“This is mainstream, this is normal, this is almost mundane for some of
the people we spoke to”
Professor Andy Phippen from
Plymouth University commenting on the joint study with NSPCC conducted for BBC
Channel 4 into the phenomenon of Sexting
Looks like the Gloves are off as far as Facebook’s concerned. Facebook
is getting serious about Mobile Computing as I’d predicted in my Geezam blog article
entitled “How to add Emoticons to your
Facebook posts”.
And yes (like duh-uh!!) it’s a clone of Snapchat, baby, as reported in
the article “Facebook
releases Poke, its Snapchat clone”,
published December 21, 2012 December 21, 2012, by Molly Mchugh, DigitalTrends
which they launched on Friday December 22nd
2012!
Snapchat…what? Which Social Network’s that?
No worry; if you’ve never heard of Snapchat; few people in Jamaica
without a real smartphone with their noses stuck in a Blackberry and banging
away at BB Messenger have. However, as Jamaicans begin to fall in love with
smartphones and their much improved higher resolution Cameras and Video
Shooting capabilities as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “Apple
iPhone boosts Jamaican smartphone usage as BB goes Chapter 11 Bankruptcy”,
Snapchat’s notoriety grows on you like a Cannabis plant!
Yes, while Jamaicans and to a great extent Americans fritted away their
time on their Desktop Computers and Laptops with Facebook, Twitter, which were
born in the Desktop era and the other competing Social Networks, most of which
were born Mobile, another little Kingdom was rising built on the premise of
Safe Sexting.
For the uninitiated who never owned a Camera phone back in early first
Decade of the 21st Century, Camera phones gave rise to the
phenomenon of Sexting; Millennials [ages 18 to 28] sent lurid, revealing and
very unflattering picture of themselves taken with camera phones, often with
dire consequences if the recipient was a pervert.
Among Millennials, Sexting is almost passé it seems;
not uncommon either for adolescents to have seen a girl’s breasts and other
body parts before ever seeing their face as indicated in the article “Snapchat fends off Facebook despite video glitch”, published 02 Jan 2013 10:07AM GMT By Matt Warman,
Consumer Technology Editor, The UK Telegraph.
The problem back then was that once pictures were sent, they cannot be
retrieved or deleted on the recipient’s phone, making the recipient capable of
doing damage to your fragile High School or College reputation using one’s
image of your less-than-flattering nude doppelganger.
Snapchat’s hugely popular App, which is 4th on Apple iTunes
100 Chart, popped up on the Mobile Social Networking Radar back in May 2012,
neatly solves that problem; pics can be set to “self-destruct” Mission
Impossible style as noted in the article “Snapchat auto-delete sexts seconds after they’ve been viewed”,
published May 8, 2012 by NattGarun, DigitalTrends.
Should you choose to Accept this Mission…er…I mean Snapchat’s App Terms
of Usage as suggested in the article “Terms & Conditions: Snapchat’s
privacy policy has too many secrets”,
published December 16, 2012 By Andrew Couts, DigitalTrends, on your
smartphone, Millennials [ages 18-28] can safely begin re-living your “sexting”
fantasies.
This setting a preset period of time ranging for 1 to 10 seconds as
reported in the article “What’s
so special (and so dangerous) about Snapchat”,
published December 14, 2012 By Kate Knibbs, DigitalTrends for
those provocative pictures worth a thousand words and stares to disappear.
True, screen capture Apps can be used to capture you private emotions
expressed in the picture and preserve it for further viewing among fellow
perverts. The first failsafe is that the pics are deleted off both the sender’s
and the recipient’s phones – unless you the sender decide to save the picture
sent on your phone permanently, usually not
a good idea. Snapchat already has a feature that notifies the sender if their
naughty snaps have been copied.
But fret not.
The screen capture feature in most smartphones can be easily thwarted
via the App disabling the screensaver feature on the smartphones, if Snapchat
chooses to make this upgrade. If your recipient is no longer in your circle of
trust and Snapchat reports that he’s using Screen-capture software to have a
permanent reminder of you nude copse
cadaver, you may soon be able to remotely delete that which can do Social
Damage straight off the person’s phone.
Making only the most tech-savvy geek the only persons capable of raining
on your Sexting parade! It’s the instantaneous fleeting pleasure of sending any
picture without consequence that’s the catch here folks; users seem to agree,
sending some twenty million (20,000,000) snaps per day, an average of about 232
pictures per second as clocked in the article “Facebook to Launch Its Own Snapchat
Competitor App”, published December 16, 2012 at
10:57 pm PT by Mike Isaac, AllThingsDigital!
Snapchat has also launched a similar feature for self-destructing
10-second “Sexting” Videos. Traffic as of writing this article now stands at
fifty million (50,000,000) pictures per day…with no end in sight as to its
phenomenal rise as tallied in the article “Snapchat’s adding video, so sext me, maybe?”,
published Dec 14, 2012 - 10:07AM PT By Eliza Kern, GigaOM.
Definitely cause for Facebook to worry and hence explains why they
decided to launch a standalone App on Friday December 22nd 2012
despite already having native Apps for Google Android and deep integration into
iOS 6.0 on the Apple iPhone 5 as reported in the article “Apple’s iOS 6 Includes
Deep FaceBook Integration”, published June 11, 2012 by
Sarah Kessler, Mashable and
reported in the article “Apple
kicks Google Maps off iPhone, adds FaceBook”,
published Wednesday, June 13, 2012, The Jamaica Observer.
Still, it’s not without danger, as tests by BuzzFeed FWD indicate that
it’s possible to retrieve the videos by just simply connecting a Laptop of PC
via an external Cable to your Apple iPhone or Google Android smartphone.
Then using a file Manager Program such iFunBox or even a computer
Running Ubuntu or Fedora, any hidden photo or video files in the area where
Snapchat temporarily stores its videos and pictures as surmised in the article
“Turns out Snapchat,
Poke videos don't actually disappear”,
published December 28, 2012 6:39 AM PST by Lance Whitney, CNET News can be
easily located and retrieved.
BuzzFeed FWD found that the bug in Snapchat was as such that the pics
were indeed kaput after 10 seconds
but apparently the detonator (cheeky devil ain’t I?) for the videos failed to
go off, so to speak , and self-destruct, making them easily recoverable long
after the 10 seconds had passed. To this, the Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel
responded to Buzzfeed, quote: “there will always be a way to reverse engineer
technology products”. A fix is in the works, preferably as suggested above in
this article.
Numbers like that got Big Blue…that’s Facebook….worried, as it appears
they just wasted US$700 million acquiring Instagram that’s barely clocking 5
million images uploaded per day. Instagram’s trying to monetize images as
reported in the article “Don't
blame Instagram users - blame Instagram”,
published December 19, 2012 2:14 PM PST by Casey Newton, CNET News via a
change in its Terms of Usage Policy.
This got the attention of Reality Star and Instagram’s biggest user Kim
Kardashian, who was so upset with them that she made the veiled threat of
deleting her account as reported in the article “Kim Kardashian: Instagram's No. 1 enemy?”,
published December 21, 2012 7:02 AM PST by Chris Matyszczyk, CNET News.
Meanwhile upstart Snapchat’s making a mockery of FB’s business model by
allowing people to send images and videos that’re only temporarily stored on
their Servers only to wind up self-destructing on a recipient’s phone, even
copping US$8 million in Venture Capital funds from the very same company that fuelled
Instagram’s rise from obscurity. Folks, Irony defined!
Thus predictions of FB launching competitors to Snapchat as stated in
the article “Facebook
expected to release a sexy Snapchat clone”,
published December 17, 2012 By Francis Bea, DigitalTrends were
really inevitable. Facebook’s barely got a presence on smartphones and Tablets.
Many of these new Social Networks are born in the Mobile Computing world, an
area of potential growth for the now Stock Market traded Facebook.
Same reasoning can be applied to explain why Facebook had launched a
Messenger to compete with WhatsApp as reported in the article “Will Facebook Make
Snapchat And WhatsApp History? Maybe Not”,
published 12/21/2012 @ 8:24PM by Parmy Olson, Forbes Staff; Mobile
Computing on smartphones and Tablet’s where the action’s at.
So far FB’s failing!
After Poke’s launch on Friday December 22nd 2012, it has
failed to gain traction with the Mobile masses, dropping completely off the
radar of the Apple iTunes Top 100 apps and failed in spectacular fashion as
reported in “Everyone
Is Talking About Facebook's Massive Flop”,
published Dec. 27, 2012, 12:15 PM by Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider
Not surprising at all; in order to join Poke, you have to allow the Poke
App access to your Friends list! NOT a good idea given FB’s poor track record
with Privacy. Non too crazy about people seeing private snaps and 10 second
videos that may linger around forever and ruin your job prospects for life
Nobody’s gonna forgive FB for its past privacy slip-ups and trust FB
with their very intimate spur-of-the-moment pictures that may wind up being
seen by their FB peeps….or worse their boss!
If FB’s serious about Poke (and I doubt that they are anyway….) they
have to radically improve Privacy on Facebook by simply allowing smartphone and
Tablet users to make random friends. Frictionless sharing isn’t how humans are
socialized in real life; we hold back really private sensitive stuff as it does
hurt when it’s known.
Rather than draw your friends list from FB, a crucial mistake, they need
to allow persons to make their own friends in the Mobile phone world all over
again. After all it’s a new medium; why keep the same old Friends from FB?
The intimate nature of Sexting suggests a prelude to sex, a process
similar to Inboxing on FB as described in my Geezam blog article
entitled “Social
Network Prostitution: FOMO drives Millennials to “Inboxing””.
With something so intimate as a photo of one’s self that should only be
seen when you in the bedroom, a Privacy-snafu FB and their sexting app Poke not
to be trusted; Snapchat’s gonna be King of Sexting for a long time as
they’re bringing “Sexting” back.
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