believe in with their content.…

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