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Considerations for youth and social networking Part 4: Sharing photos Helping youth make decisions about photos they share online.

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Christine Heverly, Michigan State University Extension

According to a 2015 Pew Research, 92 percent of teenagers 13-17 years old report going online daily and 71 percent are using at least one social networking site. With this high usage of social networking and teenagers going online, there are many factors adults should consider when helping youth navigate their usage of social networking sites. This article specifically looks at helping youth with the photos they share online. Adults need to help youth understand the different outcomes of sharing a photo online and to others.

Youth should consider the following two major factors.

Disappearing doesnt mean gone forever. With youth using disappearing apps like Snapchat, they need to understand that photo isnt necessarily gone. Once a youth sends the photo to another person, that person can easily share the photo with others. One should never assume your content is 100 percent safe from other people taking the information and sharing with someone else.

Youth could lose out on opportunities. The pictures one chooses to share online help paint a picture for others to make judgements about that youth. Potential jobs, college admission officers, scholarship selection committees, etc. could possibly see the photos that are being shared online. That could mean a youth may miss out on a job, scholarship or another opportunity.

To help adults educate youth about taking time to consider the outcomes of sharing photos online, Michigan State University Extension has some questions parents or other adults should share with youth:

Youth enjoy sharing photos through social media tools, so it is extremely important to help them understand what they share online can be seen by others, even if that wasnt the original intent. Adults should help youth understand that every picture that is shared with others paints a picture of that youth. Others can use this information to make assumptions about the youth or even locate a youth.

Technology changes, apps come and go, and the next wave in social media platforms will come about, but that doesnt change the guidelines youth should consider around the photos they are sharing. Adults should continually be reminding youth they need to take a few moments to think before sharing a photo.

Check out this previous articles in this series below, and watch for future articles that will continue to explore different areas of sharing information on social networks.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit http://www.msue.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit http://www.msue.msu.edu/newsletters. To contact an expert in your area, visit http://expert.msue.msu.edu, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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Considerations for youth and social networking Part 4: Sharing photos - Michigan State University Extension

One of the topics that generates strong feelings in the online world is adblocking. Many users love it, but many publishers hate it. That's a big problem, because advertising has turned into the main way of funding what appears on the Internet. As adblockers become more common, so the advertising revenue available to pay for creating articles, images, sound and video diminishes. Some want to ban adblockers, but that's hardly a solution: forcing visitors to your site to view ads they hate is not a good way to foster a long-term business relationship. Improving ads seems a better approach, but that's easier said than done, and may come too late now that so many people have installed adblockers.

The other obvious solution is to charge people to view online material. There's been a certain reluctance to try that approach, partly because of the misleading slogan "information wants to be free", and partly because historically it hasn't worked in general. But it seems that major online players in China are now starting to roll out the paid-for model, perhaps in part because adblockers are widely used there, as in the West. Here's what the biggest online service, WeChat, with a billion accounts created, and at least 700 million active users, is trying, as reported by technode:

WeChat, Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s social networking and chat app, will roll out paid services for the content offered by official accounts, an authority at the Chinese internet giant told Yicai Global.

WeChat invited selected official accounts to trial its paid content function, which is not open to general users for the time being.

As their name suggests, WeChat's "official" accounts are a step up from personal ones. They can be be verified for a fee, and allow services to be offered. A few years ago, there were 8 million such accounts; the number today is likely to be higher. The same technode article reports on research carried out by WeChat's parent company Tencent:

A survey of more than 1,700 netizens conducted by a Tencent research unit found 55 percent of respondents had paid for professional knowledge or advice, including paid content and documents in the past year. Over 50 percent of Chinese netizens have paid or are willing to pay for contents, compared with only 30 percent two years ago, an iResearch report found.

Another established Chinese company that hopes it can get its users to pay for online material is Douban, an upmarket social network focusing on the arts, with around 200 million users. China Film Insider has news about Douban Time, a new paid-for service:

Douban Time will feature curated texts, images and sound from experts and writers in different fields. Catering to its audience, Douban Times first offering is a 102-episode poetry review program which will invite poets and critics to give lessons in poetry appreciation.

Although 102 episodes on poetry appreciation might sound like something of a specialized offering, it is probably well-suited to Douban's sophisticated user base. And perhaps it will turn out that the solution to finding alternative business models for online publishing is precisely this kind of niche approach, rather than the current advertising system based on volume, that is now struggling badly.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Read more from the original source:
Is This The Future Of Online Publishing? Leading Chinese Social ... - Techdirt

We all know that good information is the requisite ingredient for effective analysis and investment decision-making. The ability to gather analytical inputs or tradable information about a company or security in advance of the market can enhance investment returns.

In the past, when information moved slowly and was difficult to come by, analysts who could find and incorporate relevant and usable data about companies, securities, or the capital markets had a distinct edge.

Mining Reputable Data in the Social Media Revolution

Today with the democratization of data and the social media revolution, access is no longer such an advantage. Countless information sources for investments are available online, and data can be easily accessed and shared across social networks with the click of a mouse.

According to a survey conducted by The Pew Research Center, 62% of U.S. adults now get their news from social media. The reasons are simple: By the time a news organization gets hold of a story for us to read on their traditional platforms, its already old news. And thanks to fancy algorithms, our social networks know what news we want and feed it to us in a more timely fashion.

For better or worse, social media can yield investment information just as it can disseminate the news. But harnessing the gathering power of social media is a daunting task. For most individual investors, even following a single social media platform, like Twitter, for a sense of user sentiment or to form an investment outlook can be like drinking from a fire hose.

When information is so readily found, access has little value. In fact, we have access to too much data. What has become more valuable today is being able to distinguish and differentiate usable and reputable signals from all the noise.

With new technologies that pair Big Data and Machine Learning, there may be ways to channel the deluge.

During the Super Bowl for example, LikeFolio used its social data technology to collect and process millions of tweets to measure the effectiveness of the ad campaigns and rate how well the sponsoring company leveraged its advertising spend, Forbes reported.

Similar technology can transform social data into analytical inputs or investment decisions, and create practical insights from massive amounts of social data. Though these tools are not yet readily accessible or available at a reasonable price point for individual investors, given the demand, it wont be long before they are.

Fake News vs. Trusted Networks

Sifting through social media data is only one factor.

What about the trust issue?

How do we know whether the data shared across social media is reputable? Unfortunately, fake news and other misinformation proliferate online, and people looking to influence the pricing of assets or securities may resort to it.

Social networks designed specifically for traders and investors have the potential to mitigate much of this trust problem.

Those interested in trading the market can join eToro, ZuluTrade, Collective2, and Scutify to access and emulate numerous traders and their trades. Members can follow individual traders and make investment decisions based on those transactions, and some of these networks even feature high performers or rate traders according to their investment track record. Although pricing varies by platform, these sites offer similar services and are organized along similar lines.

Other social networks -- TradingView, for example -- are forums where investors can exchange trading ideas, information and place live orders.

These platforms offer a variety of content articles, commentary, investment information, etc. that are developed and shared just like on other social networks, and can feature analytical input and education on investment topics.

There are two traditional ways that people learn the principles and best practices of investment management. One is to emulate the strategies and tactics of successful investors. The other is to identity common investor mistakes and avoid them.

The power of investor-focused social networks is that they help investors do both.

These platforms are moving in the right direction and already provide value for short-term traders. That said, they have yet to fully harness the power of social communities for all investors.

As more longer-term investors grow comfortable sharing their profiles, investment ideas, and performance histories, these networks will generate usable statistics not only about investors, but about what strategies and tactics work and dont work in various market scenarios.

Just as consumer products are evaluated today, new investment ideas will be discussed, tested over time, and then subjected to peer review through economic cycles. To all that, add new tools that can compile sentiment and other usable data from the output of other social networks. The combination of those inputs could be the catalyst for a comprehensive, expert, and market driven approach to investment analysis.

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Investing in the Age of Social Networking - Huffington Post

Youths aged between 13 and 17 were given tips on how they should behave online in order to have a positive experience on Facebook and Instagram.

Malta ranks in at second place across all EU countries in terms of the number of internet users that engage is social media activity.

The BeSmartOnline! project is implemented by the Malta Communications Authority, the Foundation for Social Welfare Services and the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education.

Representatives from Facebooks safety team and BeSmartOnline! visited students at St Michaels Church School, Higher Secondary in Naxxar and the Youth Caf group in Cottonera, which is managed by Aenzija gaag.

Youths aged between 13 and 17 were given tips on how they should behave online in order to have a positive experience on Facebook and Instagram. A number of resources were distributed, including a booklet specifically designed and developed by Facebook, which was also translated to Maltese.

On the second day, over 140 educators from various schools across Malta and Gozo were given an explanation of the measures Facebook takes to contribute to the well-being of youth.

They were introduced to Facebook's internal mechanism that deals with reports received and the difficulties and restrictions they encounter; the difficulties brought about by the complex nature of some of the reports received, either by ethical and/or legislative restrictions; and the sheer number of reports and data exchanged.

Moreover, they were given a thorough explanation of the resources Facebook produce specifically for educators and how these can be adapted in schools.

The rise of social media has sparked numerous discussions on the impact it is having on personal and social relationships. Regardless of the potential negative perceptions, one cannot ignore the opportunities offered through the positive use of social media tools.

Facebook has undertaken various initiatives to exploit its unique position of having such an extensive and complex networked community and has been very active in the field of missing children through initiatives such as Child Rescue Alert and Amber Alert recently launched in Malta.

Most recently Facebook has introduced suicide prevention tools, which exploit the intricacies of friends in order to connect a person in distress with people who can support them. These, and other initiatives, are undertaken as part of Facebook's drive to help build a safe community both online and offline.

Laura Bononcini, Head of Public Policy for Italy, Greece and Malta, said that Facebook believes safety is the shared responsibility of all social media user.

This is why we provide tools that help you stay safe while using Facebook, we want to educate people on Facebook and encourage them to use our safety features, she said.

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Facebook and BeSmartOnline! highlight safety concerns of social networking - MaltaToday

The initiative is part of enhancing transparency and regulating the practice of offering products and services for sale on social media. e-Trader provides an added marketing channel and ecommerce platform to the business community in Dubai and underlines DEDs commitment to enhance ease of doing business as well as overall competitiveness and sustainability in Dubai.

We are delighted to launch e-Trader as it will have a significant role in promoting consumer confidence in shopping for products and services on social networking sites. Through this initiative, we aim to promote and facilitate doing business in Dubai and introduce new solutions capable of contributing to economic development in Dubai, and the UAE in general, said Omar Bushahab, CEO of BRL sector in DED.

Bushahab explained that e-Trader not only eliminates obstacles for social media users but also improves accountability and intellectual property protection. Licencing a business activity enhances consumer confidence on one hand and on the other it removes the risk of infringement on a reserved trade name or other intellectual property. A licence guarantees the rights of everyone concerned and defines the legal accountability of the merchant.

The e-Trader licence can be registered under the name of a single owner only and the owner must be an Emirati or GCC citizen aged 18 or above and residing in Dubai. The e-Trader cannot open a shop or issue visas and in case of a legal dispute, the licensee alone will be held responsible.

Abdul Aziz Bin Hathboor, Director of Customer Relations in BRL, said the e-Trader licence offers varied privileges to the merchant, most notably a detailed user feedback and observations on the merchants products and services.

Bin Hathboor said the first phase of the initiative will include creating awareness among traders and owners of social networking sites on the benefits of e-Trader. Nearly 3,000 e-Traders are expected to be licenced in Dubai in 2017.

"Those who wish to obtain an e-Trader licence can complete the registration by visiting the site http://www.etradr.ae and entering their details, such as proof of identity, type of business activity and the account through which products and services will be displayed. Once the entries are validated and payment completed, the licence will be electronically issued, said Bin Hathboor.

Link:
DED launches 'e-Trader' to licence business activities across social networking accounts - CPI Financial