The First Ever Email, the First Tweet, and 10 Other Famous Internet Firsts

PA - Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet simply said, 'just setting up my twttr' (PA)

When was the first email sent, and who sent it? What was the first ad to ever run on a web page? How about the first picture uploaded to the Internet?

Here are 12 famous Internet firsts that were monumental in shaping web history.

1. The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson to himself in 1971. "The test messages were entirely forgettable. . . . Most likely the first message was QWERTYIOP or something similar," he said.

Ray Tomlinson (Flickr via whlwcl)

2. The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Now it serves as a historic site.

Symbolics

3. The first website was dedicated to information about the World Wide Web and went live on August 6, 1991. Here's the url:http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

Info.cern.ch

4. The first picture ever uploaded on the web was posted by Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) on behalf of a comedy band called Les Horribles Cernettes.

Gizmodo via Motherboard

5. The first AOL Instant Message was sent by Ted Leonsis to his wife on Jan. 6, 1993.It read, "Don't be scared ... it is me. Love you and miss you."

His wife replied, "Wow ... this is so cool!" Leonsis later became AOL's Vice Chairman.

Ted Leonsis (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
6. Joe McCambley ran the first banner ad ever online. It went live in October 1994 on HotWired.com and it promoted 7 art museums, sponsored by AT&T.

7. The first item sold on eBay (back then it was AuctionWeb) was a broken laser pointer for $14.83 in 1995. The man who bought it told founder Pierre Omidyar he collected broken laser pointers.

Daily Mobile

8. The first book purchased on Amazon was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought in 1995.

Amazon

9. The first sentence uttered on Skype was in Estonian in April 2003 by a member of the development team. It was 'Tere, kas sa kuuled mind?' or "Hello, can you hear me?" in English.

10. Mark Zuckerberg was the first person on Facebook with ID number 4 (the first three Facebook accounts were used for testing). The first non-founder to join Facebook was Arie Hasit (below), who is now in Israel studying to be a rabbi.

BuzzFeed

11. The first YouTube video posted was posted by co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. It was uploaded on April 23, 2005 and has been watched nearly 10 million times.


12. The first tweet was written by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006.

Twitter/@Jack

Just Who Uses Social Media? A Demographic Breakdown

You think you know social? How about who uses it? Well, you might not know it as well as you would have guessed.

A new study from the Pew Research Center and Docstoc shed some light on just who uses social and on what platforms. Some of the findings seem in line with what you would probably guess, but others were surprising.

If you think the smarter, more attractive sex is more socially prolific than us men, well ... you're right. Women use social media 9% more than men do. Despite having more distractions, people living in cities have the most social media activity, at 70% of the population. Perhaps it's the connectivity of large-city life.

In terms of racial and ethnic groups online, Hispanics lead the pack at 72% engagement, with African-Americans trailing at 68%, who are ahead of Caucasians at 65%. And in a strange twist, despite being somewhat economically disadvantaged, 72% of adults with annual household incomes below $30,000 use social networks, more than those with higher wages.

How about most popular social networks? That would be Facebook, with 67% of adults using the Zuckerberg-founded service. A distant second was LinkedIn with 20%, with Twitter coming in third at 16%, and Tumblr falling dead last at 6%.

Take a look at the details below:

Twitter gets into April Fools' action, announces vowel-less 'Twttr' service

Who needs vowels, right? Especially if you’re on Twitter and already hate the 140-character limit on the micro-blogging site. Twitter has announced that it is going to launch a new service called Twttr that will skip the vowels and will turn the main site Twitter into a $5 a month premium service. Of course, one needs to keep in mind that it’s April Fool’s day today.

“Starting today, we are shifting to a two-tiered service: Everyone can use our basic service, Twttr, but you only get consonants. For five dollars a month, you can use our premium 'Twitter' service which also includes vowels,” the scl ntwrk wrote in a blog post.

World's most retweeted tweet on Twttr

Being very considerate, though, Twitter has letter “Y” for free. Saying that the letter “Y” will be free, “always and forever,” Twitter also said that vowels in URLs will also be free of charge. These changes will thankfully not be rolled over to Twitter users who access the website in other languages. 

Twitter is also expanding the length of tweets to 141 characters (yayy!) from the original 140, “for those moments when you need just one more character to finish your thought.” This extra character will come with a price tag, sadly. Using a bidding system, Twitter will decide the price of the extra character keeping in mind its demand at the time. You can choose to go over limit with one character, not two, said the social networking website.

So how did this genius idea come about? Michael Sippey, Twitter’s VP of Product said, “I was carpooling home after Twitter’s seventh birthday party. With my head filled with images from our past, like our early logo where we spelled it TWTTR, in neon green toothpaste. And then Prince’s song “I would die 4 U” came on the radio. I felt like there was something there, but I wasn’t sure what or how to bring it to market.

Then later that night, I was watching “Wheel of Fortune” with @adambain, and a contestant yelled out ‘I wanna buy a vowel’. Everything just sort of clicked. Adam and I turned to each other and high-fived. It was one of those product moments that just felt like magic.”

Twitter said that it has already started testing Twttr with a small group of users, and this change will be rolled out to 100 percent of them over the next few days. Very considerately Twitter has advised users to practice tweeting with merely consonants and the letter “Y”. It has made available hashtags #novwls for people on Twtter and #icanhashashtag for users on premium Twitter.

April Fools!

A website that converts your Tweets into “Twts” has also been provided. Heading to the website will write a tweet out for you to send to your followers, letting them know you’ve been April Fooled by Twitter.

Twitter joins the ranks of other companies who are pulling gags on the internet today. Google has launched a bevy of prank services including Google Nose, a website that allows you to smell products using your monitors. Google also announced that YouTube would be shutting down in order to find the best video, before the service launches again in 2023 with just the winning video.

New Twitter blue bird icon

Twitter updated its icon. It is now simpler, younger and more dynamic. The blue bird's head has been shaven too.

If you want to update the icons on your website you can download the vector files here (also attached below):
Positive: http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/logo/twitter-2012-positive
Negative: http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/logo/twitter-2012-negative

Usage guidelines

Do:
• Use our official, unmodified Twitter bird to represent our • brand.
• Make sure the bird faces right.
• Allow for at least 150% buffer space around the bird.

Don't:
• Use speech bubbles or words around the bird.
• Rotate or change the direction of the bird.
• Animate the bird.
• Duplicate the bird.
• Change the color of the bird.
• Use any other marks or logos to represent our brand.

How Much the World's Most Iconic Logos Cost Companies to Design Them

The price tag for some of the most iconic logos of all time varies drastically. While some of the most iconic brands in the world cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create, others got away with a check for just $15. Some spent nothing.

A good logo is crucial for a company's branding strategy.

While Pepsi recently redesigned its bottle, it decided to keep its logo, which it redesigned in 2008 for $1 million. (Signing Beyonce as a multi-year brand ambassador cost the company $50 million.)

Stock Logos—a site that offers, well, stock logos—has compiled a list that reveals how much Coca-Cola, Nike and other companies spent creating their logos.

But you'll be surprised which companies spent millions and which spent the cost of a movie ticket on their iconic images.

Microsoft: $0

Microsoft

 Google: $0

Although Google's famous, rainbow logo has gone through minor alterations over the years, the original design was created in 1998 by Google co-founder Sergey Brin on the free graphics program called GIMP. Then Ruth Kedar, a mutual friend of Brin and Larry Page from Stanford, got to work on other logo prototypes.

Coca-Cola: $0

 Coke's famous logo was created by its founder's partner and bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, in 1886. According to the soft drink's website, Robinson "suggested the name Coca‑Cola, thinking that ‘the two Cs would look well in advertising’. He wanted to create a unique logo to go with it, and experimented writing the company’s name in elaborate Spencerian script, a form of penmanship characteristic of the time."

The best things in life are free.

Twitter: $15

Twitter bought rights to the now-famous Twitter bird for $15 on iStockphoto. Artist Simon Oxley, a British citizen living in Japan, might have only received $6 for his work—without a credit. However, the bird has undergone a recent makeover.

Nike: $35

Nike co-founder Phil Knight purchased the famous swoosh logo from graphic design student Carolyn Davidson in 1971. Knight was teaching an accounting class at Portland State University, and he heard Davidson talking about not being able to afford oil paints in the halls. That's when he offered her $2/hour to do charts, graphs, and finally a logo.

"I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on me," Knight said, after doling out $35 for the swoosh.

Enron: $33,000

Paul Rand was paid $33,000 for creating the Enron logo in the 1990s. Rand also created logos for ABC, IBM, UPS, NeXT, and Westinghouse.

Pepsi: $1 million

Arnell Group redesigned Pepsi's logo to the tune of $1 million in 2008. According to Stock Logos, "The listed prices include a complete branding package unless otherwise noted."

A 27-page document, titled "Breathtaking," was full of pop-culture buzz words explaining Arnell's methodology for the redesign. The report was mocked using phrases like: "Emotive forces shape the gestalt of the brand identity."

BBC: $1.8 million 

The BBC made over its logo in 1997, switching from slanted fonts and splashes of color to the simple, letter boxes typed in Gill Sans.

Accenture: $100 million 

 

Accenture

The consultancy's change from "Arthur Andersen" to Accenture was one of the most expensive rebrandings of all time. 

Watch Zuck, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, & Others In Short Film To Inspire Kids To Learn How To Code

For more details click here techcrunch.com

If You’re Worried About Likes, Avoid Posting To Facebook From Twitter

Facebook is showing your content to far fewer people than they used to, says Nick Bilton at the NY Times, pointing out that while his subscribers have soared, the number of likes per post has declined rapidly. Josh Constine writes his thoughts here.

Bilton’s theory is that Facebook wants to incent people to pay to promote their content, so they show unpaid content to far fewer people. Hunter Walk has other theories (and correctly points out that comparing old data to new could be explained in other ways as well).

Occam’s Razor suggests Bilton is right, simply because Facebook has the incentive to make the free views scarce to increase demand for the paid views. But I just don’t know. As an aside, when I promoted a post back in November, Facebook told me I “had 969x as many views because you promoted it.”

Here’s what I do know – if you really care about Facebook likes, don’t just post your stuff to Twitter and then rely on it being republished automatically to Facebook. In my sample size of one, Facebook penalizes you significantly for that and shows that content to far fewer people.

I have Twitter auto post to my Facebook page, and I occasionally post things directly to Facebook as well. I’ve always noticed that the direct-to-Facebook approach generates far more likes, but I’ve never actually gone back and run the averages. Today I did, although only for the last few weeks of posts.

Here’s what I found. The average post published to Facebook by Twitter gets 13.6 likes. The average direct to Facebook post gets 81.1 likes.

I don’t care enough to change the way I publish to social networks. But you might.

Disclosure: I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture firm. I and CrunchFund each own shares in Facebook. CrunchFund owns Twitter shares. More information is here.

Can You Prevent Social Media PR Nightmares?

Social media has grown from a curiosity to an integral piece of corporate strategy in the space of only a few years. Nearly overnight, companies have brought on whole teams of specialists to handle multiplying numbers of social media accounts.

On the one hand, this has enabled companies to connect with clients and employees in brand new ways. With that growth, however, has come some serious challenges. Rogue tweets, off-message posts, hacked accounts and general confusion seem to be multiplying all the time.

Take for example the recent PR disaster experienced by global music retail chain HMV, when a disgruntled ex-employee took to the company’s official Twitter account to vent her frustrations to 70,000 followers around the globe. “We’re tweeting live from HR where we’re all being fired! Exciting!! #hmvXFactorFiring,” went the first in a string of damaging public rants.

To make matters worse, many of these highly publicized gaffes will continue to live on in social media infamy, becoming examples of what not to do and leaving PR teams scrambling to repair damages for a very long time.

So is there a way for businesses to avoid social media meltdowns? Well, until recently, not really. Collaboration and security features on social media sites were limited or nonexistent. Interns, CEOs, interns and marketing pros posted and tweeted in a social media free-for-all. Departments couldn't collaborate. One wrong click could spell a PR crisis. Staying on message was like herding cats.

But, finally, that's changing. For example, my company, HootSuite, continues to develop some very serious tools aimed expressly at business collaboration. They promise to restore a semblance of order to sprawling social media departments. By bringing all company social profiles into one central dashboard, managers can ensure messages are aligned and approved before publication—and no one drops an F-bomb while on company time. Flexible permissions restrict who can post what to which accounts—from the CFO right down to the summer intern. Back-end sharing means messages aren't duplicated by different departments. Social media squads can organize organically by department, posting to Twitter, Facebook and other networks as a unit.

These changes represent a fundamental shift in how social media is being used. The planet's largest companies are integrating Twitter, Facebook and other networks into every aspect of their operations. This means that very visible brands are more vulnerable than ever to damaging social media PR disasters. To avoid such catastrophes, companies—at the very least—must stay on top of the latest security tools available to them.

source

Hacking social networks

Facebook to pay hackers for bugs

Bug bounty will be $500 per bug, but the company will pay out more for serious issues

Facebook is going to pay hackers to find problems with its website -- just so long as they report them to Facebook's security team first.

The company is following Google and Mozilla in launching a Web "Bug Bounty" program. For security related bugs -- cross site scripting flaws, for example -- the company will pay a base rate of $500. If they're truly significant flaws Facebook will pay more, though company executives won't say how much.

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"In the past we've focused on name recognition by putting their name up on our page, sending schwag out and using this an avenue for interviews and the recruiting process," said Alex Rice, Facebook's product security lead. "We're extending that now to start paying out monetary rewards."

On Friday, Facebook will launch a new Whitehat hacking portal where researchers can sign up for the program and report bugs.

Many hackers go public with the software and website flaws they find to gain prestige. Finding an important bug on a widely used website such as Facebook can help make a journeyman hacker's career, and going to the press with the issue can make him -- or her -- famous.

But talking about the issue before Facebook has had a chance to patch it, can be risky for Facebook users. In recent years, other companies have started these bug bounty programs to encourage hackers to keep quiet about the problems they find until they are patched.

Google pays between $500 and $3,133.70, depending on the severity of the flaw.

Google started to pay for browser bugs in early 2010, and then in November it expanded the program to cover bugs in its Web properties too.

The Web bug bounty program has helped Google uncover a lot of programming errors in the past eight months, most of which have been in Google's lesser-known products, a company spokesman said this week.

Google sees its Web program as a big success. "We're very happy with the success of our vulnerability reward program so far. We've already given out $300,000 and have seen a variety of interesting bugs," the spokesman said in an email message.

Facebook's security team already engages in a lot of dialogue between security researchers and its own programmers. The company is contacted between 30 and 50 times each week by hackers. Their information leads to an average of about one to three "actionable bugs," per week, Rice said. Most of these are cross-site scripting or cross-site request forgery issues. These are both very common Web programming errors that could be abused by scammers and cybercrooks to rip off Facebook users.

Company executives say that keeping good relationships with the hacker community is very important. Facebook has sponsored high-profile parties at the Defcon hacking conference for the past two years and Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan sees that meeting as a key place to recruit new talent and educate security staffers.

"There's no other conference that we send so many people to or think about in advance like we do at Defcon," Sullivan said "We have a lot of people who go on their own dime too, not just because it's their job. It's a really important part of the identity of the people who work here."

Source:http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/facebook-pay-hackers-bugs-168473

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