We make a lot of fun of people who forsake any semblance of a life in favor of playing ‘social’ games on Facebook, well, alright I do but if you were honest you would admit you do the same.

From Farmville to Plants vs. Zombies; or any of the knock-offs and big money wannabes, people are talking about social gaming, either about the making of them or trying to figure out the reasons for their rampant success and money making.

Of course the big boy of these perpetual money machines is Zynga with their reputation of mimicking other people’s work and how much money they are making off of the the back of Facebook and members of the service.

However do we really know who all these people are that play all these games for hours on end, or with some it is more like days on end. This is the question that the team at Flowtown decided to try and figure out and use the information to create a nifty infographic.

via visual.ly

Will social gamers please stand up and introduce yourselves [Infographic] is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s been interesting watching the world of change that is happening in places like Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other countries in that region and how social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are being used.

It has also been interesting to watch the discussion among the digerati of how services like Twitter and Facebook have influenced our changing society; and regardless to which side of the importance scale you might fall there is something much more subtle happening and it’s not restricted to places like Egypt.

Yes, these social media services are important and in a lot of ways extremely subversive; which is why governments around the world are worried, but they are just the tools being used by a fast growing part of our society that wants change.

We aren’t just talking about countries being imprisoned by dictators either as these self same tools are being used by regular people as a way to have a say in the political processes of democratic countries; and often with growing success.

It is easy for us, here in our comfortable homes and with our fun toys, to slough off Facebook as nothing more than a destination point for wannabe farmers and Twitter being the cyber warehouse of pointless 140 characters being spewed forth endlessly. However, the youth of places like Egypt and Tunisia have shown us that these tools can also be used to reach the disenfranchised and ignored to give them a platform from which they can lay the groundwork for change.

These are not just people in far away lands either but rather the tip of an iceberg that our society here in the privileged world is approaching with an increasing speed. As much as we might like to believe that such titanic change, like what is happening in Syria and Yemen, is a localized event the underlying spark to those events is global in nature.

In the past social change, radical social change, has been a difficult thing to move beyond just corner bar chatter. It often needed a massive blow to the common man and the world they lived in before there was enough impetus to move it past any status quo lines of separation.

There has always been three basic factors behind any massive social change: human beings who have been marginalized either financially or politically, a political and corporate atmosphere where power and money is concentrated in the hands of an increasingly smaller number of people, and finally an effective method of communication – for the times – through which people can organize.

In the past we have seen this happen in ways that foreshadow what our future could hold. As Paul B. Farrell wrote in a commentary on the MarketWatch blog

Remember the Roaring Twenties? The Crash of 1929? Great Depression? Just days before the crash one leading economist, Irving Fisher, predicted that stocks had “reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

Yes, he was trapped in the “Great Gatsby Syndrome,” an earlier version of today’s Super-Rich Delusion. It was so blinding in 1929 that the president, Wall Street, all America were sucked in … until the critical mass hit a mysterious flash point, triggering the crash.

Yes, we’re reliving that past — never learn, can’t hear. And oddly it’s not just the GOP’s overreach, the endlessly compromising Obama, too-greedy-to-fail Wall Street banksters, U.S. Chamber of Commerce billionaires and arrogant Forbes 400. America’s entire political, financial and economic psyche is infected, as if our DNA has been rewired.

The Collective American Brain is trapped in this Super-Rich Delusion, replaying the run-up to the ’29 Crash.

As we struggle to comprehend the changes happening half a world away  from the majority of us it is easy to brush it all aside by saying that these are people who were being downtrodden by power hungry tyrants. Doing so though belies what is happening all around us in supposedly free countries where and increasingly small number of people are the ones that are actually enjoying the fruits of the labor of an increasing majority of people wondering where their next meal is coming from.

Farrell points out in his post that there is very little difference between the driving forces of change in Egypt, Syria, or Jordan and the quiet murmur that we are beginning to hear in our own cities and countryside.

Nobody predicted 2011 revolutions in the oil-rich Arab world either

Warning: Mubarak, Gaddafi, Ali, Assad, even the Saudis also lived in the Super-Rich Delusion. Have for a long time. Were vulnerable. Ripe for a revolution. They, too, honestly believed they were divinely protected, chosen for great earthly wealth, enjoyed great armies.

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, a new “educated, unemployed and frustrated” generation turned on them, is now rebelling, demanding their share of economic benefits, opportunities, triggering revolutions, seeking retribution.

If we were to look at the three driving forces of forced radical social change we would see that two of them are already in full force in our own societies.

Never before has the American public been so divided and increasingly feeling that they no longer matter in the political process. Never before have American seen such separation along financial lines with the vast majority of people living so close to the poverty line. There is no more middle class driving forward the economic engine.

Where ever you turn you see people who are facing a future without any promise of things getting better no matter how hard they try. Where you turn all you see are politicians who do everything they can to appear like they care about the people they are suppose to represent but turn right around and enjoy a privileged life paid for by corporate back-patting.

In Libya, Syria, and Egypt we safely point to the Gaddafi’s, the Mubarak’s, and the Assad’s suggesting that people like them could never exist in our world. The problem is that they do but they run billion dollar corporations that answer to nobody, regardless of the show put on by our elected politicians.

Tyranny can come in many forms and they don’t always need to carry guns. Money is more powerful than any amount of guns and when you control who gets the money, and how much, one can be as much a tyrant as the next dictator, or corporate CEO.

With past social upheavals the key ingredient was the print media, and later the television media, as well as the telephone. Through those outlets people from around the country were able to read, and see, what was happening. They were able to communicate better because of things like the telephone. The free flowing flood of information (for the times) allowed people to combine their efforts, allowed them to challenge the powers that be; both political and corporate in ways that they had never been able to do before.

Today we are living in the waning world of the baby boomers, many of whom are in positions of power; both in politics and the corporate boardroom, and those positions of power, or money, isn’t something that they are going to give up willingly. Today though, we are also living in a world with a growing number of technologically knowledgeable young men and woman; many of whom unfortunately don’t like the lack of a future for themselves.

Farrell writes in his post:

Bloomberg warns: “The Kids Are Not Alright.” Worldwide, youth unemployment is fueling the revolution. In a New York Times column, Matthew Klein, a 24-year-old Council on Foreign Relations researcher, draws a parallel between the 25% unemployment among Egypt’s young revolutionaries and the 21% for young American workers: “The young will bear the brunt of the pain” as governments rebalance budgets. Taxes on workers will be raised and spending on education will be cut while mortgage subsidies and entitlements for the elderly are untouchable,” as will tax cuts for the rich. Opportunities lost. “How much longer until the rest of the rich world” explodes like Egypt?

All the pieces are coming together and now the young have the greatest tool of all – the Internet and can communicate in real time with each other outside of the view of those in power. They have the tools and they know very well how to use them to their benefit.

Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Libya have shown us all the power that is there when people can communicate in real time and not just with words but with pictures and video. They have show us all what happens when the perfect social storm comes ashore.

People are a social animal and that is what gives them the power in the end and why governments, tyrants, and corporations do whatever they can to first profit from and then break apart that social behavior.

Just as in those countries where social upheaval is occurring right now we are also seeing the ingredients of a perfect social storm coming together. The Internet, Twitter, and Facebook might not be a revolution but they are most certainly to tools of those that want change; and change will come. It’s just a matter of how ugly the process will be as we undergo it.

The Social Perfect Storm is out there just beyond the horizon but like all perfect storms it will hit when we least expect it; but you can be sure you’ll hear it first rumblings on Twitter and Facebook.

The modern Great Gatsby Syndrome and the coming Social Perfect Storm is a post from: The Inquisitr

It seems that if Google sneezes the tech blogosphere comes rushing with the kleenex and then proceeds to write ad naseum about the sneeze and really this +1 button … it’s a sneezer.

I mean really people when we’re on Facebook the last thing we consider it to be is a search engine (regardless of how much they would like you to think so), and the last thing I think of when I go to Google is that all my friends are their sharing their awesome search results with me. In fact I couldn’t careless what my friends search results were because as it is the majority of the time the search results suck.

So the idea that just because the results now have some fancy looking button with a +1 next to them is going to make those results any more valuable is just silly. The only ones that the +1 buttons are going to benefit in the long run are advertisers.

Not to mention that the value add for the user is more than just a little bit murky. As Mike Melanson at ReadWriteWeb says

Let’s look ahead to the future though – Google has released the button for inclusion on websites, you can see all these +1s on your Google profile, but again – what is your motivation for clicking +1? So your friends have a better search experience? Is this actually something you care about?

[....]

Simply providing a place for these +1 links to be aggregated still doesn’t give me a reason to click the button. I already have bookmarks. I already have ways to socially share with my friends. So what gives?

Frederic Lardinios at Newsgrange adds:

The real problem right now, tough, is that there are only so many buttons users can click on on any given site and unless they know where their recommendations go, chances are they won’t bother using this feature much.

With +1, your friends will see your “likes” on search results pages and on your Google Profile. I doubt that there is a lot of traffic to anybody’s Google Profile today, so why would I feel inclined to add more content to it? Instead, when I send a recommendation to Facebook or Twitter, I know exactly where it goes and who sees it.

Chances are, too, that my friends aren’t always looking for the same thing I do, so the chance of them actually seeing my +1 recommendations are pretty slim – making me even less inclined to use the button.

I realize that the pulse-pounding buzzword in the social world is social search but really I couldn’t care less about social search because the quality of search is already at such a low bar that the idea of it being social will only add to the useless noise. Not everyone is going to be shopping for that trip to Brazil your friend just +1′ed. Not everyone is going to be shopping for that fancy new washing machine that now tweets when it is finished just because your friend +1′ed it.

Google is not a social company. It isn’t in their DNA regardless of how many social media gurus they hire. I’ve tried Wave and I’ve tried Buzz and you know what – Wave has waved good-bye and I don’t use Buzz anymore. I’ve gotten more benefit from sharing in Google Reader than any other effort they have tried, at least when I’m not blocking 90% of the people (?) trying to follow me.

Google is a search and advertising platform company. They are a web engineering think tank and they are exceptionally good at that. That is their value but unfortunately in both case they are being distracted by all the cool buzzwords and their core businesses are showing it.

+1 image courtesy of The Next Web

Wow! Google has a +1 button – excuse me while I *YAWN* is a post from: The Inquisitr

Apple is an anomaly in today’s tech world.

Long the mainstay of small segment of computer users it had a loyal following who would probably leap off of cliffs if Steve Jobs asked them to, especially if asked during one of his famous keynote speeches. There is no denying that all that faith and admiration in both the man and the products isn’t well placed. The iPhone has transformed the whole smart phone industry, the iPod/iTunes has revolutionized the music industry and could have the same effect on video, and the Mac in all its variations is a beautiful and excellent computer.

When it comes to the man the loyal followers have him to thank for first bringing the company back from the brink of disaster and then making it more popular than it ever has been before. In return for this ‘fandom’ Apple and Steve Jobs continue to challenge the established ideas of how we perceive our electronic devices and provide us with some of the best designed gadgets to fill our days with – and in the process Apple is making money hand over fist. With over $25 billion cash in their war chest Apple is set to do basically whatever it wants.

All this goodness and light however isn’t without its spots of tarnish – spots that are increasing both in number and size.

As hard as Apple tries to clean up those spots they aren’t going away. No longer will people blindly sign NDA’s over their iPhone exploding, no longer will they be silent about Apple’s heavy-handedness. Now even the little things like Apple breaking developer reference links or the silence about the removal of something like the ZFS file system are getting attention.

Attention that Apple continually ignores as it sits behind its wall at Cupertino. However this is  the age of the social web and the empowerment of the consumer where even the most loyal Apple consumer has a voice – and aren’t afraid to use it. After all it’s pretty easy – set up a blog, join Twitter, add friends on Facebook. The avenues for expression of dissatisfaction are all there and people are using them with increasing frequency.

Except Apple for the most part isn’t listening, or at least even if they are they are not responding. They chose to ignore the very people who have dedicated much of their computing life to advocating the Apple way of life. They have believed enough in Steve Jobs and the company to add their portion to that $25 billion war chest.

In a world where, especially the tech part of it, where social media is becoming the powerhouse of consumer interaction Apple’s silence is excruciatingly loud. As Tom Foremski writes

This is strange. This means Apple must have a company policy to not engage in social media at all. There can be no other explanation.

This company directive must come from the top. Steve Jobs has a reputation as a micro-manager and control freak.

And on the social web there is no control over your message. It will be “annotated” by thousands, potentially millions of people. It takes balls to put yourself in front of people on the social web.

Apple seems to be lacking the balls.

For all the life long fans have given to Apple there will be a breaking point as dissatisfaction with this silent treatment from the company that many of them love reaches a breaking point. It might not be a breaking that will turn that fan base away from the company but it is one that may seriously discourage any new people from taking up the Apple mantra.

People in this new social media world have the power to change things a lot more than they may realize but definitely more than companies realize. Apple may have once benefited from its autocratic, elitist, “we know best” attitude but as we are finding with every other business that holds that same attitude that world is gone. Once again Tom phrases it well when he says

The other thing people will remember is when you show you aren’t listening, you aren’t interested, you come across as arrogant. You have $26 billion in cash earned from your customers and you don’t care about your customers, what they are saying about you, what problems they are having. That’s memorable.

Very memorable.

Apple’s love/hate relationship with its users is a post from: The Inquisitr

Most of the attention these days around social media and social networks has been Facebook and is recent moves to try and make it the social destination point on the web. After all they just absorbed Friendfeed, their only real perceived threat, and announced how they have turned on their real-time search feature. So everything would seem to be going Facebook’s way because really it’s not like Twitter is any threat to them.

There’s only one problem with that assumption. It’s wrong.

You see, very quietly Google has been working in the background on their social initiative and now as they start to roll out more and more of the smaller parts that will make up its larger social media initiative Facebook would be wise to sit up and pay attention. By themselves Google’s little Social Gadgets may not seem to be threatening but as people add more of them as they become available to their iGoogle pages the potential to make a severe impact on Facebook will become more apparent.

Mike Elgan wrote about this today where he notes that this new move with iGoogle isn’t something he is predicting to be a Facebook killer but it is something that could threaten if especially given the one-click viral nature of the gadgets.

Social Gadgets transform the page. The new gadgets unveiled today include social games like Chess, Scrabble and Trivia. Social productivity apps, such as a sharable to-do list, are nice, too. But these pale in comparison to the gadgets that threaten Facebook directly.

(Note that Google will be gradually rolling out Social Gadgets in the US this week, so you may not get immediate access to them.)

A Google-made Gadget called Timeline performs the same function as Facebook status updates.

Another Google Gadget unveiled today is called Social Photos. It does just what it sounds like it does — it lets you upload and share your photos using whatever popular photo sharing site your pictures are already sitting on, including Flickr and Picasa.

Gadgets are also viral. A one-click "Share this gadget" feature could spark exponential growth in the use of iGoogle for social networking.

While the purchase of Friendfeed may have the folks at Facebook feeling like they have some breathing room the fact is they don’t. Google has never been one for splashy type entrances – with the except maybe of Google Wave – and their moves into Social Media appear to be no different. In the end though Google could end up being Facebook’s biggest threat and not one that they can buy off either.

Google’s stealth attack against Facebook is a post from: The Inquisitr

Speeding admittedly leads to many fatal accidents. Speeding in bad weather can multiple the number of fatalities exponentially. Sure the police can issue speeding tickets as well as dangerous driving tickets but the truth is many people just consider them as part of the cost of driving.

In New Zealand they are trying something totally different to try and get people to slow down during bad weather – public horror. They are doing this through special billboards with pictures of children. They are special in that when it rains the billboard begins to bleed.

hat tip to BuzzFeed

Billboard campaign uses tears of blood. is a post from: The Inquisitr