Private Content Thought Deleted Before Posting is Often Saved Anyway

Growing up, you may have been warned by parents and teachers that if you did something bad, it would end up on your "permanent record." Of course, eventually, you found out that such a record doesn't actually exist... at least not in a physical format. Most people are aware that everything you do or say online stays around forever. Even if you delete something, there's almost always a way for a tech-savvy researcher to dig up an old post or shared picture. However, what might come as a surprise to most internet users, as explained in Drew Harwell's L.A. Times article, is that many websites record words typed and images uploaded, even if you delete the content before it ever gets posted.

Many social media users have been in a situation where they were preparing a scathing review or an angry post, then decided to not post it at all, whether for personal or business concerns. Even though they deleted the words they had typed, and never approved the post to go out to their friends and followers, social media platforms (Facebook in particular) save what was deleted"until it is no longer necessary to provide our services and Facebook Products, or until your account is deleted." While it is unnerving to find out that the thoughts and pictures you believed were private were actually being stored on Facebook's servers, some might consider the privacy issue to be not too concerning. However, when Facebook recently accidentally exposed millions of those undeleted photos to third-party apps (not the first of their privacy faux pas this year), their customers were justifiably upset.

It's more than just social media sites that are gathering information you didn't intend to give them. Some online chat services for customer service (LiveAgent for example), show the responder a real-time view of what the customer is typing. These companies claim that this allows responders to more quickly reply to questions, yet they don't inform their users of what some might consider a breach of their privacy. If you knew that every word you typed could be seen, not just the ones you sent, you would probably be more careful with everything you write. I know I would.

According to research done at Princeton University, there are hundreds of websites that record all of the mouse movements and keystrokes made by a user while on the site. This could give companies and cybercriminals access to all kinds of personal and sensitive information, from passwords to credit card numbers. Such websites included WordPress, LiveJournal, and Spotify, among many others. The research couldn't conclusively determine whether a specific website actually had a record of the user's actions; it only showed that the sites had the ability to make such a record.

Not all websites and social media platforms fall into this category. Snapchat, for example, saves an unset message for 24 hours before deleting it completely, but during that time, the content is saved in an encrypted form that can't be accessed without the decryption key, which is only accessible if the message is actually sent. Platforms like Twitter and Instagram will save messages and images in drafts until the user chooses to post, but the content is saved locally, to the user's device, and is never uploaded to the platforms' servers. You should just be aware that in this day and age, everything you do on a computer (or even on a mobile device) could be recorded, saved, and possibly released to the wrong audience. As usual, be mindful with what you post online, and even be careful with content that you don't ever plan on revealing to the public.

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Consumer Version of Google+ Platform to be Shut Down Over the Next Several Months

Social media is an important aspect of most people's lives. For some, social media is a way to keep up with what's happening in the lives of their friends and family members. For others, social media is a platform by which they can advertise their business or find the latest news updates. Although each platform tries to compete with others to some extent, the different platforms tend to attract different types of users, and often users will have accounts on multiple social media sites. LinkedIn draws in job-hunters and business professionals. Facebook and Twitter tend to be for general connectivity, although the former is more for friends and family, while the latter is more general.

Google+, while not on the same level of popularity as Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, filled a similar niche, intending to connect users and improve social media reach through Google's impressive search engine optimization algorithms. Unfortunately, according to Sam Dean's L.A. Times article, SEO wasn't enough to keep the users engaged. Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, recently announced that Google+ is getting wound down over the next several months. The company expects to have the social media platform completely shut down by August. This week, a Wall Street Journal article came out claiming that Google discovered a security breach on Google+ months ago, and the company never informed its users. Some analysts believe that this breach in customers' trust could be what brought about the announcement on Monday.

However, it seems very likely that the privacy breach (although it may have been the last straw) was not Google's main motivator for shutting down Google+. The real reason was probably one of simple economics. Google+ just wasn't bringing in enough revenue. Social media platforms, since they tend to be free to use, bring in money by selling advertisements. Advertisers will only pay a company if they can see that the number of potential new customers justifies the cost. If a company can pay Google a set amount of money each month for advertising on Google+, and be guaranteed an increase in customers and sales, then they will gladly make that leap. However, if they know that 90% of Google+ users spend less than 5 seconds per session, the company is unlikely to believe that their advertisements will ever be seen, so they will be unlikely to put an advertisement in the first place.

Although the consumer version of Google+ is getting shut down over the coming months, Google is still planning to keep up its enterprise platform, through which corporate customers interact and provide information that can be integrated into Google's other features, including Google Maps. It's impossible to tell which of the issues (low user rates or recent privacy concerns) really made Google finally flip the switch and shut Google+ down, but other social media platforms may soon follow suit. Due to several recent issues with Facebook's handling of user data and bugs in their operating system that allowed hackers to access the same data, governmental agencies like the Federal Trade Commission have stepped up their levels of oversight. Even the House of Representatives and the Senate are getting involved, looking to investigate and improve laws to keep data safer than before.

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YouTube Most Popular Social Media Platform Among U.S. Teens

The internet has evolved so much since it was first created. The internet's growth from a hub of research sharing to the vast interconnected network that exists today is simply mindboggling. None of its original developers could ever have imagined how far their project would come one day. Although the internet is still used for that original intention (sharing research), consumers use it for so much more today. They can go shopping or communicate or socialize or really do pretty much anything they want. The internet is such a dominant force in our society that many online companies can make plenty of money just by getting users to visit their sites. According to a Bloomberg article, one such popular site, YouTube, has become the most dominant social media site, at least in terms of users aged 13-17, the "trendsetting demographic."

These days, the money-making ability and success of a social media company are dependent on how many users it can attract. Even though most of those kinds of sites are free to use, they make money off of advertisements. A few years back, Facebook was well in the lead and was able to make the statement that 71% of teenagers in the United States actively used the site. Now, there isn't one single definitive leader when it comes to favorite social media sites for US teens. The three market leaders are now YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram, while Facebook has only captured 51% of their possible teen market. YouTube is in the lead currently, with 85% of teens in the US using the site, according to a Pew Research study.

Even with a decrease in their capture rate of that ideal demographic,  Facebook still does very well for its shareholders. Facebook makes approximately $23 per user each quarter and has over 185 million users in the US and Canada alone. Those numbers could change pretty quickly in the future, though. Even now, the study found that only 10% of the respondents reported using Facebook as their main social media platform. Conversely, 33% said that Youtube and Snapchat are their top sites, and 15% said that Instagram is visited most often. Facebook's relatively recent acquisition of Instagram could be their saving grace.

Social media apps and plenty of other online platforms have had increased usage over recent years. This is likely because getting on the internet continues to become easier as technology becomes more and more advanced. Where a user once had to go to a physical desktop computer, the advent of portable computing made everything more accessible to so many people. From laptop computers to smartphones, users are now able to get online pretty much anywhere and anytime they want to. In fact, the Pew study found that 95% of teens either have a smartphone or have regular access to one. Also, 45% of teens say that they are online nearly constantly. That kind of ease of use is beneficial to the companies and consumers alike.

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Twitter Inc. to Shut Down Vine and Lay Off Hundreds of Employees

Five years ago, Facebook and Twitter got into a battle over who would ultimately purchase Instagram. When the more-powerful Facebook ultimately purchased Instagram, Twitter took a risk and went for the unheard-of Vine app. In the short-run, Vine was a far cheaper investment and ended up with millions of users. However, now that live video streaming seems to be the way of the future. According to Paresh Dave, in his L.A. Times article, Twitter is being forced to stop all future development on Vine and cut approximately 9% of its workforce to make ends meet as their profits continue to decrease.

Vine is an app that enables users, especially those with comedic talent, to share short videos, limited to approximately 6 seconds. Many people have gained viral fame due to Vine, including comedians like Thomas Sanders and singers like Shawn Mendes. Unfortunately, even though Vine gained massive popularity, it only lasted a few years before users and advertisers realized that YouTube and other platforms would be more lucrative. As one analyst stated, there are too many alternatives for video advertising to have a successful app that limits clips to 6 seconds.

Vine isn't the only thing Twitter Inc. is getting rid of, though. In order to save around $100 million per year, even after severance pay, Twitter plans to lay off approximately 350 of its 3,900 employees. Unfortunately, analysts don;t believe that the cuts will be enough in the long run. While Twitter's revenue is up 8% from last year, in part due to advertisement sales, it is also showing a loss of over $100 million per quarter. Twitter executives seem confident that the addition of live-streaming capabilities will enable the company to be more successful in the future, but that remains to be seen.

One of the main problems that analysts have pointed out regarding Twitter Inc.'s business is that users are too limited. On Twitter.com, posts are limited to 140 characters, and on Vine, videos were limited to 6 seconds. Users don't like limits, especially when they are so small. At least on Snapchat, videos have a slightly longer 10-second limit, nearly double that of Vine. There has been some talk in recent years of Twitter raising their character limits, but as of yet, that has not come to fruition. Logically, longer messages and longer videos would have more space for advertisement, so if Twitter wants to stay competitive, it may have to adapt to the longer format used by most platforms.

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