Social round-up: Facebook Graph Search, the weapons people take on aeroplanes and saving seas with Kickstarter

Facebook announced this week that it is going to start rolling out Graph Search to every user whose language is set to US English. So, what’s the big whoop?

Well, it takes Facebook stalking from creepy to super creepy, as you can use the new feature to search for things like ‘Photos my friends took in London’ and ‘Mexican restaurants in Glasgow’. You will be shown results which are ‘Liked’ by your friends, as well as those by strangers.

Don’t worry though, you can apparently thwart any mega stalkers by tightening up your privacy settings and checking who can see what on your profile.

Businesses can’t pay to advertise through Graph Search (make their page appear at the top of search results) yet... but I’m pretty convinced it will only be a matter of time. It will be interesting to see the reaction to Graph Search and how it’s used by businesses and consumers.

You’re probably going to see some ‘OMG FACEBOOK’S SEARCH BAR HAS CHANGED WTF?!’ Just a heads up, in case you want to take a holiday around that time.

Twitter evading tax?

The rumour mill is a-turning this week, after Twitter reported retained profits of just £92,000 last year. Eyebrows are being raised as the site was tipped for a sweet £7.3billion flotation.

Will Twitter be the next name on the list of people we’re shaking our fists at for dodgy tax evasion ways? Apparently the reason for its sneaky ways is the fact that it's using some controversial corporate structure in Ireland to book sales from British advertisers. Hmmmm...

Whatever it is Twitter's doing, it seems like it needs to calm the hoards pretty quickly, or it'll have a backlash on its hands.*

*People writing nasties about it online.

Save our seas: Kickstarter project

An ocean farmer has launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to change the impact we have on our seas. Bren Smith and his team are currently using two lines to grow fresh seaweed and mussles, but they are looking for funding to add at least 10 more.

Smith, founder of ‘Project Green Wave’ is pushing to grow high-quality local food, encourage ecosystem restoration and transition fishing communities into a blue-green economy.

Whilst this sounds like a GCSE Biology lesson, it’s way more interesting because you’re reading it through your computer screen and are not being bored to tears by a teacher with serious coffee breath.

The project has just crossed its $30,000 goal, but there are still 10 days left in the campaign for all you eco warriors out there.

The TSA takes on Instagram

America’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has taken to Instagram.

Fortunately, TSA is not over-sharing pictures of what its team are having for lunch, but instead the agency is using it as its latest move to draw attention to the number of menacing weapons fliers are trying to take onboard airplanes.

There are only 11 pictures up there at the moment, but they include a stun gun disguised as a packet of cigarettes and several loaded guns. It’s a great use of Instagram, bringing awareness to the fact that people are STILL trying to fly with weapons.

You can keep an eye on what they’re confiscating on their Instagram account, tsablogteam.

Social media first at scene: Asiana Airlines

Social media (and Twitter in particular) are often slated for the misrepresentation of news, including reporting ‘news’ without any evidence.

However, it came into its own last week as an Asiana airplane crash landed at San Francisco airport. The first on-scene report came via Path (and Twitter) from Samsung exec David Eun, who posted about what was going on. His tweet has gained 32,958 retweets and his followers have gone from around 2,000 to over 25,000.

Social media was particularly effective in this instance as there was no way for the traditional media to get on the scene, so many people were relying on social updates from those on the scene.

So, whilst it can be incredibly irritating when you see a celebrity’s name trending and you automatically assume they’re dead, social can be incredibly useful for reporting news from around the world. TAKE THAT HATERZ.