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The Most Viral Video in History

Posted on by Stephanie Blichfeld

If you are not one of the millions of people that have watched the video, “Kony 2012,” chances are you’ve at least heard about it. The 30-minute video about Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Kony, has created huge buzz in the social media sphere, dominating Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.

Visible Measures, a leading Internet measurement firm, reported today that the Kony 2012 campaign has garnered well over 100 million views in just 6 days, making it the most viral video in history. Coming in #2 on the list of most viral videos is “Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent” at 100 million views in 9 days and at #3 “Lady Gaga: Bad Romance” in 18 days. Check out the full list of viral videos here.

Recently there has been a lot of backlash surrounding the Kony 2012 campaign. Criticisms center on the funding of the charity that made the video, Invisible Children, as well as the fact that the video oversimplifies many of the issues presented. Setting this debate aside, Kony 2012 is an amazing example of the power of digital activism in the increasingly connected society that we live in.

While we don’t yet know the real impact that the campaign will have on its goal of capturing Joseph Kony by the end of 2012, I think the global popularity of the video will only further fuel calls for digital activism in the future. As the Arab Spring also demonstrated, social media is a powerful tool for promoting change, and governments around the world can no longer afford to ignore the voices of their people.

Review of StockTouch app

Posted on by Brian Lee

The folks at Visible Market invited me to try their new app called StockTouch, available for $4.99 in the Apple App Store. Its unique premise is that it “brings the power of data visualization and financial information together.”

I myself use E-Trade not only to buy, but for research. E-Trade gets the job done for the latter point, but StockTouch takes it to the next level.

From its graphic interface, you can see how the top 100 US and Global companies are doing in nine sectors (e.g. health, tech, etc.) over any given period of time (e.g. one day to five years).

I tested the app on an iPod Touch. I venture to guess that the interface would be better had I used an iPad, which I don’t own. For example, the main screen shows all nine sectors. After you tap on one of the sectors, that sector itself takes up the whole screen, but to show all of the companies at once (represented by little rectangles), each one is very small. If you have larger fingers or don’t have a stylus, you may find it hard to choose the company you want.

Still, the display is what makes StockTouch a keeper. I can’t think of a better way to quickly see how a stock is doing in the market. The color-coded system (green=gains, red=losses) shows you how a stock is doing based on its price, volume, against the S&P 500 or against its peers.

As weird as this sounds, I actually felt smarter using the app. It’s wonderful to be able to interpolate and even extrapolate trends in a stock’s performance. Plus, you can get all the latest news about the stock.

One other thing: you can also mark stocks as favorites, so that they are highlighted in each sector. In a future update, I’m hoping that you can just view all your favorites together at once.

Here’s a video from the StockTouch website:

An Instagram worth a thousand words

Posted on by Emilie Buckman

Some might assume that the news of Instagram’s Android debut being delayed would disappoint my nerdy, amateur photographer self.  They would be wrong.

The social media site and app does seem to fit with my compulsive need to take and share pictures.  And I am excluded from joining because I actively refuse to join the cult of Apple.  But I am not particularly disappointed by the delay nor am I completely sold on Instagram’s potential for something beyond a photo sharing site.

My first hesitation is about the app and it’s fairly petty and more than a little pretentious.  With the ability to filter every picture into an “artistic” shot, I worry about oversaturation and a lack of ability to discern between a truly great picture and a picture that just mimics something truly great.  While I support art for the masses, I don’t think all pictures are created equal even if they are created by the same filter.   I mean, how many color distorted photos of cups of coffee or someone’s lunch are truly great pictures? Or how many do we really need for that matter?

But my second, and more valid, concern about Instagram is the need of its own social media site.  You can upload your Instagram photos to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc.  It’s the redundancy of existing sites that has me concerned.  Obviously, for personal use it doesn’t matter as much but for marketing it might.  Other social media sites were able to find a unique niche for businesses that elevate them as a branding tool.  While businesses are using Instagram and using it well, I am not sure the site itself is a necessity.

I guess I am a little curious for the Android version to be released.  But not to join, instead I’m interested to see if my Instagram-apprehension is well-founded or not.  Though, I am willing to place bets that in a few months I’ll back track on everything I just said.  And then you will be able to enjoy all the vintage looking pictures of coffee cups I can upload.