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There were 203 Russians reportedly convicted for online speech crimes in 2015, and roughly half of those were for posting, sharing, or liking something on Russias Facebook clone, VK.com.

As a result, many Russians seem to be moving into a post-social-networking era. Specifically, they are turning to Telegram, an encrypted messaging service founded by Pavel Durov, the same person who started VK but was later forced out and became an open critic of the Kremlin.

Despite being developed as a messaging service, Telegram has been able to approximate a very basic social network. The services channels have been compared to newsletters, where authors build a subscriber base and following for their missives. Users cant chat in a channel or interact directly with its authors unless the author explicitly shares their Telegram username, which means less noise in the channels. Users can still share posts, however, which means memes and popular posts can still spread fast. Authors can grow a substantial following similar to YouTube or Facebook, although much smaller Telegram claims to have 100 million users, but even recommended channels have fewer than 50,000 followers. The ecosystem is also disjointed, with no central search engine and no good way to discover new channels without following a bot or looking at lists on the web.

Telegram isnt completely secure. There has been at least one report alleging that the Kremlin cracked Telegram, and its certainly not the most secure messaging app on the market. The Russian government also reportedly collaborated with a cell phone operator to take over two activists accounts in 2016.

So why do Russians prefer Telegram to the widely trusted encrypted messaging app Signal, or other messaging services that are more secure? The reason is the emphasis on publishing.

Anyone can log in and start a channel, but the interface is extremely minimal basically, it looks like crap. To make up for this, Telegram invites developers to make add-ons for its platform, including clients, and bots that let users add stickers, font styling, links, and polls. Authors can also use Telegrams service Telegra.ph, which is essentially a clone of Facebook Instant Articles.

Journalists and people working in media were the first to start posting in channels some anonymously, most by name. In some cases, their individual following is higher than the number of people subscribed to the official accounts of news organizations, many of which have their own channels on Telegram.

Today, Telegram has a great variety of channels. You can subscribe to skill channels and learn Excel in GIFs or find out about digital-marketing from professionals working in the industry. There is even a channel for a guy working as a surveyor and looking for oil in the Arctic, and one led by an aspiring doctor writing about medicine for millennials.

The app also supports a number of channels around delicate topics including drugs, raving, sex, and politics. Traditional shakedown near the Rodnya club, be ready, one techno channel posted, alerting its users.

There is also support for those dealing with mental illness. Psychostory is a channel allegedly run by a 25-year-old woman struggling with depression. I met with one of my subscribers today, she was in a state psychiatric clinic in her childhood, a recent post read in Russian. She told me that no one really cared about the kids with suicidal tendencies there, they just took all the sharp things away from them. Those children found rough walls lacked renovation and rubbed themselves to blood which sometime stayed unwashed for days. The author of this channel announced in February that she has a book contract with one of the biggest publishing houses in Russia. This is the first book from a Telegram channel, she wrote.

Even if you dont get a book deal, its possible to monetize a channel on Telegram with ads. The service doesnt have an official ad network, but it does have a primitive black market. Advertisers contact the owner of a channel to negotiate, and at least anecdotally, the clickthrough rates are good.

For many, Telegram is primarily a source of news. The information there is sometimes reliable, often not, and its difficult to tell but the app has been praised for circumventing the traditional state-controlled media.

Telegram hasnt escaped the Kremlins notice. In January, authorities were reportedly exploring ways to identify users of messaging apps including Telegram, WhatsApp, and Viber by regulating SIM card contracts. Then in February, some channel authors reportedly attended an unofficial meeting with Roskomnadzor. Afterward, one of the channel authors, who specializes in the intersection of politics and information technology, said that officials wanted to know more about how exactly Telegram works.

If anonymity is truly compromised on Telegram, much of its appeal for Russians will go away. Even though there is no way to vet sources of information on the app, its a thriving alternative to the increasingly censored web, where a user can go to jail for sharing a meme.

Andrey Urodov is a freelance journalist and the publisher of the magazine Russia Without Us.

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Russians are using Telegram like a - The Outline

While everyone was flabbergasted with the idea of social networking and Facebook was gaining importance, other technology giants also tried dipping their toes into the said ecosystem. One such social experiment So.Cl (pronounced social) came from the fun people at Microsoft Research FUSE Labs. But, the platform failed to gain traction and is now closing down after a five-year-long stint.

Microsoft debuted the said platform back in 2011, with the aim of providing consumers with a collaborative platform rather than the usual communication stack. It allowed them tocreate, collect and share everything from rich visual collages to short animated video (now known to us GIF). These posts or collections could be shared on So.Cl, as well as other existing social platforms as well.

When theplatform made its initial debut for students, before a wider roll out, it was being closely compared to Facebook or Twitter. It was being seen as Microsofts attempt to build a social network to take the competitors head-on. But, the company never intended the collaborative service to rival them as So.Cl itself used Facebook login to onboard users. Also, the visual and media-focused approach it followedwas reminiscent to Pinterest boards, if nothing else.

So.Cl quietly continued to exist on the interweb and mobile for a period longer than most wouldve imagined. The platform failed in its mission to redesign and enhance the social experience through the said approach. Thus, it is now going offline within a weeks time, on March 15. In an official blog post, FUSE Labs bid farewell to the experimental social network as under:

So.cl has been a wonderful outlet for creative expression, as well as a place to enjoy a supportive community of like-minded people, sharing and learning together. In supporting you, So.cls unique community of creators, we have learned invaluable lessons in what it takes to establish and maintain community as well as introduce novel new ways to make, share and collect digital stuff we love.

[emailprotected]

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Microsoft is shuttering its little-known experimental social network 'So.Cl' - The Tech Portal

Many argue that we are now connected more than ever. Human beings can have conversations with one another in an instant regardless of location or time zone thanks to social media. American psychologists recently determined, however, that social media sites have only intensified experiences of social isolation.

Psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine examined the use of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr. The team questioned 2,000 adults between the ages of nineteen and thirty-two. The study concluded that adults who spend more than two hours a day on social media were more than twice as likely to have feelings of loneliness.

The team theorizes that adults who spend more time on social media in turn spend less time on real-world interactions. Users can also feel excluded if they see pictures of their friends at an event that they were not invited to. To top it off, people tend to only post the best parts of their life on social media. Most who spend more time on sites like Instagram and Facebook are only looking at idealized versions of another persons life.

This is not the first time, and certainly will not be the last time, that the Internet is blamed for a variety of social ills. One 2014 study debunked the rumor that video games themselves caused violence, but revealed losing a game can increase aggression.

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Psychologists Claim Social Networking Sites Cause Higher Levels Of Loneliness - Hot Hardware

My God, you are an idiot! Those people [who share your political perspective] are vile and despicable and should be ashamed of themselves! Thats an actual quote from a Facebook conversation I participated in last week. Despite the easy access social media gives us to each other, the communication doesnt seem to be moving us toward greater understanding. Why is that, considering that Facebook and Twitter conversations share some things in common with transformative mediation sessions? In both situations, the participants are free to choose whether they speak, what they say, when they say it and how they say it. Theres no one with judicial authority involved; and theres no third party who sees it as their job to move the conversation toward agreement. So why do transformative mediations usually work out so much better than internet conversations?

It turns out that the presence of someone who is committed to and skilled at being supportive of all participants makes a big difference. Imagine a transformative mediator helping with the above conversation (assuming they were invited to do so by all the participants). The transformative mediator, when appropriate, would reflect what a party said, so Dan is an idiot, and that whole group are vile, despicable and should be ashamed. That intervention alone could have a big impact on the speaker. Just hearing, from another human being, exactly what youve just said, tends to lead to progress in your thinking. One possible direction might be that the speaker says, yes, well, Dan is sure talking like an idiot, Already, progress. The speaker has shifted to suggesting that I might not be a full-time idiot, but that I might be just very mistaken about this issue. A series of shifts along those lines and we could wind up having an intelligent policy discussion where we both learn something, including that neither of us is all that bad a person.

The presence of the transformative mediator usually allows everyone to think more clearly about the precise point they want to make. When they hear themselves reflected, they make progress in their own thinking. When they hear the other person reflected, theyre able to listen again while feeling less threatened and defensive, but while also facing up to the reality of what the other party said. The mediators ability to remain non-judgmental of both the other party and of oneself suggests that its possible for both sides to be tolerated.

So is it possible to apply the practices of the transformative mediator in ones own online discussions? Not exactly. Taking the role of mediator when one is also a party just doesnt work. But somehow, the above internet conversation ended with the following exchange: I truly enjoyed our talkIt is very nice talking to someone that doesnt cuss at you, try and tell you that you are a racist, etc..Feel free to jump in at any time that you might see a post of mine on here..Good luck, stay safe. Likewise, Brother.

So maybe theres hope?

Dan Simon writes the blog for the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. He is a national leader in the field of transformative mediation. He practices and teaches it in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He's trained mediators throughout the country for the U.S. Postal Service, the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, and as an Adjunct Professor at the Hofstra University School of Law. He serves on the Minnesota Supreme Court's ADR Ethics Board, is the Immediate Past Chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association's ADR Section; and he serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. He hasbeen the director of Twin Cities Mediation since he founded it in 1998. He helps with divorces, parenting differences, real estate issues, employment cases, business disputes, and neighbor to neighbor conflicts.

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Social Networking Ain't Transformative Mediation - Mediate.com

Enterprise Irregulars (blog)

What We Know About Making Enterprise Social Networks Successful Today Enterprise Irregulars (blog) It's a little hard to believe that it's been over ten years now since the first early enterprise social networks (ESN) emerged on the market to make their initial forays into our organizations. They showed us then and I believe even more now today ...

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What We Know About Making Enterprise Social Networks Successful Today - Enterprise Irregulars (blog)