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Growth in the more established social media platforms has slowed here, while newer mobile-based apps are gaining ground, according to the latest research into Irish social networking habits.

Ipsos MRBIs quarterly survey of 1,000 Irish adults aged 15 and over has shown that while just 22% of people use photo-messaging app Snapchat, it is second only to Facebook in terms of the proportion of users who use the medium on a daily basis.

Facebook remains the social networking platform with the most account holders in the country, with 61% of people having an account. This is followed by Twitter (29%), LinkedIn, Google Plus (both 24%), and Instagram (18%).

Skype is the largest social messaging medium in Ireland, with half of adults having an account. It is followed by Viber (40%), Facebook Messenger (39%), Whatsapp (31%), and Snapchat (22%).

However, the survey shows that while just over one in five Irish people have a Snapchat account, it has recorded a higher growth in the number of users than any other medium since Ipsos MRBI first recorded its usage last November.

In November 2013, just 13% of Irish people had a Snapchat account, which has since increased to 22%.

Snapchats growth is bolstered by the frequency with which it is used 63% check the app every day. This daily usage rate compares favourably to Twitter (38%), LinkedIn (13%), and Skype (7%). Nearly half of Whatsapp users avail of the service on a daily basis.

Communications consultant Damien Mulley said the results show that Facebook, which also owns Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, remains the dominant player in the social media market.

However, Mr Mulley said the slow growth of older social networks that were originally accessed via desktops compared to the more mobile-friendly newer entrants to the market suggests that social networking traffic is now predominantly mobile-driven.

He said he is now advising clients to engage with Snapchat to build up a following as its users are a lucrative market of people aged under 30 with discretionary income.

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Slowdown in growth of social media sites

Are you a 1-percenter who needs a safe social media outlet to talk about your first-world problems, without the risk of alienating your commoner friends? Now you have an alternative to the impoverished unwashed masses of Facebook. Enter Netropolitan.club, an exclusive digital country club -- essentially, Facebook for rich people.

For a cool $9,000 first-year membership fee (and $3,000 a year every year after that), high-rollers can crowdsource names for their yachts or complain about having to fly commercial to a like-minded, sympathetic audience. Netropolitan is billing itself as the worlds most exclusive online community, one that will allow affluent and accomplished individuals worldwide to socialize in a completely private and secure manner. With the hefty subscription prices, Netropolitan can afford to be ad-free. And the posts will be moderated by the company's own "professional moderators." Businesses will be able to create groups and advertise to each other, albeit under strict guidelines, according to Netropolitan's information site.

Netropolitan was created by James Touchi-Peters, a composer, performer and former conductor of the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra. Michelle Lawless from Media Minefield, Netropolitans PR firm, told the Los Angeles TimesNetropolitan was inspired by the discomfort Touchi-Peters and his friends felt when they talked about certain topics that could be construed as bragging on traditional social networking sites, where they were met with a little ill will. But Netropolitan, she explained, is designed to be the place to talk about your last European vacation or new car without the backlash.

Unlike the young and the rich on Instagram (as chronicled on Rich Kids of Instagram, a tumblr that aggregates their shameless bragging on the photo sharing app) the rich of Netropolitan.club will be far more discreet -- limiting their sharing to their peer group.

Perhaps the Wall Street Journals recently lampooned video explaining how you can make $400,000 a year and still feel broke" would have been better suited for Netropolitan.club.

Link:
Netropolitan: Social Networking For Rich People

NEARLY everyone lives by their smartphone these days, including U.S. Supreme Court justices. In Riley v. California, the nations highest court recently acknowledged this, finding all citizens have a Fourth Amendment right of privacy in their cellphones. The often-divided court was unanimous.

Before the Riley decision, lower courts were split on whether it was necessary to obtain a warrant before searching a suspects cellphone. Justice John Roberts definitively settled the dispute: Get a warrant.

The federal and Washington state constitutions are often tested in the context of criminal activity, but the ramifications of this ruling are weighty and will send ripples well beyond criminal suspects. The Riley decision speaks to the privacy rights of all in the digital age, including public employees.

Washington states Constitution provides citizens broader privacy rights than the Fourth Amendment, and the state Supreme Court has been ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue.

The Riley ruling will help decrease harassment of public employees by prison inmates and others who attempt to use Washington states Public Records Act to violate the privacy rights of teachers, firefighters, police officers, prosecutors and other public servants.

Pierce County and other government entities have been sued by requesters who wrongly claim the Public Records Act is a license to search the personal phones of public servants to determine if there have been work-related conversations or if personal phones were used during work hours. This far-fetched and shortsighted theory violates the privacy of public servants, their families, friends, and everyone who contacts them.

Such lawsuits against Pierce County have been twice dismissed by Superior Court judges, though the issues are continuing to wind through the courts. The Superior Court agreed that personal phone records and text messages are not public records and are protected by both the Washington and U.S. constitutions.

Public servants and other law-abiding citizens do not have fewer rights than criminals.

Some argue public servants could hide behind the state or federal constitution and somehow create shadow governments, and therefore they should give up their constitutional rights. Imagine, teachers could be forced to turn over their personal phones to be searched for public records because they might have talked or texted with a students parent. This is a good premise for a dystopian movie, but a bad law for a free society, and fortunately this is not the law in the United States or in Washington state.

Our federal Supreme Court has specifically held that public employees do not give up their constitutional rights by working for the public. Public employees make sacrifices to serve our communities, but they do not sacrifice their constitutional rights. Like private-sector employees, public-sector employees have a free-speech right to talk about their work and a constitutional right to privacy as well. Private landlines, which do not create public records, did not result in shadow governments and neither will personal cellphones.

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Guest: Why the privacy of a public employees cellphone matters

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