Social Networks

FACEBOOK IS IN: Facebook has jumped into the music video game. The social media giant has announced it will now license content from Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group for Facebook Watch and via individual artists’ pages. They can be shared, reacted to, or commented on like any other video on Facebook. The move is a step up for Facebook, which previously was able to only share short previews of major label content. The target is industry leader YouTube, which are one of the most popular attractions on that site. TAYLOR SWIFTIES JUSTICE: The word “fan” is short for “fanatic.” Submitted for your approval: the reaction of certain fans of Taylor Swift this week to a relatively good album review. Related Story Coronavirus Continues to Ravage Los Angeles County: 50 New Deaths, 2,303 New Cases Pitchfork senior editor Jillian Mapes gave Swift’s new record folklore a review that called it “a sweater-weather record filled with cinematic love songs and rich fictional details.” Pitchfork uses ratings of multiple staffers to determine a final score, and granted the album and 8 out of 10. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for ultra-fans, who doxxed Mapes by posting her personal information and taking to social media to wage jihad. Swift has yet to comment on the actions, perhaps because she’s celebrating the overwhelming sales of the album, which topped the 2 million mark in its first week JAPAN IS GOING MUSERK: Music and video rights management firm Muserk has partnered with Video Research of Japan to launch MUSERK V.I.D. The joint venture will service, manage and protect the online rights of the major broadcasters, networks, and production companies of Japan around the world. Japan is the second-largest music market in the world and third-largest YouTube market in the world. Muserk was founded…

Major advertisers on Facebook reduced their spending by millions of dollars in July, but not enough to significantly damage the platform’s revenue. July Boycotters Reduced Spenders Other Top Advertisers 10 5 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUNE JULY July Boycotters Reduced Spenders 5 MAR MAY JULY JAN Aug. 1, 2020Updated 5:08 p.m. ETThe advertiser boycott of Facebook took a toll on the social media giant, but it may have caused more damage to the company’s reputation than to its bottom line.The boycott, called #StopHateForProfit by the civil rights groups that organized it, urged companies to stop paying for ads on Facebook in July to protest the platform’s handling of hate speech and misinformation. More than 1,000 advertisers publicly joined, out of a total pool of more than 9 million, while others quietly scaled back their spending.The 100 advertisers that spent the most on Facebook in the first half of the year spent $221.4 million from July 1 through July 29, 12 percent less than the $251.4 million spent by the top 100 advertisers a year earlier, according to estimates from the advertising analytics platform Pathmatics. Of those 100, nine companies formally announced a pullback in paid advertising, cutting their spending to $507,500 from $26.2 million.Many of the companies that stayed away from Facebook said they planned to return, and many are mom-and-pop enterprises and individuals that depend on the platform for promotion. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has emphasized the importance of small business, saying during an earnings call on Thursday that “some seem to wrongly assume that our business is dependent on a few large advertisers.”Facebook said that the top 100 spenders contributed 16 percent of its $18.7 billion in revenue in the second quarter, which ended on June 30. During the first three weeks of July, Facebook said,…

2 meetings Monday, Instruction work group looking at Title IX and Restraints and Sedlusio Policy plus virtual learning.  Schools board in open session on Security Ad Hoc Committee and closed session on property purchase. Monday, August 3 5:00 p.m. Instruction Work Group Meeting Virtual Meeting via Zoom – (Meeting will be live-streamed via YouTube MMSD-BOE-YouTube-Meetings) Public Appearances (please visit the website at https://board.madison.k12.wi.us/board-education-virtual-meetings to register) Title IX Policy Update Use of Restraint and/or Seclusion Policy Instructional Continuity Plan–Virtual Learning Quarter 6:15 p.m. Special Board of Education Meeting in Open Session— WORKSHOP Virtual Meeting via Zoom (Meeting will be live-streamed via YouTube MMSD-BOE-YouTube-Meetings) Finalization of Safety and Security Ad Hoc Committee Membership/Charge/Timeline Special Board of Education Meeting continued in Closed Session Closed Virtual Meeting via Zoom Approval of Closed Session minutes dated June 30, July 1, and July 2, 2020, pursuant to Wis. Stat. Sect. 19.85(1)(c) Deliberations regarding negotiations for the purchase/lease/sale of public property, pursuant to Wis. Stat. Sec. 19.85(1)(e)

So you're watching a fun video on YouTube. Neat, good for you.  You've seen a moment you really like, and you want to convert that fun little moment from YouTube into a GIF. I get it, pal, GIFs can be fun. Don't be embarrassed if you don't know where to start. Creating an animated GIF from YouTube is easy and I've broken the process down into 10 very simple steps.  OK then, let's do it.  1. Pull up your YouTube video and copy the link For demonstration purposes, I'm choosing the "Instagram" sketch from Netflix's hilariously bonkers, truly wonderful sketch show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.   Why? Because I love that show and it is very GIF-able.  2. Go to Giphy.com and create an account You don't need a fancy GIF maker or Photoshop to create a GIF from a YouTube video. You just a Giphy account.   I'm assuming here that if you're looking for tips to make a GIF, you do not have a Giphy account. So go ahead and make one. You must have an account to make GIFs on Giphy, which wasn't the case in the past. It's simple: You just need an email address and a password. There are other GIF converters out there, but using Giphy is going to be the easiest path and will leave you with a quality GIF.  3. On Giphy.com, click the "create" icon right beside "Upload in the righthand corner. It looks like this: Image: Screenshot / Giphy 4. Paste your YouTube link into the blank space under the title "Add Any URL"  Below is what that'll look like. You can also make GIFs from Vimeo, Giphy, or from videos you have on your computer.  Image: Screenshot / giphy 5. Once you paste your link,…

A screenshot from a video from a Facebook group devoted to looting and selling antiquities. A narrator speaking Syrian-accented Arabic describes an elaborate, Roman-era mosaic depicting mythological figures and animals believed to be in northwestern Syria – a conflict zone where there has been extensive looting of illegally excavated antiquities. ATHAR Project/Screenshot by NPR hide caption toggle caption ATHAR Project/Screenshot by NPR A screenshot from a video from a Facebook group devoted to looting and selling antiquities. A narrator speaking Syrian-accented Arabic describes an elaborate, Roman-era mosaic depicting mythological figures and animals believed to be in northwestern Syria – a conflict zone where there has been extensive looting of illegally excavated antiquities. ATHAR Project/Screenshot by NPR In a video shared in a Facebook group, a narrator speaking Syrian-accented Arabic describes an elaborate, Roman-era mosaic depicting mythological figures and animals. The colored glass and stone in the mosaic are still vivid some 2,000 years after it was created. A brief glimpse of sweatpants worn by the narrator is the only indication of who is speaking. Then the camera pans out to show that the mosaic still lies in the ground, uncovered in a field of dirt and rocks. The Facebook group is one of more than 100 that archaeologists have identified as offering looted and illicit antiquities for sale. To counter this online trade, Facebook announced new rules in June that, for the first time, specifically ban the exchange, sale and purchase of all "historical artifacts" on its site and on Instagram, which it owns. Previously, the company could invoke its general policy against the sale of stolen goods to remove pages selling artifacts that were clearly looted. But critics say it rarely did so. And they warn that Facebook's new policy won't have an impact unless it's enforced. They say…

Instagram/brittany_broski?imgriffinjohnson TikTok influencers are taking a break from their usual content and making their way to YouTube for a cooking competition that will premiere next week. Dish This will be a six episode series on AwesomenessTV's YouTube channel, and it'll feature all of your favorite TikTok influencers going head to head in the kitchen. Basic Bitchen: 100+ Everyday Recipes―from Nacho Average Nachos to Gossip-Worthy Sunday Pancakes―for the Basic Bitch in Your Life Dish This will be hosted by Chowhound's editor-at-large Joey Skladany and will center around recipes from his upcoming cookbook Basic Bitchen. Contestants will be given photos of dishes from the cookbook and will have to recreate it with no hints besides the picture in front of them. Skladany will then judge the final dishes based on ingredients, presentation, and creativity. To add to the stakes, the contestants will be given challenges throughout the competition, and whoever wins can get tips for how to cook the dish or choose to sabotage the other contestant. There are some pretty big TikTok names lined up for the show, including Noah Beck and Griffin Johnson from the "Sway House," Brittany Broski (who rose to fame from her kombucha reaction video), Sarah Schauer, Cristian Dennis, Tyshon Lawrence, Daniella and Devenity Perkins, Sofie Dossi, and Zak Dossi. This content is imported from TikTok. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. The six-part series will premiere on AwesomenessTV's YouTube channel on August 4 at 4p.m. EST. Skladany's cookbook will be released on the same day (but you can preorder it now!). If we're lucky, we'll get some behind the scenes content from Dish This on each influencer's individual TikTok accounts, so we have a lot to look…

New York (CNN)Democratic campaigns were warned Thursday that hackers posing as Facebook could be targeting them in an effort to gain access to their Facebook account credentials, according to a copy of a security alert obtained by CNN.The Democratic National Committee's security team detailed in the alert how emails designed to look like they are coming from Facebook tell victims their Facebook page has been unpublished because it violates Facebook's terms."This means that you can still see the page, but other people won't be able to see it," the email reads. It then directs victims to a fake Facebook website where they are told they can appeal the page's deactivation. This fake website asks for some login credentials and other personal information which could be valuable for a hacker.This type of attempted cyberattack is known as phishing. It's the method that was used by Russian hackers to access Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's Gmail account in 2016.Speaking to CNN on Friday, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, said he was not familiar with the specific attempted attack the DNC warning referenced but that it was consistent with attempted phishing attacks generally. Gleicher warned that campaign staff at all levels need to be vigilant as often hackers can target less prominent members of a campaign. He said Facebook and other services are aware of sophisticated hacking groups targeting political campaigns and that Facebook offers additional security to campaign staff and government and elected officials through a program called Facebook Protect.Facebook, he said, can detect unusual login behavior such as an account being accessed from a location or a device that is not normally associated with an account.Thursday's warning from the DNC came amid heightened concerns about social media hacks following a Twitter breach that saw former Vice President Joe…

Facebook is adding official music videos to its service in the US after partnering with major music companies including Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, the company announced today. The videos can be found through Facebook Watch and via individual artists’ pages. They can be shared, reacted to, or commented on like any other video on Facebook. It’s a big shift for Facebook, which in the past has only been able to share short previews of music videos from artists on major US labels, TechCrunch previously reported, or just audio in some cases, according to Bloomberg. With this launch, Facebook is stepping into an area where YouTube is dominant. Music videos are one of the most popular genres on Google’s video site. Bloomberg notes that Facebook’s interest in music videos likely stems from the more lucrative advertising rates associated with video. As part of its announcement, Facebook says that its platform will feature exclusive music video content from a variety of artists including J Balvin, Karol G, Sebastián Yatra, Alejandro Fernández, and Calibre 50. A new official music video from Lele Pons will exclusively premiere on Facebook, and it also says it will have an exclusive video from Panamanian R&B singer Sech. Bloomberg previously reported that Facebook had been offering to fund the production of certain music videos in exchange for exclusivity. Facebook has previously offered music videos in Thailand and India. The launch of music videos on Facebook comes just months after its Facebook Gaming section inherited Mixer’s streaming partners when Microsoft closed down the service. All Mixer sites and apps automatically started redirecting to Facebook Gaming on July 22nd. Facebook says its new music videos section will be available on iOS, Android, and desktops starting today.

Image: Screengrab, YouTube I’ve been thankful in quarantine that you can find Errol Morris’s documentaries on streaming services, not only because I think about Donald Rumsfeld’s bonkers word salad weekly, but also because Stephen Hawking grappling with the concept of origins helped put things into perspective. A few days ago, Morris quietly uploaded his two-season Bravo series First Person (2000) to YouTube; from a brief perusal, it is a delight. It’s also a product of Morris’s favoured televisual invention, the terrifyingly-named Interrotron. The series features anybody with a story, but mostly, studies fringe pathology and moral deviance: there’s a “crime scene cleaner,” a woman who dates serial killers, a cryonics trailblazer who describes freezing his mum’s head. The series title and cutaways highlight Morris’s carefully-orchestrated design to get subjects to make direct eye contact with the viewer — an approach accomplished by a set of two cameras and two, two-way teleprompter mirrors, superimposing a live feed of both the director and interviewee over the lenses. (You can see a diagram by production designer Steve Hardie here.) Today, we might think of this as video conferencing, but it’s better; the camera on a laptop is still slightly above the image of the other person’s face. Image: Screengrab, YouTube Prior to the Interrotron, Morris told FLM Magazine in a 2004 interview, he used to strain to put his head right next to the camera lens in order to simulate a real conversation.“We all know when someone makes eye contact with us. It is a moment of drama,” he said. “Perhaps it’s a serial killer telling us that he’s about to kill us; or a loved one acknowledging a moment of affection. Regardless, it’s a moment with dramatic value. We know when people make eye contact with us, look away and then make…

Their performance, from June 25, 1999, came after sets from Blondie, Bush and Hole, among other artists.Singer Michael Stipe recalled, “Hole did such a great set, I was like—I’ve got to ramp this up, I’ve got to be great. I think it was maybe a moment for R.E.M. and the UK where we had kind of been forgotten or pushed aside by younger bands, and that was a particular moment at Glastonbury where I think we pulled ourselves back to the front of the line and actually proved, this is what we’re capable of. It was a great show for us!”R.E.M.‘s set included “The One I Love,” “Losing My Religion,” “Man on the Moon,” “Everybody Hurts,” “Daysleeper” and “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”The audio from the performance was recently released as part of the band’s “R.E.M. at the BBC” collection.