Tag Archives: technology

September 7, 2012

i don’t want to “like” mitt or barack. . . . with socialfixer.com i don’t have to!

By arlynnpresser

i will be in charlotte and in tampa next week, but i seemed to have missed my opportunity to pick up swag at the conventions–you know, like baseball hats and bumper stickers and seamus the romney family dog plush toys.

in 1983, with five sons, a wife, some luggage and dog, mitt romney made the decision to put seamus in a dog carrier strapped to to the roof of the car for his 36 hour drive to a family home in ontario. bad political move! and since everybody’s seeing seamus’ mug on facebook, couldn’t we get a better shot of him?

in tampa, i will bake a facebook cake with my facebook friend jennifer. it will be the first time we have met, but i already know i will like her. for real, not just with a click!

 

but missing the conventions doesn’t mean that i won’t have a bit of politics hanging on me like a piece of tissue on my shoe as i leave the ladies’ room.  people everywhere are a little guarded in their comments about the upcoming elections and the ones who aren’t make me go quiet and start counting fibonacci numbers in my head.  while nodding in agreement. zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty one, uh, thirty four, fifty five, uh, let me think now. . . eighty nine!

on facebook, it can get pretty annoying when somebody posts something to your wall.  it can also make some of your friends start comment wars.

she’s beautiful, she’s witty, and i like her. but roughly half my friends are going to have smoke coming out of their ears if one of my friends posts this on my wall.

so while i intend to vote — and i have a substantial bet with my ex-husband on the outcome of the election–i am here to advise on how to get rid of politics on your facebook page.

1.  install socialfixer.com and figure out the key words you don’t want to see on your page.

2.  status updates:  go to social fixer’s options in the blue bar at the top of your screen, then click filters in the right sidebar. Under matching text, type what you want blocked, looking like this: /romney|obama|republicans|democrats/i. Putting the “i” at the end ensures that the filtered terms aren’t case-sensitive. After that, click hide and save.

3.  links.  we’re so tired of people posting links to their favorite rant, so why should you have to suffer?  go back to options and click add new filter, putting text similar to what you don’t want in the matching selector box a[href*=”obama|romney|republicans|democrats”].  no more see any links that have these words in the URL.  there’s going to be stuff that gets past it, but not so much anymore.

you can use socialfixer.com for all kinds of things like cute/inspirational/puppies or chicago/cubs/aren’t/ever/going/to/win/the/world/series/ever!

 

i just got this on my page this morning. socialfixer won’t get rid of this picture, no matter how handsome he may be, but i’ve been asked to “like” and for all my friends to “like”.  i might like this guy, i might not like this guy, but if he gets reelected i feel honorbound to “like” him. 

 

i think facebook needs a “i respect your opinion and your thoughtfulness in sharing” button!

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August 22, 2012

it’s been a great summer for my friend mark zuckerberg

By arlynnpresser

so lots of folks are frowning about facebook.  the social media network built in mark zuckerberg’s harvard university dorm room in 2004 offered up its shares to the public in may.  at the opening bell, it was trading at $38 per share and expectations were high.  it was the most anticipated of ipo’s!

since then, share prices have plummeted to less than $20 as i write.  board member and one of facebook’s biggest investors peter thiel sold off 80% of his shares today and that’s gotta hurt.  thiel was an early angel to the company, with a $500,000 check.  he’s going to end up with over a billion dollars.  that is so much more of a return on investment than i netted when my ex husband and i sold the family home this summer.  and i don’t see any articles on cnn.com about what a lousy investment the presser family made in real estate.

dustin moskovitz, one of facebook’s cofounders, is selling 7 million shares today, netting him about $9 million. that sounds like a defection, like a friendship issue. but it’s not. moskovitz still has 126 million shares, or about $2.4 billion in the company. so mark, don’ t hit the “defriend” button!

 

but let’s look at mark’s summer.  and facebook’s summer.

mark and his girlfriend priscilla chan married a few days after the ipo in may. contrary to the storyline of “the social network” mark and priscilla were an item beginning even before facebook was started. he’ll always know she loves him for himself! and she graduated from medical school this year and is pursuing her own dream of being a pediatrician. what a happy couple! i have no idea where my “save the date” postcard and my invite went. but that engraved toaster i got you at bloomingdale’s is on its way!

so on a personal note, mark is having a great summer.  and professionally?  well, he’s young and he’s created something so amazing that he could walk away and everybody would still think he’s a genius.

but is he going to walk away?  no.  just because facebook (and the other social network systems) have been overvalued doesn’t mean there’s a fundamental problem.  it just means that some people were a little overenthusiastic.  a social network’s only asset is information about its users.  the only thing facebook owns is information about you–your pictures, your posts, that status update–that it can sell to advertisers.  there’s never been a company model quite like facebook, groupon, zynga, linkedin before.  it’s to be expected some mistakes would happen in figuring out how to value information about its users.

but with mistakes comes opportunity.  the price is dropping.  some analysts think facebook is going to settle around $12 a share and that still leaves mark zuckerberg incredibly wealthy.

mark and priscilla have lived in this home for quite a while. it’s big, to be sure, but not quite what you would expect for a gazillionaire. and i respect that the two of them handed out candy at halloween on their own. they’re pretty regular, all things considered.

and here’s the great thing about the shares settling in the teens–it means that mark can look forward to regular type folks investing in facebook.  including me!

see you at the board meeting, mark!

 

 

 

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