Google+ reaches huge milestone: 1,000 “active” users

December 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google+, Google’s social network, has been a major focus at Google. They have put a lot of resources and effort into making it the social web that connects all of their products and services. Though it’s nothing more than a Facebook competitor, Google has much bigger plans for its product, planning to bring it to Google’s core to leverage interaction and valuable profile data to enhance their services. Though Google has been touting huge growth and massive amounts of new users, we decided to do our own research.

The latest numbers from Google claim that Google+ has reached 500 million users and 100 million “active users”. This is an impressive stat, given that the service has only existed for about a year and a half. But, when you actually use the service, you may notice that only 1 or 2 of your friends ever say a word on the service. Are we supposed to believe that 1 in 5 users are using Google+ on a regular basis? WRONG.

Though we had every intention of doing our own research, we actually didn’t have any way to conduct this research, or really any clue how we would get these numbers on our own. Luckily, we have an inside source at Google, so we just pawned it off on him (or her – but most likely him , let’s be honest). Anyway, long story short, there are only 1,000 total users using Google+ on a daily basis. And, the term “using” is meant to be taking lightly. We don’t mean posting every day, we mean actually visiting the site daily.

And if you were curious where Google came up with that 100 million “active users” number, they measure “active users” as a user who has logged in to the Google+ service at least once. One time. That means that 400 million users probably signed up on accident, or thought they were getting a Gmail account, or both.

Anyway, Merry Christmas.

Filed Under: Social Networks Tagged With: , , , ,

Instagram ignites users to read others’ Policies and Terms; scary stuff everywhere

December 20, 2012 By 2 Comments

Instagram has found themselves in hot water over changes that were made to the company’s Privacy Policy this week. According to the update, Instagram now has the legal option to sell any photo shared via the service. As one might expect, this was met with fierce criticism from the community, with many users swearing to leave the service forever. This also sparked a renewed interest in the reading and understanding the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies with all web services and applications, leading to shocking discoveries everywhere.

Our first tip came from a Farmville user. Deep in the Farmville Terms of Use was this little terrifying gem.

5.1.4  In the event of a situation that is deemed appropriate by Zynga or any entity or property of Zynga, the user may be asked to forfeit any number of U.S. dollars or personal assets to Zynga, determined by Zynga, and may not be contested by the user. The user will receive written notice via mail or electronic mail, and will be required to comply within thirty (30) days of the delivery of the written notice.

According to these terms, Zynga can simply take any amount of your personal money or assets for any reason they want. They can simply say “Hey, we want $10,000″ and you’d be legally required to send them a check within 30 days. Yikes!

Another tipster sent us this horrifying section in the Privacy Policy of the new MySpace.

44.2  If a user uploads an image or piece of content to MySpace that any executive, employee, member of the MySpace Board of Directors or Justin Timberlake disagrees with or believes in any way misrepresents the vision for MySpace, the user will be required to dismember their right index finger, then package and send said index finger to MySpace Headquarters via the United States Postal Service within five (5) business days.

How did this one slip by many thousands of users already? And who did they hire as their lawyer, the guy from Saw? It’s scary to think that there are savage terms like these buried within a policy that no one reads. What else have we agreed to without our knowledge?

Probably this. A tipster sent us this paragraph from Facebook’s Terms of Use.

551.22  Facebook does not, in no way, not own your entire identity. All content uploaded to and provided to Facebook, and content not uploaded to Facebook but can be discovered through other means, including but not limited to photos, videos, messages, phone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, passports and credit card numbers, will not not be property of Facebook. Facebook vows to never not have the ability to do anything and everything deemed necessary with this data and content, for any reason at any time.

If you can navigate the double negatives, I’m pretty sure Facebook said that they can and will own all of your identity and will do anything they want with it at any time. That’s frightening.

I think it’s safe to say that we should all just stop clicking “I Agree” to every Terms of Use and policy and start reading these things before we all become property of Internet services.

Filed Under: Business, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Could you please teach your uncle how Socialcam works? [OPINION]

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today’s post was written by a teenage girl, and then heavily edited for spelling and grammar.

I don’t think your creepy uncle knows how Socialcam works. Or maybe he really is just that creepy. Does he know we can all see what he’s watching on his Facebook? It was fine when he was watching stuff like My new kitten first jump fail. A little strange for him, but at least its cute. And I’d expect TOP 10 NBA Lucky shots. Not my thing, but whatever. But it is not OK for Check out Ashton in our football bikini to show up in my feed. I don’t want to know that he’s watching that. Isn’t he like 49? Or Lost my bikini. Gross. And why is he watching Guy caught masturbating in car? I don’t think he knows how Socialcam works.

This is becoming a real problem. You really need to do something about this. Does your Aunt know he’s looking at this stuff? Does she know she’s married to a total creeper? If you don’t stop him, it could really ruin his marriage. And weird stuff like Something is Growing. Double Gross. Where did Two-Headed Animals come from? Where did he find that? Why do I have to see that?

Look, for the rest of us, could you explain to your creepy uncle how the Internet works? God knows what will happen if he figures out he can use it on his phone. I don’t want to see him posting his own videos. He doesn’t have an iPhone, does he?

And why did your uncle friend me on Facebook anyway? Creepy.

Filed Under: Columns, Social Networks, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

NASDAQ fired over compromising Facebook photos

May 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In a stunning series of events this morning, MockCrunch has learned that the SEC and FINRA plan to announce that they have pulled the charter allowing NASDAQ to work as an exchange, essentially firing him. While details are still coming together, it appears as though NASDAQ, which recently signed up on the social networking service Facebook, was photographed in some compromising situations. Many Americans will be familiar with losing their job after appearing in questionable Facebook photos, but NASDAQ is perhaps the highest profile casualty of Mark Zuckerberg’s crusade to make the world less private.

NASDAQ, who only signed up for Facebook two weeks ago, was still shocked when we reached him for comment. “I don’t know what happened. Honestly, I am a good person. I have been selling securities for over 40 years now. I have a great reputation. It’s not like I am some sort of hedge fund manager.”

When we reached Mark Zuckerberg for comment, he seemed very put off. “I am busy hunting right now. Do you know how much time it takes to hunt everything you eat? Why do you think our privacy settings are so hard to understand? Besides, it’s not my fault that NASDAQ is a slut.”

NASDAQ was seen pole dancing with escorts and call girls. That would have been enough, but he was also seen doing the 80′s stock broker salute, snorting cocaine off of a stripper’s ass.

NASDAQ, who is now working at a Brooklyn Audi dealership, shared his frustration with the privacy settings in Facebook. “They told me that it would be easy to control my privacy. It felt so good to get Facebook before NYSE, but then I lost all of my money on Facebook stock and now I lost my job. Do you know how hard it is to get a job as a stock exchange? I saw the Lehman brothers yesterday and they just laughed at me.”

NASDAQ appears to be more like an everyday slacker than his reputation suggests. “The joke is on Zuck. I wiped my ass on that bell everyday.”

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Networks, Technology Tagged With: ,

Congress Demands Return of Facebook Poke Button

May 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

facebookThe United States Congress has issued a demand to Mark Zuckerberg, the new billionaire head of Facebook: “Bring back the Poke Button”. It seems, although most people didn’t really notice it was missing, that it is in fact, missing. However, upon investigation, we were able to find the elusive button. We found it buried in the “settings” menu on our friends’ pages. To find out why this has happened – out of pure curiosity and not real concern – we contacted the Director of Poking (yes, the title is real) at Facebook in Palo Alto, CA. We were surprised to receive a quick response from Andy Baldwin. Yes, the same Andy Baldwin of ABC’s The Bachelor. Here is an excerpt of his response:

Lt. , U.S. Navy, who was a contestant on the t...

…[Mark] Zuck[erberg] pulled the plug on poking. I don’t care if I get fired over this response, but that smarmy weasel can kiss my smooth hot ass. Turns out, he made the button as a way to feel like he was poking girls. I suppose since he couldn’t get laid in real life, he would “poke” every girl who joined Facebook. He even has this wall in his office, where he puts a mark for every girl he poked. Anyway, he has essentially killed my job – I won’t be here much longer. Why did he get rid of the poke? I can’t say for sure, but it may have something to do with pressure from his investors. I saw a lot of “professional” looking women going in his office ever since he pulled the poke…

We thanked Mr. Baldwin for his time and set our sights on Congress. We interviewed a Congressman who wished to remain anonymous, so we’ll call him Congressman Bill Long representing the 7th District of Missouri. Bill said the entire congress is in an uproar over the missing button. When asked why, he stated that he and his colleagues have used the poke for years as a contest and to gauge the availability of chicks. Startled, we asked him to clarify. After reassuring the Congressman (Bill Long, 7th District, Missouri) that we would keep is comments anonymous, he gave us more detail:

079 Capitol Hill United States Congress 1993

“Around the congressional offices it is sort of a game to see how many babes we can poke. And if they poke back, then we get a notch on our desk. If you poked a honey three times, and she poked back three times, that meant you could get a ‘real’ poke – if you know what I mean. My desk looks like a serrated knife. This is anonymous, right?”

We reassured Congressman Bill Long, 7th District, Missouri, that this was an anonymous interview.

I suppose we will wait and see how Facebook responds to this demand.

Filed Under: Facebook, Politics, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Facebook IPO uncovered as a Ponzi scheme by SEC [BREAKING]

May 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In 2004, Eduardo Saverin registered a business in Massechusets. The company was registered as “The Facebook Inc.” This is a story that we’re all familiar with: a Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg built a website that has taken the world by storm. This is the story that was told to Savern’s investors. He said that Facebook was changing the world. He said that it was used by the hundreds of millions. There’s just one problem. Zuckerberg and the website never existed. Today, the Securities and Exchange Commision has released documents after an investigation detailing a long running Ponzi scheme that ends with valueless stock being sold to the general public.

At first the scheme was easy. The Facebook was an exclusive site. He told his investors that only Harvard students could use the site, and that’s why the investors couldn’t see it. In order to raise more money, Saverin had to convince investors that the site was growing. He continued the story, acting like it was open to other colleges, and then high schools. This ploy got him further, but at some point, in order to keep the investment money flowing, he had to open the fake site to the public.

This is where the scheme got much more complicated for Saverin. Once open to the public, his investors wanted to join the site that didn’t exist. Saverin hired a team of developers in India to put together a basic functioning website. He then used Mechanical Turk to create tons of fake users in the database. This was just enough to convince the investors that The Facebook was legit. Some questioned why they couldn’t see any information from the claimed millions of other users. He told them that they could only see content and profile information from their “friends”. This was the start of social media as we know it.

The developers had left the website open to the public and a few people started signing up for the website. Worried that people might find out that the website was only a sham, he started hiring cheap foreign labor to play the part of the new users’ friends. They would spy on the friends of the users that were joining and create fake profiles and content for those people. Even today, Facebook only has about 2,000 users, and their friends’ activity is being written by non-english speaking people, which explains all the bad grammar and misspellings.

Eduardo Saverin fled the United States years ago and continued to run this scheme. He just renounced his citizenship and his whereabouts are unknown, but the FBI would like to know any information you may have. With the release of the SEC’s investigation, Facebook’s stock is expected to plummet, as Facebook has no real assets. Mockcrunch has placed a target price of $0.01 and a SELL rating on FB.

Filed Under: Facebook, Finance, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

GM discovers why $10M Facebook campaign was ineffective: it never began

May 16, 2012 By 4 Comments

On the eve of Facebook’s IPO, General Motors made the surprising announcement that they will be pulling out of their advertising efforts on Facebook, worth around $10 million annually, claiming that their ads were ineffective. GM was one of the highest spending advertisers on Facebook, causing speculation of the true value of Facebook ads. Many are now concerned for the future of the social network and their long-term growth potential. Upon further investigation, it appears that GM never actually started any Facebook campaign at all. The team in charge of the campaign at GM never figured out how to use Facebook’s ad platform.

We reached out to Jody Liscrow, Social Media Manager at GM for comment. “We had no idea that the campaign wasn’t running. I remember we went into the platform and set up some ad targets. Well, at least I think we did. Now that I really think about it, I don’t know if we even got that far”, she said. “We weren’t really sure what we were supposed to do. Facebook has very little documentation on their website and no customer service team to help us. We were left to figure all this out on our own, and it didn’t go very well.”

This was not the first time that GM’s social media team made an astronomical mistake. Back in 2011, an accidental and very inappropriate personal tweet went out on GM’s company Twitter account.

GM’s CEO is said to be making an announcement today regarding the fate of their social media team. If we had to guess, we’d say it doesn’t look very good.

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Pinterest goes unused during Mother’s Day

May 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

Since its launch in Spring of 2010, Pinterest has seen unprecidented user growth. It was the fastest site to reach 10 million unique visitors, and it has acheived an estimated 20 million users. A majority of Pinterest’s users are female. Some estimates pin female users outnumbering males 4 to 1. This may help explain a curiosity that Pinterest’s servers experienced yesterday.

Pinterest’s IT staff got an alert at about 10AM that server traffic was only 1% of normal volume. This is normally a symptom that something is preventing users from accessing the site. They scrambled to find out what it was that was blocking people from the website. Internally, the servers showed no connectivity problems. Amazon’s cloud services were all operating normally. No one at the office had trouble getting to the website.  The Pinterest employees continued trying to identify the problem until about 1pm when server traffic started slowly climbing.

At this point, they realized that all of their users were being taken out to brunch. The demographic of females between 25 and 54 with children were all celebrating Mother’s Day. At that moment, the intrepid IT team remembered to call their mothers and wish them a Happy Mother’s Day. Except for Steve, who just sent his mother an offensive but witty link on someecards. She pinned it later that day.

We contacted Simone Overton, 48 year old mother of two, to get a users perspective on the false alarm.

Oh sure, I’m normally on Pinterest first thing on Sunday mornings, but Frank took me down to Millie’s Cafe for Brunch. It was so sweet of him. They had the most delectable kale and goat cheese frittata. I found a recipe online as soon as I got home and pinned it to my brunch board. I was happy to see that it got two repins that afternoon! My girlfriend said that she would have her daughter make it for her next Mother’s Day.

Filed Under: Social Networks Tagged With: , , ,

Shocking new evidence proves Abraham Lincoln really did invent Facebook

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, a blogger posted a long-winded story claiming he had proof that Abraham Lincoln invented Facebook. His story was an adventure which lead him to discover a patent filed in 1845 by Abraham Lincoln for a newspaper comprised of Facebook-like profiles and status updates. The patent stated “every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors.” Or in other words, Facebook.

Shortly after he broke this story, it went viral. Thousands of people began to share the story. Then, credible media sources got word of it and stated it was a hoax all along. At Mockcrunch, we were not going to allow the “gotcha media” to sweep this important part of our history under the rug. We went out and began our own investigation. We consulted with the most prestigious hackers and sleuths in the world, including the famous Sherlock Holmes, who unfortunately ended up being useless and computer illiterate, carrying nothing more than a magnifying glass. But I digress. Our hackers did their job, and boy did we find a gem.

Extensive research lead us to a very interesting domain: facegazette.com. Take a look at the WhoIs information.

This was pulled directly from NetworkSolutions WhoIs page. If you’d like to see it for yourselves, visit any WhoIs service and search for the domain facegazette.com. This discovery is remarkable. Even the address listed on the domain matches the address of his residence in 1845, right around the time he had filed the patent. Abraham Lincoln was clearly getting his ducks in a row, as he registered a .com domain name for this Facebook-like service using GoDaddy before GoDaddy or the Internet even existed. Not only does this domain registration give us damn-near surefire proof that Abraham Lincoln really did invent Facebook, but this is phenomenal evidence of something much bigger: time travel. There is no other logical explanation for our findings.

We reached out to famous American astrophysicist Irwin I. Shapiro to help us make sense of this. He wouldn’t take our call. Nevertheless, we have a feeling that this story is far from over.

Filed Under: Facebook, History, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Zuckerberg cancels Facebook IPO: “No hoodie, no IPOie” [BREAKING]

May 10, 2012 By 3 Comments

One week from now, Facebook was expected to launch their highly anticipated IPO, allowing employees, shareholders and the general public the ability profit off of the dominating social network. Everything seemed to be lined up and ready to go. Facebook even prepared a roadshow to entice investors. Well, that was until an analyst was interviewed on Bloomberg TV, making remarks that caused a very unexpected result: the end of Facebook’s IPO.

Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities and one of the first analysts to give Facebook a “buy” rating, was questioned on why he believed Mark Zuckerberg was a risk for Facebook. His reply caused a stir. “Mark and his signature hoodie: He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him; he’s going to do what he’s always done. I think that’s a mark of immaturity.” Shortly after this interview, Mark got wind of it, and he wasn’t happy.

Today, Zuckerberg himself released the following statement.

Michael thinks he’s soooo smart. “I wear a suit so I’m mature”. You know what Michael? I built a f*cking social network in this hoodie that most of the PLANET uses! Facebook has more users than you’ve had minutes alive, which I assume is a hell of a lot since you’re like 120 years old, you old butt munch. What have you done with your life? Trade stocks? In a suit? Sounds dumb. And really uncomfortable. You should wear a hoodie sometime. And take that stick out of your ass while you’re at it. Oh yeah, one more thing. You want immaturity? How’s this. No hoodie, no IPOie. Yep, I’m canceling the IPO. Sucks to be you.

As if this statement and decision wasn’t shocking enough, it is said that Zuckerberg made it irrationally and entirely on his own. He didn’t consult with a board member or fellow executive, similar to when he made the decision to acquire Instagram for $1 billion. This is classic Zuckerberg and clearly justifies Michael’s concerns. We’ll watch as this story continues to develop.

Filed Under: Facebook, Finance, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , ,
« Older Posts