Mediaboss Marketing

STAFF WRITER CONNIE SWINNEY

The neighborhood social network site Nextdoor.com allows cities and residents to interact through the dissemination and sharing information.

MARBLE FALLS Just how well do you know whats going on in your neighborhood?

Thats the question Marble Falls city leaders have posed to residents as the municipality joins an online platform that allows users to share information with each other.

Acting as an intermediary between the city and its residents, the neighborhood social networking site Nextdoor.com will foster neighbor-to-neighbor and citywide communication, according to the city of Marble Falls website.

Officials are touting the online tool as a way for residents to have direct access to information provided by law enforcement, fire services, utilities, and administrators.

Also, the platform is expected to encourage residents to offer recommendations to the municipality.

Participants typically post about neighborhood watch programs, safety issues, local events, school activities, garage sales, and lost pets.

The self-managed platform will rely on active participation from the community.

Staff will review the site engagement in six months, Marble Falls City Secretary Christina McDonald said in a news release. There are already 223 Nextdoor residents signed up, and we are confident, with some encouragement, we can increase that number.

The city of Marble Falls has a population of approximately 6,000.

Participants can subscribe to Nextdoor.com for free but must provide proof of residency.

Officials pointed to the success of the website in Georgetown.

Nextdoor is quickly becoming the top social media platform for cities, law enforcement, and fire departments to connect with their citizens, said McDonald in the release. According to the communications department in Georgetown, Nextdoor is their top social media site.

(The service) will be used as an additional tool to provide citizens of the city of Marble Falls information and to encourage engagement with their neighbors and their city, she stated.

The platform is password protected, and city officials said the site never shares personal information with any third parties.

connie@thepicayune.com

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City of Marble Falls to share info with residents through neighborhood social network site - DailyTrib.com

Dating apps are, in their own way, a form of social networking especially as they expand into new areas like friend-finding or professional networking. So it only makes sense that they would adopt video as well, given the growing popularity of the format on social apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, as well as the industrys larger embrace of Stories as a means of offering an angle into peoples lives, activities, and interests.

This week, both Hinge and Zoosks Lively are rolling out support for video, each in their own way.

Hinge, for example, will now allow users to augment their user profiles on the service with video. The company says users can add videos up to 30 seconds long, by pulling from those that already exist on their phone. However, its shying away from short-form, disappearing videos like those found in Instagram, Snapchat, or Messenger Stories.

In fact,Hinge will not prompt people to take a front-facing video at all, only those pre-recorded or previously shared to Facebook or Instagram. (The videos imported from social networks can be longer than 30 seconds, Hinge notes.)

Instead, Hinge believes support for videos will allow members to better show who they really are, by sharing fun or memorable moments and activities from their lives. This continues the dating services larger mission of helping users find relationships, not casual encounters.

On Hinge we encourage our members to be authentic with one another because we know that leads to the best connections, explains Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod. Our profiles already do a great job, but video creates the opportunity for our members to learn about potential matches in a way that simply cant be captured with still photos and text.

The company will also encourage video adoption, too, by showing Hinge profiles with video to five times more people it says.

Meanwhile, Zoosks newer product Lively is hoping to capitalize on video to bring more people to its app.

Launched last summer as a product from the companys R&D group, Zoosk Labs, Lively had adopted video from the get-go. In Lively, users upload photos and videos that are then turned into story collages, which also include transitions and movement.

Again, the idea is that using video can show off someones personality much better than static, photo-only profiles.

Now, Zoosk is pushing the bar even further in terms of video with the launch of live video chat. The feature, which will be public on Wednesday morning, is designed to help users make connections with people that extend beyond dating.

In the updated app, users will be able to pick a topic and start chatting with others who are also available to chat. But unlike with Livelys profile videos, the chat feature allows users to start their session with their screen blurred. This helps users instantly feel more comfortable, the company explains, without having to worry about what they look like right away.

As users continue to talk, the blur fades away but users can opt to add it back if they want to remain hidden. Zoosk says the blur fades over 40 seconds, but you can tap Add Blur whenever you like to remain hidden.

Lively is about creating fun ways to help people connect, not just match, says Zoosks SVP of Product Behzad Behrouzi. Were hoping to create an overall experience where people can feel more relaxed being themselves, and more excited to meet and get to know other people.

This feature will push Lively beyond dating to help users just generally meet new people. This trend is not one thats limited to Lively. Top dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and others have also adopted friend-finding features as of late, as they become more like social networks. And Bumble is preparing to launch into professional networking in September, with the debut of BumbleBizz.

Shortly after, Bumble will roll out its own video support as well.

Announced in January, BumbleVID will allow users to share video stories on their profile. Bumble says it decided to hold the feature back because it would make more sense from an engineering perspective to launch it in the rebuilt app arriving this fall. That version of the app will support BumbleBizz, but will also introduce features that let you craft different profiles for dating, friends, and professional networking.

Similar to Snapchat and Instagram, Bumble will support short-form videos recorded live or in the past 24 hours, which can be either posted to your profile for all to see, or only shared with matches.

Also like Stories on other social apps, these videos will vanish in a day. However, a later version of the app will allow for a semi-permanent way to keep them. (More to come on that this fall.)

Again, Bumbles interest in video has a lot to do with how the company feels the format will help users show more of themselves, which is the common thread between all the dating apps embrace of video.

Its more of a way to storytell, and express yourself beyond a photo, explains Bumble co-founder CEO Whitney Wolfe, but in a way that was native to how we in our audience already use social media video. We didnt want to reinvent the wheel we wanted to just take what was already working well in other platforms, and give them the opportunity to do that with people they dont know yet, versus their friends, she says.

But these newer dating apps like Lively, Bumble and Hinge arent alone in making video a key feature in their updated user experiences. Even longtime dating giant Match.com is getting into the video game.

The company this week announced its plans for a Stories feature, too. In Matchs case, the stories can stretch to 60 seconds, as compared with Bumbles 10-second videos, for example. And theyre meant to be a combination of photos and videos, similar to whats available on Lively. Plus, you can narrate the content if youd like, to describe the imagery youre showing.

It gives people flexibility, Match CEO Mandy Ginsberg explained earlier in an interview with Mashable. Hearing someone talk about their photo is far better than just seeing the photo. Seeing a video and hearing their voice is, I think, the holy grail in terms of figuring out your attraction.

Match says Stories will launch into testing in the coming weeks, with a national rollout planned for later this year.

Video chat, however, is not on Match.coms public roadmap, nor Bumbles, nor Hinges.

This is likely because of the additional overhead that comes with allowing users to chat live, not only from a product and engineering standpoint, but also from a community safety perspective. It also may not be necessary after all, if two people enjoy chatting with each other a lot, what usually comes next is a request along the lines of, lets get off this app.

Livelys video chat launches tomorrow, around 9 AM PT. Hinges video is live now. Match and Bumble will roll out video later this year.

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Dating apps are embracing video - TechCrunch

June 28, 2017 | Mobile | Social Media

India has experienced explosive growth in the number of Facebook users over the past few years, making the country home to the largest share (32.6%) of users in Asia-Pacific.

According to eMarketers latest worldwide social network users forecast, 182.9 million people in India will log on to Facebook regularly in 2017, equating to 69.9% of social network users and 42.6% of internet users. eMarketer expects user growth to continue throughout the forecast period, increasing 20.0% this year. By 2021, 70.1% of social network users in India will access Facebook at least once per month.

Mobile social network usage is helping to drive up Facebook usage in India. This year, 96.5% of Facebook users will access the platform via mobile device, up from 90.3% in 2015.

By comparison, Twitter users in India will total 10.9 million this year, with 4.2% of social network users and 2.6% of internet users in the country accessing the platform. That number is forecast to reach 15.7 million by 2021, eMarketer estimates.

Mobile devices continue to fall in price, making them increasingly accessible to the average Indian consumer, according to Monica Peart, eMarketers senior forecasting director. This trend will continue to positively impact the growth of various internet activities, including regular use of the countrys most popular social networking platform, Facebook.

Using data collected from sensors, infrastructure and networked devices, smart-city projects are helping municipalities improve efficiency, boost sustainability and encourage economic development. They are also creating more collaborative environments among cities and their businesses and residents. Preview Report

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eMarketer Forecasts Strong Growth in Facebook Users in India - eMarketer

Social networking website Facebook reached two billion active monthly users globally on Tuesday, the company has said via a statement.

An average of more than 800 million people "like"something each day on Facebook, and more than 175 million "share a Love reaction," the company said.

The website's "Groups"feature has more than a billion monthly users, it said. The groups are built around everything from sporting interests to humanitarian projects.

The company defines a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through its website or a mobile device, or used its Messenger app, in the past 30 days. It does not include people who use the Instagram or WhatsApp networks but not Facebook.

"As of this morning, the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people!"co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook.

"We're making progress connecting the world, and now let's bring the world closer together,"Zuckerberg wrote. "It's an honor to be on this journey with you."

Rapid growth

Founded in 2004, the social media behemoth hit the billion-user mark five years ago.

Now, the user base is bigger than the population of any single country, and of six of the seven continents. It represents more than a quarter of the world's 7.5 billion people.

The company said in May that duplicate accounts, according to an estimate from last year, may have represented some six percent of its worldwide user base.

Still, the social network's user population dwarfs that of similar companies. Twitter Inc reported in April monthly active users of 328 million, while Snap Inc's Snapchat had 166 million daily users at the end of the first quarter.

As it has grown, Facebook has updated features to fend off challengers such as Snapchat and adapt to trends such as the migration of news and streaming video online.

In the latest move to deepen its reach, it revealed Monday it is starting production on high-quality television series and gaming shows to be broadcast on its platform.

Hate speech

Facebook is also under pressure - along with other social media giants - to tackle the proliferation of hate speech and extremist content, trolls and misinformation, while safeguarding freedom of speech online.

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube announced Monday the launch of an anti-terror partnership aimed at thwarting the spread of extremist content on the internet.

Each of the technology giants has been working individually to prevent its platforms or services from being used to spread extremist views.

Facebook posted details Tuesday on how it defines and enforces rules against hate speech on its platform. Last month, Zuckerberg said the company would hire 3,000 employees in the next year to review and remove offensive content posted by users.

Whether hate speech, propaganda or activism, governments across the globe have upped efforts to curb content deemed illegal from circulating on social networks. From drawn out court cases to blanket bans, DW examines how some countries try to stop the circulation of illicit content while others attempt to regulate social media.

In Germany, Justice Minister Heiko Maas has proposed a law that would impose heavy fines on social media companies, such as Facebook, for failing to take down posts containing hate speech. But Facebook has pushed back, saying "preventing and combating hate speech and fake news is a public task that the state cannot avoid." The law is currently being reviewed by a German parliamentary committee.

In 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled that European citizens had the right to request search engines, such Google and Bing, remove "inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive" search results linked to their name. Although Google has complied with the ruling, it has done so reluctantly, warning that it could make the internet as "free as the world's least free place."

In May, Ukraine imposed sanctions on Russian social media platforms and web services. The blanket ban affected millions of Ukrainian citizens, many of whom were anxious about their data. The move prompted young Ukrainians to protest on the streets, calling for the government to reinstate access to platforms that included VKontakte (VK), Russia's largest social network.

In 2015, the European Court of Justice ruled that Safe Harbor, a 15-year-old pact between the US and EU that allowed the transfer of personal data without prior approval, was effectively invalid. Austrian law student Max Schrems had launched the legal proceedings against Facebook in response to revelations made by former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, Edward Snowden.

In China, the use of social media is highly regulated by the government. Beijing has effectively blocked access to thousands of websites and platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Instead, China offers its citizens access to local social media platforms, such as Weibo and WeChat, which boast hundreds of millions of monthly users.

Author: Lewis Sanders IV

sri/rd (dpa, AFP, Reuters)

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Facebook now has two billion monthly users - Deutsche Welle

Its pretty widely accepted by this point that state and local CIOs are facing an uphill battle when it comes to pulling new talent into their respective agencies. Either they cant compete with the pay at places like Google or Amazon, or they just dont have a workplace people are drawn to.

However desperate many will tell you they are, few are in the spot of Hawaii geographically isolated with a considerable cost of living to contend with. And while it might be hard to feel sorry for anyone living and working in an island paradise, the fact of the matter is that the state has to work twice as hard to bring in qualified people.

The recruiting struggle led CIO Todd Nacapuy and the team at the Office of Enterprise Technology Services (ETS)to think outside the standard methods of hiring and embrace something a little different a pilot partnership with the professional social network LinkedIn.

Outside of the geographic challenges obviously that Hawaii has, we are always the No.1 or No.2 most expensive city in the U.S. to live in, he told Government Technology. But the bigger challenge is we dont have many large industries here in Hawaii to support higher paying salaries like they do in San Francisco or New York. Most of our companies here, the largest ones are about 2,500 to 3,000 people, so we have a very different socio-economic climate

But even with the challenges of luring new talent to the public service in a city with a considerable cost of living, the six-month test run that occured between October 2016 and April 2017 garnered substantial results for ETS. During the previous year, the state had 29 open positions and was able to fill six of them, only receiving an average of six applications per position.

A lot of times its called the cost of living in paradise, where you are going to make 20 to 25 percent less than you would in a comparable city on the mainland, Nacapuy said. That being said, obviously there are huge challenges, because then there is the state or public sector that is notorious for not being able to pay as much as the commercial sector can. You stack those two things against us, and trying to hire anybody in tech for the state of Hawaii becomes very, very challenging.

With the LinkedIn pilot, the state agency was able to bring on 13 people and vastly increased the visibility of and application rate for each open spot an average of 60 applicants per job.

Through LinkedIn and this marketing campaign, we were able to hire 13 people in six months, which for the state is a lot. We were able to fill basically 42 percent of our vacancies in that six-month period using LinkedIn, Nacapuy said.

By allowing a designated internal recruiter access to the suite of proprietary, data-driven tools, state officials are able to target talent based on their background and professional experience, sending direct InMail messages when a candidate really fits the ETS bill.

The inversion in the job seeker/employer relationship helped to not only target the right people, but also given the state more power to step away from the passive hiring processes of the past.

In trying to reach the right candidates, ETS also built up what the professional network calls the talent brand index, or what might otherwise be called brand recognition. As it stands after only a short pilot, ETS ranks at 62 percent talent brand index rating, compared to the next closest island-based brand at 19 percent.

Though the partnership does not come without a price tag which was not available at the time of the interview the ETS official said the recruiting tool is far more cost-effective than hiring a consultant to track down qualified applicants.

Rather than pony up the cash to hire a headhunter which can cost as much as 25 percent of the open positions salary Nacapuy said the LinkedIn pilot offered more control and engagement in an environment that is very competitive.

With the trial run complete, Nacapuy said that Gov. David Ige was pleased with the return on investment and that his agency will be recommending the LinkedIn service to other agencies with hard-to-fill positions. He hopes to take make the service live with the start of the new fiscal year, July 1.

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IT Applicants Increased Tenfold During Hawaii's Pilot Partnership With LinkedIn - Government Technology