“The New Dork” A Viral Video Tribute to the World’s Geeks

When I was growing up being called a dork was probably not the ultimate insult but it was up there. Dork conjured visions of Steve Urkel (Family Matters) and Screech (Saved by the Bell), but certainly not of cool popular culture superstars like Jay-z (Unless you count Urkel’s “hip” alter ego Stefan Urquell). Yesterday the success [...]

How to Twitter and Why You Should

He Twitters, She Twitters, Bill Twitters, I Twitter: I had the inspiration to write this blog post the other day when trying to explain Twitter to my non-tweeting friends. To many who’ve spent time using the medium what I write here will be nothing new. To those who believe all us Twitterers do is tweet about–what [...]

Google vs. China The Costs and Long-term Benefits

Yesterday Google announced that actions do not go unpunished. In this case a large scale cyber attack on Google’s (among others) infrastructure prompted their refusal to continue censorship of Google.cn search results, and to threaten that they may pull out of China’s search market completely. It appears that the attack was motivated by efforts to [...]

Psychology of Social Media

I blame the inner nerd within me and a psychology/ business major for triggering my growing curiosity about the stickiness of social media. There must be some underlying reasons why social media appeals to such a large group of users. It is not just popular with one specific market; it ranges from emo [...]

Cheating the Masses

Stories about the most-viewed YouTube video of all time hit major blogs this morning. The video in question is “Twista ft. Do or Die-do you” and at the time of this article was listed with 79,441,058,538 views.  Despite the obvious artificial inflation of this number YouTube’s placement of it at the top of the list [...]

Social Networks: Academic Friend or Foe?

As with the rise of any new technology or trend there are unabashed lovers and vitriolic haters of the growth of social networks at the end of the last decade. (Ha. I can write last decade and mean 2000s, weird!) Those who were concerned about social networks cited a myriad of reasons some of which [...]

Complaint Choirs Showcase the Beauty of Social Networks

I love underdog triumph stories. Patriotism in any form causes an immediate lump in the throat. I’m mostly likely to cry during a sports movie. I’m a sucker for all things “Common Man”, “Everyday Hero”, and grassroots social action so naturally when I saw Boing-Boing’s post about this “complaint choir” from Japan I couldn’t help [...]

According To… Year 2009 in Review

It’s the end of the year and that means that everyone is doing end of the year blog posts, so we will too. Since we’re a social media company we’ll stay on topic. Here are 5 articles that have interesting, notable, funny, or otherwise worthwhile takes on 2009 related to the social media world.How Facebook [...]

Control the Conversation

Word on the Street – Facebook Privacy Buzz: There has been a lot of talk lately about the new Facebook privacy settings and what they mean for the average user. The introduction of Facebook’s new policy earlier this December prompted 10 different organizations headed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) to file complaints with the [...]

I’m on a Mac

Coming back to the office post holidays is tough every year, but this year we at Banyan Branch had something that brightened up an otherwise ordinary Monday. A video that we helped create “I’m On a Mac” is stirring up Mac and PC lovers alike. Written up by Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and Mashable to name [...]