Have you ever faced a bug in social media?

Have you ever faced a bug in social media? If you have never had those experiences or didn't even know what I mean by bug, then you are a lucky person. Even though we can think about it as a temporary technical problem whether temporarily or not, there are bigger problems that arise as well.

Last night Sept 24, after I liked one of my friends' profile picture on Facebook, I refreshed the news feed page. What happened after that was that there only showed public figures on that page. I didn't realize some problems at that moment. Then I went to the search engine like normal, to search for some close friends, but no friends showed up. I started to get confused, so I went to my friends list to try to find them. Things happened with the opening page showing "No Friends Yet." After checking some of my friends' homepages and trying to add them back as friends, I was told that "you are already connected," which started to make me upset. Thus, that night ended up with me being unable to see friends on my news feed, to add them back or to see photos of me in my friends' albums.

When I searched for the solutions this morning, I suddenly found that I was not the only personal made miserable by bugs in social media. Actually, there were more than 100 people around today experiencing the same Facebook friend bug as I did, and Facebook was not back to normal until 8 pm.

In fact, social media bugs are quite common. Another Facebook bug happened today when Huffington Post published that private messages had been posted on people's Facebook timeline. People got frustrated and embarrassed by those posted messages, which are supposed to be private. When things come to an ex or a complicated relationship, the issue of privacy much more severe.

When you face a bug on social media sites, 

You should:

First, KEEP CALM
You have to believe that you are not the only person suffering the problem. If there are other people experiencing the same problem,  you yourself can do nothing about it, and the web itself will find a way out.

Second, Let Others Know
Communication is always a key to success. Talk about your situations with your friends or tech pro who might understand your problems. If it is setting problem arise by yourself, then you can fix it immediately.

Third, Report the Problem
Even though big social media companies like Facebook may receive thousand of emails from their users, trying to report should always be a solution. Also, try to report your problem through other social media such as Twitter and Tumblr because people are connected under the flat world.

Fourth, Wait and See
Wait for applicable solutions. Or, it might just work again for no reason.


When social media bug happens especially regarding privacy issues, business firms should still behave ethically. This is because firms rely more on social media strategies to reach their target audience nowadays.

We, as interactive social media users, should actively react to these kinds of problems because we hold power and business companies rely upon our responses and reports.




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Apple pushes the Integration of Web Radio

Rumor to gain attention 

As iPhone 5 finally showed up in the market this Friday Sept 14, Apple has kept its glowing power in the communication business. Prior to that, on September 7,  The Wall Street Journal  posted an article called “Apple Seeks to create Pandora Rival.” What Apple Inc. intended to do was to take on Pandora’s music streaming service and create its own music service station. With this announcement, Apple Inc. is taking advantage of its existing iTunes customers while hurting businesses such as Pandora and Spotify, changing the marketing sales model as well as the communication model.

Is Apple going to monopolize online music?

We will see a monopoly of online music radio service, or in other words, an integration of custom music radio stations. According to Youtube video by Ethan Smith, a Wall Street Journal news editor, there are 400M iTunes customers, 50M Pandora customers and 16M active users on Spotify, so Apple could just pull their existing iTunes users into the new custom-radio station without losing users. Instead of incorporating advertisements into different music services, now marketers would focus primarily on the coming music service, decreasing the total cost of advertising. 

When the announcement of Apple’s seeking Pandora rival came out, it hurt the business of other web radio companies especially Pandora, seen by Pandora’s decreased stock price since Sept 7. As Pandora mostly relies on revenues from smartphone advertisements, says Qineqt, it becomes deeply vulnerable when rivals like Apple comes into the stage to try to get those advertisers. 

Different Sales Model, Different Marketing Communication Model

The sales model in this market is changing from buying (iTunes) to renting (Pandora), according to editor Smith. Under this circumstance, the communication model is changing as well since customers are able to choose their preferences of taste given a particular period of time. In this way, Apple is trying to disrupt the digital ecosystem, by adding its version of online music radio , which is far away from its traditional role, according to CNBC’s Jon Fortt published on The Time Business.

Therefore, we are seeing a merging of web radio services in the coming future with Apple’s entry. Since once Apple offers streamed music service to individual users, its competition with Pandora will be absolute. However, what remains uncertain is whether Apple is going to have a free version with ads like Pandora does.

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