Why Instagram is Down?

Instagram has been suddenly down for a while and instagram fans and other netizens all over other social media sites have expressed their rage. Some Instagram users are even exageratedly expressing their disappointment about the sudden flaw the site have had. After this shortcoming though, the official twitter account of the said popular photo sharing site has already gave an official statement about the incident:



I've tried my instagram right now and it seems to be okay already. Here's my recently uploaded photo.

posted from Bloggeroid

Confirmed! 6.5 Million LinkedIn Passwords Compromised

LinkedIn updated today that the reports about some LinkedIn users passwords are indeed, in compromised!

In their latest blog post, LinkedIn Director, Vicente Silveira, expressed that the reports about the stolen passwords being associated with LinkedIn accounts were true and they're currently taking the necessary steps to prevent possible identity theft or any inconvenience it may cause.

We want to provide you with an update on this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts. We are continuing to investigate this situation and here is what we are pursuing as far as next steps for the compromised accounts:

1. Members that have accounts associated with the compromised passwords will notice that their LinkedIn account password is no longer valid.
2. These members will also receive an email from LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords. There will not be any links in this email. Once you follow this step and request password assistance, then you will receive an email from LinkedIn with a password reset link.
3. These affected members will receive a second email from our Customer Support team providing a bit more context on this situation and why they are being asked to change their passwords.

It is worth noting that the affected members who update their passwords and members whose passwords have not been compromised benefit from the enhanced security we just recently put in place, which includes hashing and salting of our current password databases.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our members. We take the security of our members very seriously. If you haven’t read it already it is worth checking out my earlier blog post today about updating your password and other account security best practices.

[Infographic] Facebook Reaches 488 Million Mobile Users

About fifty percent (50%) of the total Facebook users have the Facebook mobile app installed in their phones according to the recent IPO (Initial Public Offering) filing of Facebook company, showing that their mobile application has reached an outstanding 488 million users across the globe, with United States recorded to be the top country of the mobile app and Nigeria recorded to have the highest Facebook mobile penetration at 81.2%. 

The infographic below courtesy of SocialBakers show the current statistics of the facebook mobile application across all platforms, the top 10 countries with the highest Facebook mobile app users and the top countries with highest penetration of the said mobile app based on the recently submitted IPO of Facebook.

LinkedIn Acquires SlideShare for $119 Million in Cash and Stock

Professional content sharing platform, SlideShare, has been acquired by the social networking company, LinkedIn, for $119 Million in cash and stock.

The strategic acquisition of the said platform will help LinkedIn  gather more momentum in the social media space and help the company establish a stronger network for professionals since SlideShare provides services that are business-related and intended for professionals.

"Now that content can be shared, uploaded, viewed amongst liked minded individuals, LinkedIn will be the strongest social media network for professionals," said Audrey William, Head of ICT Research for Frost & Sullivan Australia & New Zealand.

LinkedIn has doubled its shares since initial public offering on May 2011 with site members also dramatically increased from 150 million in Q4 to 160 million. The company is even more striving to maintain such a unique position as not all companies has the same business model as LinkedIn.

Related: LINKEDIN REACHED 1 MILLION FILIPINO USERS

Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO,  is pushing mobile technology to seek professionals stay in-touch with their subscription services and attract advertisers who want to reach their growing user base.

"The company has in recent years done quite a few amazing things to its portal including allowing for twitter feeds to be sent via LinkedIn and that itself has brought about a lot of discussion amongst professionals," said William. Further, LinkedIn "will become an attractive platform for advertising and recruitment and will be the ‘Facebook’ of the professional networking world," she said.

LinkedIn as a business-related social networking platform offers services where the company is effectively getting revenues such as premium membership, advertising and recruitment fees.

Three Forms of Your Facebook Password

If you haven't knew about this yet, your Facebook password has 3 variations which will still log you on to the site whichever variation you use: your original password, your original password with the first letter in CAPS LOCK, and your original password in all CAPS LOCK.

In an article update at ZDNet written by Emil Protalinski, He described how he was still able to log on to Facebook, one morning, with his keyboard caps lock button on. Upon his "accidental discovery" he then conducted a little research through a series of communication with Facebook which clarified the issue.

The three variations has its own reason why Facebook decided to allow them during sign in. The first password is the password you provided during sign up and you're expected to enter this information by default. However, since there are cases that you might also be logging in without noticing the caps lock keys on, Facebook realized to accept 2 additional variations for your convenience. The second password as shown above is for the case when you're logging in using a mobile phone wherein the first letter is always set to be capital when entering information. While the third password variation is for the case when you just forgot to off the caps lock button when logging in using your computer.

His second update in the article reads:

“Nothing is more important to us than the security of our users and their information,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “Our passwords are not case insensitive. We accept three forms of the user’s password to help overcome the most common reasons that authentic logins are rejected. In addition to the original password, we also accept the password if a user inadvertently has caps lock enabled or their mobile device automatically capitalizes the first character of the password. We feel this does not significantly impact the security of the user’s password or their account. Additionally, we do not store our passwords in plain text we use several encryption technologies and techniques to maintain the security of our information.”

So don't be confused when you accidentally log in to Facebook with your password reversed.  the toggled password would still work on it.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Social Media Usage in the Philippines

Philippines is one of the countries today that has the most active people in the online world. Each year, the number of Filipinos who are using the internet is continually increasing. From 24 million (or equivalent to 24.5% of Philippines's total population) internet users in 2009, it rose 6% to mark 29.7 million or 29.7% of the total population in 2010. As of 2011, there are approximately 29 million (29.2%) internet users out of 104 million of the total Philippine population, 3.7 million of which are active internet users (Maybe that include me).

Filipinos' online presence primarily involve the use of social media platforms particularly facebook, twitter and youtube, blogging activities and searching information in the web. The  engagement to different social media platforms has continued to shape values and culture of the Filipinos that made them to become known in the world as the social networking capital. Social media sites become an avenue for every Filipinos from different parts of the globe connect one another. Likewise, it has become the primary source of online entertainment and markets for every small and medium business in the Philippines.

The infographic, social media usage in the Philippines below shows recent figures of the Filipino population from top social media platforms today. The infographic also shows the social media highlights which conjecture the challenges every Filipinos in the online community are going to face this year and maybe even in the next coming years.

Facebook to Acquire Instagram For $1 Billion

Social networking giant, Facebook is buying Instagram, the company behind the popular photo-sharing app 'Instagram' as confirmed by Mark Zuckerberg today.

"I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook."

This is the first time that the said company is acquiring another company and the product that has a well established community and Zuckerberg is looking forward to bringing the two companies working together.

"This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.


We're looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we're going to be able to build together."

The popularity of Instagram started  way back its release on iTunes last October 6, 2010 and just two months later (December 2012), Instagram had reached 1 million registered users. It continues to grow the next year with five million users on June 2011 and surpassed the ten million mark of registered users by September of the same year. As popularity becomes unstoppable, developers of Instagram further pushed it to a larger market by releasing an Android version of the app last April 4, 2012. It reached as high as 1 million within 12 hours after the release. As of today, there are 227,919 android users who are using Instagram.

It seems that both parties are happy with the acquisition. In a blog post wrote by Kevin Systrom, Instagram CEO, he describes the humble beginnings of Instagram and how it reached a large community that never once imagined and how he hopes to have an exciting future in the arms of facebook.

"When Mike and I started Instagram nearly two years ago, we set out to change and improve the way the world communicates and shares. We’ve had an amazing time watching Instagram grow into a vibrant community of people from all around the globe. Today, we couldn’t be happier to announce that Instagram has agreed to be acquired by Facebook.


Every day that passes, we see more experiences being shared through Instagram in ways that we never thought possible. It’s because of our dedicated and talented team that we’ve gotten this far, and with the support and cross-pollination of ideas and talent at a place like Facebook, we hope to create an even more exciting future for Instagram and Facebook alike." - Mike (Instagram CEO)

Both Facebook and Instagram CEOs further clarified that the acquisition of Instagram will not put the photo-sharing app into nowhere but will continue to be as it is and both will strive hard to bring the popularity of Instagram to a much wider people. Instagram CEO further said they will work on adding new features for the app and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.

Bentabols: The Next Sulit in the Making?

When I opened my facebook account today, an eye candy ad struck and got my attention. Reading the ad even made me convinced  to click it. After having a second thought, I finally decided to direct to the site and what I discovered is a promising pinoy advertising site that offers free posting of buy and sell ads that is indeed, very similar to Sulit! Introducing: The Bentabols.

Upon heading to the site, I landed on Bentabol's homepage and as what I've seen on the ad earlier, the site is truly colorful but looking neat and sophisticated while the overall look is dominated by light blue, pink and green colors.

Bentabols, for its very purpose, offers advertisements that are mainly categorized into five namely: Buy and Sell, Real Estate, Business and Services, Automotive and Jobs. Buy and Sell section is where all goods and products (brand new or second hand) for trade can be found such as books, computers, jewelries, phones, different accessories and many others. Real Estate in the same manner is where all advertisements concerning real properties such as house and lot, apartments and condominiums , beach and land properties and the like can be found. Business and Services is where advertisements for different services including accounting and finance, automotive, advertising, IT and computer services and many others that fall in can be found while the last category, Jobs, is where all opportunities relating to employment, which includes part time or full time, online and offline jobs are found.

For a limited period of time, users who will register to Bentabols will be given 500 coupons that can be used to post a free premium advertisement and that advertisement can be likewise posted into facebook wall in just one click.Moreover, users are given enough advertising functionality to maintain their ads within the site including a personal storage address, customizable ad layout, viewer tracker and secured private settings. Users are also given 50 coupons monthly allowance for making premium advertisements. 

Head now to the site and don't miss this limited opportunity!

[Infographic] How Do Social Login And Sharing Affect Ecommerce?

We've been into this era where social media buttons became an integral tool to express every individual's own opinion. That one's identity in social media became a reliable source for foreign sites to consider when identifying a particular customer. That's why, more and more sites are adding social media buttons for logging in and social sharing to promote their products and the site as a whole. Moreover, it is also becoming a means to target a wider span of customers because a user is more likely to engage in a foreign site if it is recommended by a friend or other closer ones. So thanks to the like, share, tweet, and the recently rising pin it and +1 buttons, users can now express more about the things they desire and preferences they look into and share them with their loved ones, friends and other people while promoting that foreign site at the same time.

Police Arrests KONY 2012 Filmmaker for Masturbating in Public and Vandalism

After KONY 2012 video campaign gone viral in youtube, with 80 million views as of March 17, 2012, and published in various news and blogging sites around the world, now, one of the co-founders of Invisible Children and filmmaker of the 30-minute video, Jason Russell was arrested by San Diego Police 11:30 AM, March 16, 2012, for the said drinking, vandalizing cars and "masturbation" gestures in public.

San Diego Police Department detained Jason Russell after public reported his strange behavior that led to his hospitalization and arrest. According to a public report, Russell was caught running around  at Pacific Beach Neighborhood only wearing his underwear, banging his hands on the ground, screaming and acting incoherent. The public tried to stop him for his behavior is causing traffic in the place.

Police confirmed the fact that Jason Russell was hospitalized for a medical evaluation and treatment after finding out that the filmmaker was under the influence of something that caused his undesirable behavior.

"Jason Russell was unfortunately hospitalised suffering from exhaustion, dehydration and malnutrition. He is now receiving medical care and is focused on getting better," said Invisible Children's chief executive Ben Keesey in the statement. 

Watch KONY 2012 campaign:

Diablo III Sets Release, Pre-Sales Now Available

After more than a decade when Diablo III began to develop, finally the long wait is over as Blizzard announced that the next series of the dark fantasy/horror-themed action role-playing game is finally set for release! Diablo III, which will be unleashed from the burning hell on May 15 this year, is already available for pre-sales in battle.net starting today.



"Beginning May 15, players around the world will be able to return to Tristram to discover the dark secrets of a fallen star and begin their quest to save Sanctuary from the impending demonic invasion. To secure your place as a barbarian, monk, demon hunter, witch doctor, or wizard right now, simply log in to your Battle.net account, and then purchase and download* Diablo III, and you’ll be ready to play when the game launches." - us.battle.net


Diablo III gamers can reach retailers across the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau while digital purchase of the game through Blizzard’s Battle.net® website is also available for regions in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.

New and improved gameplay expriences, unique battle arenas for PvP (player versus player), a custom 3D game engine with retained 'feel' from previous games in the series including a viewpoint reminiscent of the isometric view of Diablo III's  predecessors are only few to mention added features that will make Diablo III more engaging to play.

Of course, the five character classes (Wizard, Witch Doctor, Demon Hunter, Barbarian and Monk) of the game is still available but unlike in the previous series, character gender, whom the player want to use in the gameplay, can now be selected. Let's get to know them class by class as described in Diablo III site:
Witch Doctor
Witch doctors are spiritual warriors who summon dead souls and crawling creatures to do their bidding. By surrounding themselves with conjured zombies and vermin, witch doctors are free to assault their enemies with exploding skulls, acrid poison clouds, and wasting curses.

The ability to infect, slow and terrify their enemies gives witch doctors unprecedented control  over a battlefield. They can manipulate opposing attacks and movements with debuffs and crowd control spells, rendering enemies easy prey for hungry pets. Witch doctors can also lay down fields of fire and venom that slowly leech life from advancing foes.

Although some witch doctors avoid melee combat in favor of augmenting their pets and crippling  their enemies from afar, they are also more than capable of slaying weakened foes with their own hands.


Barbarian

Barbarians are savage wanderers who never flinch from close-quarters combat. Mighty ground stomps, leaping attacks and dual-wielded slashes leave a barbarian’s enemies dead in their boots and send any survivors fleeing for cover.

Barbarians can dominate a melee with nearly any combination of weapon and approach, though they tend towards massive and imposing weaponry. Barbarians are no strangers to the pains of battle, and often fare better in the midst of several opponents, taking and giving cuts, than when attempting to chase down single targets.

Barbarians’ attacks are primarily melee focused. Their quick weapon swings whittle down the number of weaker foes in seconds, while their slower, ground-shaking slams and stomps can send approaching hordes reeling and crack the armor of mightier foes.

Monk
Monks are sacred warriors who channel divine power through sheer force of will. Healing waves mantras of protection and attacks empowered with holy might are all within their purview.

Skilled monks deliver rapid-fire attacks unarmed or with a variety of well-balanced weapons. In combat, they emphasize high maneuverability over staying power, darting in and out of melees and avoiding protracted slugfests.
Demon Hunters

Demon hunters are relentless vigilantes who execute their infernal targets with an arsenal of ranged weapons. They crouch and take aim far from danger, relying on bows, deadly traps, and projectiles to swiftly bring an end to the creatures that haunt their world.

With sweeping blasts of shot, wide salvos of arrows and timed explosives at their disposal, demon hunters excel at devastating groups of foes who cluster together. Hunters’ pinpoint accuracy also allows them to deal with stronger monsters at a distance: they can snipe at key targets or fall back while snapping off kill shots at advancing foes.
Wizard

Wizards are renegade spellcasters who use their bodies as vessels for arcane energy, forsaking the more careful path favored by other magic users. They manipulate all manner of forces to disintegrate, burn, and freeze their foes, and they can control time and light to teleport, create powerful illusions, and deflect oncoming attacks.

Wizards grip wands and staves to focus their less potent magics, blasting at their enemies while gathering the energy or time necessary to destroy them in a dazzling hail of arcane might.

With few exceptions, wizard attacks are conducted at a distance, away from danger. As living artillery, wizards are well suited to relying on long-range destructive power.

Watch the preview of Diablo III gameplay

posted from Bloggeroid

LinkedIn Reached 1 Million Filipino Users

LinkedIn, the largest online social network for professionals, has just reached 1 million Filipino members last week according to Cliff Rosenberg, Managing director (LinkedIn Austrlia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia).

 

LinkedIn is currently maintaining 150 million members (and counting), providing a strong network for professionals in finding job, gaining and sharing insights and growing their business.

While the current number of Filipinos who use LinkedIn only reflects a very small number of Filipinos who are actually looking for their job in either domestic or foreign employment, LinkedIn has all the tools and an active network to provide a reliable platform every for Filipino professionals can use to find their dream job and at the same time, connect with their co-workers and co-professionals and even those people of their interest. LinkedIn is also a site where you can get different events, job offerings and other opportunities straight from the professionals and big companies worldwide.

Filipinos should try considering LinkedIn as the base tool in showcasing their professional profile (resume) especially if they are looking for jobs online.

Google Science Fair 2012

The search for young bright minds continues as Google opened its second 'Google Science Fair 2012'. Submission of entries ends on April 1, 2012.

Again, Google is opening new opportunity for everyone to raise questions about something they are curious about and discover through conducting research and experiments to arrive at reasonable solutions answering their question.

The Google Science Fair 2012 is an online competition of every curious mind that always want to seek answers through experimenting on things and achieving practical possibilities from it. The competition is open for teens, ages 13 - 18, individual or as a team of two or three members with the consent of their parents to join in the competition. Everyone from all corners of the globe are allowed to join in the Science Fair.

Participants must register in google science fair site using their google account. Participants must fill out the set up and details form from which their information will be specified and the category their project will fall in. Projects to be submitted must fall in any of the following categories:

• Behavioral & Social
• Sciences
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Computer Science & Math
• Earth & Environmental Studies
• Electricity & Electronics
• Energy & Space
• Fauna & Flora
• Food Science
• Inventions & Innovation
• Physics

After successfully submitting the form, participants are expected to start building their project and published write ups of results to a website created in Google Site.

Project site, which will be using the Google Science Fair template, will allow participants to showcase their submitted project in an easy-to-use, highly interactive website. The template is composed of eleven (11) sections that must be customized by adding information, details and supporting documents including:

• Summary - brief overview of project and an embedded video or summary presentation.


• About Me - Tell the judges a bit about the proponent.


• The Question - the question that interests the proponent about something that they have observed, noticed, or wondered about.


• Hypothesis - Address something that the proponent believe is challenging which they are able to answer in a single experiment.


• Research - Summarize the research that the proponent completed to support and answer the question.


• Experiment - Design, execute, and summarize an experiment that tests the hypothesis.


• Data - Report on all of the data, numbers, outputs, or outcomes from the experiment.


• Observations - Show an understanding of what the proponent saw happening during the experiment.


• Conclusions - Explain how the experiment supported or contradicted the original hypothesis.


• References - Provide references for sources of information that have consulted.
• Acknowledgements - Detail any help and support received in completing the project.

Judging of the submitted projects will be based on criteria including film or presentation, the project website, and the project goal of making the world a better place. Life- changing prices awaits for the grand winner such as a National Geographic expedition, scholarship from Google, a hands-on experience with LEGO, CERN and Google, and Chromebooks for their classroom.

Introducing Google Play: The fun Never Stops!

Google is set to transform Android users' experience in using the Android market as they introduced Google Play, a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps on the web and on your Android phone or tablet.



Google Play offers a centralized repository of files- pretty much similar to iCloud so your files are accessible accross all android devices you own.

Since all of your files (music, videos, games, eBooks etc) are now in the cloud, you can easily access them anytime, anywhere! You can enjoy all your files whether you are online or offline and it is now even more easy, hassle free to transfer files to your phone or tablet

Specifically, with Google Play you can:

• Store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks
  
• Download more than 450,000 Android apps and games
  
• Browse the world’s largest selection of eBooks
• Rent thousands of your favorite movies, including new releases and HD titles

Changes in the Android market which is turning into Google Play started today and every android user must see a pop up window similar to the one below while launching their Android Market account.


On the next few days expect to see more changes in the face of Android market as it turns to Google Play with Google Music and Google eBookstore already becoming part of it.

Google Play will also upgrade the existing app with Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music so you can view your downloaded movies, books and music.

Watch Google Play video from youtube here!

posted from Bloggeroid

WMF and Telenor Partnership Allows Free Access to Wikipedia on Mobile

Telenor, an international telecommunications company has partnered with Wikimedia Foundation to offer wikipedia mobile and other wikimedia sites access free of charge to telenor subscribers in Asia and Southeastern Europe.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia blog

In a press release published by Wikimedia, the partnership is said to target 135 million customers around the world whose primary means of accessing the web is through mobile device.

“The Wikimedia Foundation is working to remove barriers to free knowledge, and for most people around the world right now, cost and accessibility are the two biggest hurdles,” says Barry Newstead, Wikimedia Chief Global Development Officer. “We applaud Telenor for joining us to deliver free access to Wikipedia for their customers. Through this partnership, we move a step closer to providing the sum of all knowledge to everyone in the world.”

The implemention of the 3-year partnership will start immediately this year with the first markets lunching this second quarter.

There are, so far, seven signatory countries on the agreement including Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Montenegro, and Serbia but  more partners are expected to join by the end of the year.

Pope Benedict XVI to Join Twitter

Pope Benedict XVI will join the micro blogging and social networking site Twitter to communicate and reach more catholics, as announced by a Vatican official although there is no date revealed yet as to when the account will be activated and officially start tweeting.

Image Courtesy of The Guardian

Head of the Vatican's pontifical council for social communications, Father Claudio Maria Celli said that Pope's tweets can be reformulated, redistributed, relaunched and disseminated. Moreover, the Father said, "In this sense it is like the gospel, a small mustard seed that once scattered grows into bushes where birds can rest."

The Vatican is not actually new to using the internet in reaching its people and spreading the gospels of God. It may be remembered that the first Pope has launched a YouTube channel in 2009 and encouraged priests around the world to also engage in blogging and use social media sites in communicating with congregants along with the existing means of communication.

Pope followers though should expect that not all tweets to be published will always come from the Pope himself but all tweets will undergo his approval.

Update: I searched Pope Benedict XVI on twitter and here are the results:

Infographic: The Sad State Of Social Media Privacy

Aside from allowing people to connect from one another, building a safe, robust community over the web, another big responsibilty of social media providers is to give users barrier against outside parties that may be benefited of the information they share.

This is where the Privacy Policy comes in. Privacy policy is a statement or a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify an individual, not limited to but including; name, address, date of birth, marital status, contact information, ID issue and expiry date, financial records, credit information, medical history, where you travel, and intentions to acquire goods and services. (Wikipedia - Privacy Policy). Every website that collect information from users is required to declare privacy policies for the very purpose of letting the users know what particular information they collect and for what purpose these information are intended to be used.

Sadly, having these privacy policies taking in effect are "easier said than done" because of the factors like (1) users have lack of control over their privacy, (2) government's implementation of laws regarding user privacy are not really strong enough to protect the users and (3) most of the users just don't know the importance of privacy policy.

The MDG's recenlty published infographic shows these factors that took social media privacy into the most sad state. Right click the image below and select view image to view in full size.

Infographic by MDG Advertising

The Rise Of Mobile Social Media Use

Year 2011 has been dominating for smartphones and tablets. In fact, more than half of all mobile phone sales are occupied by smartphones already. It is the year where consumers sought and realized that the use of these devices can bring yet another effective and convenient way of computing.

Powerful mobile OS (Operating Systems), highly interactive and useful applications, increased phone memory and the ever-powered storage over the cloud which allowed users flexibility to access files wherever, whenever! These are only among of a hundred reasons why smartphones and tablets are overtaking feature phones.

Related: Top Social Networking And Blogging Sites Of 2011

MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA USE IS ON THE RISE

Whether it is a feature phone or a smartphone, the ability to access social media is a commonly used feature among mobile owners. About 43 percent of users access the web through mobile device such as mobile phones, iPad, e-reader and handheld music player. In the figure below, the 97 percent for computer use only suggests that still, computer is the most convenient way to use and access social media contents.

How do consumers access social media (Source:Nielsen)

SMARTPHONE FEATURES AND HOW USERS HAVE VALUED THEM

With wide capability ranging from the basics of making and receiving calls to checking out different places nearby down to mobile payment transactions and updating social status and news feeds plus the practicality of use over other devices, smartphones continue to be the most preferred gadget. The next figure below lists down the features commonly available in a smartphone device and how these features have valued by users.

While downloading and playing music is the most available feature for smartphones and global positioning system (GPS) is the most valued feature, applications for social networking has been the second available and most valued feature.

How does social networking compare to other features consumers have on
their phones? And what features do they value most?

MOST USED APPS FOR SMARTPHONE USERS

The on-the-rise popularity of smartphones and tablets which allow users install a wide variety of applications also made it possible for mobile social networking apps to be the third most downloaded app and used by smartphone owners. The most popular app for social networking across all operating system is Facebook  while Twitter is the number five most used app on Blackberry and Windows mobile operating systems.

Gaming apps (the most popular of which include Angry birds, Fruit Ninja and Tiny Tower) are still the most downloaded and used applications for smartphones While Weather applications are also highly in demand. Other categories for the most downloaded and used applications by smartphones users include music (Google Music is the most popular) , news, entertainment, banking/finance and dining/restaurant.

Top 10 Categories of Apps Used by Smartphones Owners Who Downloaded Apps

USERS WHO ENGAGED IN MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING

As teeny as thirteen (13) and eldest as fifty five and over (55+) years of age have installed apps for mobile social networking. The most highly downloaded app of which is Facebook followed by twitter with LinkedIn, a site preferrable for professionals, as the least most downloaded app. Ages twenty five to thirty four (25 - 34) have the highest percentage of social networking app users.

Percentage of Social Networking App Users by Age

Can Social Media Land You A Job?

Apparently, the growing community of people who goes online is dramatically increasing each year and there is no doubt that more and more people are using social media not just for communication but also for looking opportunities and careers. On the other hand, most popular companies especially those involved in business process outsourcing are utilizing social networking sites to get their target employees.

Among social netowrking sites we have today, Facebook which the largest online  community on the web with over 800 million active user, leads in those social media that many users used to seek and successfully get their career although other social media platforms like Linkedin and Twitter are not left far behind.

See the infographic below as published in jobvite.com to learn more the statistical data on how social media strategy worked for getting and landing a job.