Editor’s Note: The Social Media RoundUp is a weekly feature of Information Space.
image by facebook.com
Last Thursday, Facebook announced that they are now allowing users to select a custom gender to display on their Facebook profile. The new initiative was announced by the Facebook Diversity program. Previously, users were confined to choose between male and female, but now a menu will appear that allows users to define their gender and fully customize which pronouns Facebook refers to you as. Many are referring to the social networking site as a group of accepting, forward thinkers, but others are not taking the news well.
Twitter is known as a form of free, online speech, but many users are being silenced in countries around the world. The Venezuelan government is currently blocking images on twitter, as the latest sign of a crackdown after violent protests that killed at least three people in the past week. It was reported that the social network take down came about after an anti-government protest that turned bloody.
MTV took the cake for coming up with the most creative way to celebrate Valentine’s Day. I’m sure your news feeds were flooded with hundreds of results from their customized matchmaker app, which tells you which one of your friends you are destined to be with. It does this by comparing your profile with those of your friends, using data-like location, check-ins, and mutual friends to determine the best possible match. Although this system may not have been entirely accurate, it certainly was a fun way to entertain us while we ate pounds of candy and chocolate.
Many Olympic fans have taken to social media in hopes of getting a glimpse into the personal lives of their favorite athletes. Many famous Olympians are genuine in their online personas and have no problem joking around with their followers, but others are taking a new approach to tweeting through the games. Some Olympians are turning over their social media accounts to sponsors, agreeing to quotas of postings on Twitter and Facebook and letting other people send commercial messages in their name.
Would you unfollow your favorite athlete because they handed their account over to a sponsor? Let me know in the comments below!
