All must be shared to win the war

Twitter has followers, Facebook has causes and Google+ is the new cult.

Propaganda posters by Aaron Wood.

I am socially stoned

Well, we all know that all social media can be extremely addictive, but each one with a completely different way. Patrick Moberg compares each one of them with popular drugs and alcoholic beverages:

via Design Taxi

See also:

• It started with the occasional profile update and now you are hooked: social media addiction
• The drugs of Alice in Wonderland
• Multitasking is addictive

It’s all about me

OK, we all know that Facebook is the shrine of narcissism and self-reference. And the apps that I am going to present are a tribute to the “cult of me”. But they are so well done that they are practically irresistible.

Deutsche Post’s Social Memories creates a booklet filled with infographics based on the public info on your Facebook profile. While the digital version of the booklet is free, you need to pay 19 € for the bound version in glossy paper.

Intel’s Museum of Me, on the other hand, is a virtual exhibition of, well, you. Again using data from your public info it creates 3D gallery views of your photos, friends, words most used on your status updates, etc.

See also:

• Would you tell a stranger what you tell Facebook?
• At night your facebook profile comes to life
• Don’t give up on facebook just yet

Would you tell a stranger what you tell Facebook?

See also:

• Don’t give up on facebook just yet
• Facebook in Bamako
• 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life, part 2
• At night your facebook profile comes to life

Don’t give up on facebook just yet

The first email of the day said this:

That’s all Folks!
I am deleting my facebook account (at least for the moment) because I am bored of it.

[goes on to give me us – all of his facebook friends- his new contact details].

And he’s not the first to do so. Infact, the number of my facebook friends is on a downward slope, at least for the last six months. People are getting fed up with Facebook. Has it simply run its course, like Friendster and myspace before it? Are people tired of all the overexposure? Are the original Facebook users maturing into Twitter users? Or is it simply because our Facebook newsfeeds usually look like this:

There are those, though, that are not ready to give up without a fight. Yo Zuck! Implement this is a tumblr blog with ideas on how to improve Facebook. It includes realistic, common sense suggestions that would indeed improve user experience. For example this one would be really helpful to me since my Japanese friends have the weird habit of writing in, well, japanese:

Newsfeed illustration via Thought Catalog. Link to Yo Zuck! via freeweird.

See also:

• Facebook in Bamako
• Tweets say the darnest things
• Focusing on usability traits instead of faults

From behind

Can you imagine how Twitter and Facebook would look like from behind? I am sure you can’t. Designers Jeff Lam and Josephine Yatar present in their blog Back of a Webpage a different and very creative ‘back view’ of most of our favourite websites. 

See more after the jump

Social networks from the Enlightenment

Long before Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, there was the Republic of Letters —  a self-proclaimed intellectual community of writers, scholars and other thinkers in the late 17th and 18th century in Europe and America, that managed to cross national boundaries and bring together, among others, the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

This vast community of intellectuals and philosophers, which included literary figures such as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Carl Linnaeus, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, and Denis Diderot, was the subject of a project by a team of students and professors from Stanford University. They used geographical imaging to display how this early social network and its various sub-networks intermingled and evolved over time. The Republic of Letters is perhaps an early example of what social network truly means- exchange knowledge and information.

via Braipickings

See also:

• Make up your mind about your mind
• Strange things that do exist: Computational Origami at MIT
• Can you take a hint?

It started with the occasional profile update and now you are hooked: social media addiction

Well we already know that social media can be very addictive. But can you recognize the signs of addiction? Do you need a social media detox?

See if you recognize yourself in any of the symptoms after the jump.

Read it elsewhere

A bitter-sweet mix of links:

• Too close for comfort? Portraits by Martin Schoeller – live journal
• Love is like an app store – diesel sweeties
• The facebook you vs the real you – comical concept
• Civilization has something similar: a video of all the major historical events (according to Wikipedia) in 100 seconds – ragtag
• In the same vein, an infograph of every person who has ever lived – la femme belletrist
• Nuclear boy suffers from gas (video) – youtube
• David Lynch’s hair compared to art masterpieces – world of wonder
• The answer to the burning question: “what is better, a facebook like or a tweet?” – mashable
• Meet the world’s busiest extra who’s credits include tv shows like , glee, curb your enthousiasm, arrested development, and movies like the social network, catch me if you can and spiderman (video) – vulture
• Despite recent criticism, more designers have created art inspired but the recent disaster in Japan – design for japan tumblr
• But none as strong as these radioactive cherry blossoms on the cover of New Yorker – kottke

Facebook in Bamako

If this is not an example of post-modernism, what else would ever be? Today’s logos in the most improbable locations.

More photos after the jump

Help Japan

Made by James White, this poster is available at the Signalnoise store and all profits go to the relief effort.

Here are more ways to help online:

• Donate to the  Red Cross campaign on Facebook Causes
• You can also donate to the Red Cross through iTunes
• Buy virtual stuff on Zynga’s games: CityVille,FrontierVille, FarmVille and others. Zynga will donate proceeds to Save the Children’s Japan Earthquake Tsunami Emergency Fund
• Explore.org will donate $1 for every “Like” of the “Dog Bless You” Facebook page

Twitter also created these hashtags relating to the relief effort:

• #Jishin: focuses around general earthquake information
• #Anpi: a hashtag for the confirmation of the safety of individuals or places
• #Hinan: Evacuation information
• #311care: a hashtag regarding medical information for the victims
• #PrayforJapan: A general hashtag for support and best wishes for victims of the crisis

via boingboing and mashable

See also:

• Tokyo, now
• It’s a small world

Read it elsewhere

My mind is in Japan:

• Confirmed by personal experience: when mobile phones and telephone lines failed, social networks helped the Japanese communicate in the hour of need – cnet
• In fact, after the earthquake tweets from Japan were estimated around 1200 per minute – mashable
• Google launches Person Finder for Japan earthquake – Person Finder
• Japan’s strict building codes saved lives – New York Times
• The earthquake and tsunami in pictures – buzzfeed
• Predicted tsunami wave heights – New York Times

Read it elsewhere

It’s been a long time:

• Passive aggressive emails in the business context are equivalent to drunk dialing in the relationship context: initially gratifying and eventually terrifying. And unavoidable when you are heating up in anger. But worry no more, there’s an app for that too: the ToneCheck plugin for Outlook – mashable
• Half (!) of German doctors prescribe placebos – Guardian
• If you judge a movie by its opening sequence, here are the top 50 movies of all time – IFC
• Compare people and other fallen Facebook fads from the old days – Think Catalog
• Take good care of your books, please – apartment therapy
• What happens to subway trains when they grow old? They become marine reefs – fastcodesign
• The parallels between the Qaddafi family and the Bluth family of Arrested Development – The New Republic
• It was bound to happen. After movie bar codes, here is every second of Star Wars, organized by luminosity – Jason Salavon

and a close up:

Read it elsewhere

The longest list yet:

• Did you accidentally wash your USB stick with your laundry? Well, everybody else has too – Gizmodo
• Nearly half of Americans uses Facebook, only 7% use Twitter – mashable
• Will it catch on? Free, augmented reality iPhone app – alltop
• The long-awaited Oscars infographs – mashable
• Design and order online a little black dress (described also as Fembot meets John Galliano) – fastcodesign
• 1 million workers. 90 million iPhones. 17 suicides. Who’s to Blame? – wired
• The best films-within-films – shortlist
• Meet the 26-year-old who bypassed publishing companies and made millions by selling her books directly on kindle – business insider
• Meanwhile, somebody else is writing a book and posting it page by page on lamp posts in NYC – nymag
• Algorithmic columns – boingboing

57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life, part 2

You’ve seen the infograph, now watch the video:

See also:

• 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life
• At night your facebook profile comes to life
• I know the music you would like to hear

At night your facebook profile comes to life

via the curious brain

See also:

• The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity
• I know the music you would like to hear
• Invisible cities
• 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life

I know the music you would like to hear

How would you feel if I tell you that your face can reveal your taste for music?

Automatic DJ, created by Ben Gleitzman, is a music selection program that recognises your face, finds your Facebook profile and plays the music you would like to hear. The process is easy: you take a picture of your face, then it is run through the Facebook API to find your FB profile and, from your FB profile to music taste through the Hunch API.

Well, automatic DJ raises again all these issues concerning Facebook’s privacy settings, but it would be fun to try it, though.

via Design TAXI

See also:

• Touch music again
• 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life
• Making the most of the new facebook profile

Read it elsewhere

Tuesday links:

• Double meanings: the egyptian presidency website is under construction – egyptian presidency via boingboing
• Knowledge is not dead: global data are more than 295 billion gigabytes – bbc
• Facebook pretty much owns all the photos in the universe (ah! and women upload twice as many photos as men) – mashable
• Play the Great Gatsby but mind the waiters – great Gatsby game
• Paris, London, Beijing, and Barcelona through typefaces (videos) – albin holmovist
• Ridley Scott and 9 other directors who sold out – flavorwire
• 20 years since Twin Peaks: the exhibition – in the trees art preview

Truly social

Social media have proved to have faster reflexes than the traditional media, managing to play a significant role in spreading the news all around the world and revealing, thus, their truly social nature.

via Mashable

Read it elsewhere

It’s that time again:

• Organized crime is the world’s largest social network – wired
• Do you feel squeezed? Cubicles are becoming (even) smaller – Time
• Are you obscene? – via csandis
• The role of virtual worlds in a changing arab world – mashable
• Before there were computers, there were women: Top Secret Rosies  – boingboing
• Watch the world getting fatter infront of your eyes (interactive infograph) – Washington Post
• Isn’t it tweet? Tweets as animated love stories – creative review
• Redemption song: Tokyo, Kinshasa, Livorno, Kingston, St. Ann, Chennai, Mamallapuram, Sao Vicente – open culture