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Some social news you might have missed as Facebook dominates the headlines

By Iona St Joseph

February 5, 2014 | 6 min read

Don't Look Back

Facebook Paper launched this week

Facebook has been all over the news this week as well as, ironically, being one of the most discussed topics on Twitter, judging by my timeline. My Facebook newsfeed is littered with people showing me their ‘Facebook Movie’. I watched my own Look Back video and was bored, so there’s no way I’m going to give a crap about yours. I do like the nice music though, so hats off to whoever chose that from iStock audio.

YouTube to audit video views

In a bid to prevent people from buying billions of views from Russia to try and inflate the number of views on their YouTube clips, the site has said it has started to audit the number of views each video has received.

It is has said that it will be periodically validating views on videos, and will be removing any bogus views from the final total. YouTube added, however, that it doesn't expect it will affect more than a very small portion of their users.

Facebook paper requested to change name

Just days after it launched its new reader app Paper, Facebook has had a request that it change the name by a firm which has an app of the same name.

The original Paper app, which allows people to sketch on their iPad, was developed by FiftyThree and won Apple’s 2012 iPad app of the year.

Facebook hasn't commented on the request, but the people behind Paper (the drawing version) are seemingly pretty unimpressed with the social network’s apparent carelessness, as co-founder Georg Petschnigg said in a blog post: “We think that Facebook can apply the same degree of thought that they put into the app into building a brand name of their own.”

Let’s see how this one pans out…

The teens are still there

Despite the fact that many people, including myself, have been debating how much time is actually left of Facebook’s shelf life, it would appear that we’ve spoken to soon.

According to yet another study, 73 per cent of US teens are actually still using Facebook. Will you just make up your minds, kidz?!

Pew Research Center discovered in its latest study that 57 per cent of all adults and 73 per cent of those aged 12-17 in the US use Facebook, and it claims that its use among adults is growing too, with 64 per cent of users visiting the site on a daily basis, up from 51 per cent in 2010.

Controversially, whilst these stats obviously ‘prove’ that people are still using the site, I still don’t think Facebook is doing enough at the moment to keep up in the competitive world of social networks for it to keep up in years to come.

While it obviously still has a large number of users, how many people are still actively engaging on the site? I know I’m only on there to stay in touch with friends, I don’t give a shit about the majority of things posted on there, and there’s no way I’m going to follow any brand pages. I can just get all of those updates from Twitter.

I know it’s different for those who don’t work in the digital space, people who get home from work and login to Facebook to get their daily dose of news, but how many of these people actually are there? With rumours that teens are ditching Facebook for sites such as Tumblr, and the news recently that Pinterest Pins are now more valuable to brands than Facebook Likes, Facebook needs to come up with something spectacular.

Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo release US surveillance requests

Several US tech giants have disclosed that they have to turn over the data of tens of thousands of accounts to US government authorities every six months as a result of secret court orders.

The information released was part of a transparency deal, which was reached last week with the Justice Department. The four tech firms that participate in the NSA’s Prism effort released more information about the volume of data the US Government demands they provide then they have ever been allowed to disclose before.

This is going to spell chaos for the conspiracy theorists and the paranoid people who believe the US Government are spying on them.

Why #NekNominate is the most ridiculous internet craze ever

You may have seen the video craze that has been sweeping Facebook for the past couple of weeks. If you haven’t, I wish I was you.

NekNominate involves people nominating friends to down a pint of something on video, which they them post and nominate two other friends. And so the chain of ridiculousness continues.

Now, I know people like to fit in and it’s a universal fact that drinking is considered to be ‘cool’, but there really is no need for this at all.

Add on to that the fact that several people have died in accidents related to this phenomenon, and then you realise how truly idiotic it is.

In an effort to have the best video, people are going to more and more extremes to try and impress their idiot mates, which include ‘hilarious’ actions like biting the heads off live animals and downing pints of spirits.

This dude, however, managed to restore my faith in humanity with his excellent nomination video. Take a look.

I am considering staging some sort of protest and deleting anyone who took part in one from my Facebook feed. FIGHT THE SYSTEM!

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