Salon.com > Social Media http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:31:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Sorry, the Library of Congress isn’t displaying your brilliant tweets http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/sorry_the_library_of_congress_isnt_displaying_your_brilliant_tweets/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/sorry_the_library_of_congress_isnt_displaying_your_brilliant_tweets/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:23:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13161870 The Library of Congress has been archiving tweets at a rate of 400 million a day since Twitter launched in 2006. To date, it has preserved a mind-boggling 170 billion microposts, capturing everything from Obama's epic "Four more years" on election night to what you ate for lunch yesterday. Problem is, the library has no idea what to do with them.

“People expect fully indexed — if not online searchable — databases, and that’s very difficult to apply to massive digital databases in real time,” Deputy Librarian of Congress Robert Dizard Jr. told the Washington Post. “The technology for archival access has to catch up with the technology that has allowed for content creation and distribution on a massive scale. Twitter is focused on creating and distributing content; that’s the model. Our focus is on collecting that data, archiving it, stabilizing it and providing access; a very different model.”
Providing access to the unwieldy archive has proved difficult for the library -- budget cuts have left the institution cash-strapped in recent years -- so they're exploring the possibility of outsourcing the project. But to whom? That's anybody's guess.

Developing a model to share the tweets has also raised questions of privacy -- and historical record.

The tension lies in the historical value of seeing what a person publishes, then erases. The sexually suggestive tweet that led to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s resignation is one of the splashiest examples of how deleted tweets can be significant, but even seemingly mundane deletions could carry weight with the passage of time.

The nonprofit Sunlight Foundation has a site, called Politwoops, which culls politicians’ deleted tweets in a searchable collection. Tom Lee, the director of the foundation’s Sunlight Labs, says he finds it bizarre that the library’s archive would exclude such tweets.

“You can’t make a TV appearance or press release or speech just disappear,” Lee said. “It’s not clear to me why someone should be allowed to remove something from the public record.”

A Twitter spokesman wouldn't say if the site would retroactively make deleted tweets available to the public. And like the matter of displaying the archive itself, the question of digital privacy is unlike anything the library has ever seen before. According to Dizard, "You could look at it strictly and say that anybody who puts a tweet up has published it. We have never received a collection that has ownership transferred through a click-through agreement, so that’s the difference. Most of our collections come with signed agreements or purchase. This is a different way of acquiring.”

#FirstWorldProblems, right?

 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/sorry_the_library_of_congress_isnt_displaying_your_brilliant_tweets/feed/ 2 Facebook brag about drunk driving gets teen arrested http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/facebook_brag_about_drunk_driving_gets_teen_arrested/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/facebook_brag_about_drunk_driving_gets_teen_arrested/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:06:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13161793 Teenagers are famous (infamous?) for doing stupid things and bragging about them online. But Oregon teen Jacob Cox-Brown might have gone too far when he posted on Facebook about drunkenly hitting another car and driving off.

"Drivin drunk... classic ;) but to whoever's vehicle i hit i am sorry. :P," the 18-year-old wrote on his Facebook page. His friends might have laughed, but the cops didn't. As the Daily Dot reported:

"Astoria Police have an active social media presence," a press release from the police department trumpeted. "It was a private Facebook message to one of our officers that got this case moving through."

City of Astoria police went to Cox-Brown's home and discovered damage on his vehicle matched that of a report from hit-and-run activity in a nearby neighborhood earlier in the day. He was then arrested and booked on two counts of failing to perform the duties of a driver.

A police spokesperson told local news station KGW-TV that a Facebook post isn't sufficient evidence to charge Cox-Brown for driving while intoxicated, so he'll likely just get a slap on the wrist.

 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/04/facebook_brag_about_drunk_driving_gets_teen_arrested/feed/ 2 CBS drama “Hawaii Five-0″ plans choose-your-own ending episode http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/cbs_drama_hawaii_five_0_plans_choose_your_own_ending_episode/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/cbs_drama_hawaii_five_0_plans_choose_your_own_ending_episode/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:36:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13161228 The reimagination of the 1968-1980 show "Hawaii Five-O," called "Hawaii Five-0" (zero), has announced that, for the first time ever, a prime-time drama will allow audiences to decide how an episode ends in real time.

On Jan. 14, viewers will log into CBS and Twitter to vote for one of three alternate endings in an episode that investigates the death of an Oahu State University professor. “I've always felt the most fun aspect of watching a mystery is trying to figure out ‘whodunit,’” executive producer Peter Lenkov said.  “Now the 'Hawaii Five-0' viewers will actually get the chance to tell us who they think committed the crime and we will listen. I love that our dedicated and attentive fans will actually play a part in resolving our story.”

But wait -- isn't the best part of a murder mystery being surprised by the reveal? Well, let's hope that the move to involve the audience is not part of a wider social experiment that results in a twisted new genre of scripted reality TV shows reality scripted TV shows.

CBS plans to publish all three alternate endings on CBS.com after the episode airs. Watch the promo below:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/cbs_drama_hawaii_five_0_plans_choose_your_own_ending_episode/feed/ 0 Snapchat brings the goofy http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/snapchat_brings_the_goofy/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/snapchat_brings_the_goofy/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13159974 Wait -- what? The video-and-pic sharing app Snapchat is suddenly, according to the Financial Times, "in the coveted but risky position of beginning 2013 as the most hyped app in Silicon Valley." How'd that happen?

Sneak attacks like Snapchat's -- the app was launched in September 2011, and exploded in popularity this past fall -- are most likely to happen when the target demographic is younger than the journalistic cohort that covers new technology. Smartphone-equipped high schoolers and college kids are the big Snapchat users, so the rest of us weren't paying much attention until the app blew up.

Or maybe you're just a jaded cynic like me, and responded to seeing the name Snapchat pop up with increasing frequency on Twitter by wondering why the heck the world needed yet another piece of software to help people share digital content. Haven't we shared enough, already?

Yes, probably. But the answer to why Snapchat is worth pondering is a couple of orders of magnitude more profound than I expected. Snapchat is the anti-Panopticon, an indigenous rebellion against the know-it-all, see-it-all, never-forget-anything networked world.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/02/snapchat_brings_the_goofy/feed/ 1 Zynga slashes games and jobs in effort to regroup http://www.salon.com/2012/12/31/zynga_slashes_games_and_jobs_in_effort_to_regroup/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/31/zynga_slashes_games_and_jobs_in_effort_to_regroup/#comments Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:42:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13158563 Zynga dealt a blow to time wasters and procrastinators when it ended several of its games yesterday as part of a wider retrenchment, TechCrunch reported.

The social gaming company skyrocketed into the collective brainspace with addictive fare like the simulation "FarmVille" and "Words with Friends." But the public markets haven't been kind to the company. Its ongoing restructuring effort involves cutting more than 100 jobs, closing offices and eliminating more than a dozen of its titles.

TechCrunch wrote that, "Investors feared it had become bloated, free virality on Facebook had been curtailed, competitors were proliferating, and the shift of Facebook users to mobile from Zynga’s stronghold on the desktop canvas would break the company."Zynga went public in December 2011 at $10 per share. On Monday morning it was trading at $2.37. It has not traded above $4 since July.

Games shut down this month include "PetVille," "Mafia Wars 2," "FishVille," "Vampire Wars," and "Treasure Isle."

TechCrunch:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/31/zynga_slashes_games_and_jobs_in_effort_to_regroup/feed/ 0 Go on, tweet from your seats! http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/go_on_tweet_from_your_seats/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/go_on_tweet_from_your_seats/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:48:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13155710 In a world where no meal can go un-Instagrammed, no departure from a plane unremarked upon with the phrase "wheels down" and no status un-updated, when the houselights go down, does an entertainment venue beat 'em or join 'em?

On Thursday, the Minneapolis Guthrie Theater is launching its first experiment in offering balcony-level Tweet Seats, "allowing social media users an opportunity to interact" during its production of "The Servant of Two Masters." Guthrie External Relations Director Trish Santini explains, "This cast is an incredible ensemble of comedians, and night after night they're riffing and improvising  — it's the kind of show that makes you ask, 'Did they just say that?' Usually they did — and tweeting should be a great way to talk about it."

"Should" being the operative word. As Jezebel's Laura Beck ponders, the move will either "encourage friends and families to check out fresh-ass local theater," or "just lead to people compulsively checking Facebook and Instagramming the backs of people's heads." Because while you can invite the audience to participate in "an opportunity to interact" in the hopes of creating buzz, there's zero guarantee it won't instead just idly play Temple Run instead.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/go_on_tweet_from_your_seats/feed/ 8 U.S. gas sales declining http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/u_s_gas_sales_declining/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/u_s_gas_sales_declining/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 11:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13155500 A note by Doug Short at AdvisorPerspectives.com shows that per capita gas sales have declined steeply over the last few years. According to the latest available numbers from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the 12-month moving average for gas sales dropped to  about 350 million gallons per day, down 7.7 percent since August 2005.

"Some of the shrinkage in sales can be attributed to more fuel-efficient cars," Short writes. "But that presumably would be minor over shorter time frames and would be offset to some extent by population growth." He also notes that this list of top 10 best-selling vehicles has its share of gas guzzling pickups and SUVs.

And the sales drop has taken place at a time when the population has grown. Short finds that per-capita gas sales have declined almost 20 percent since March 1989.

What's going on here? Short sees several factors at work: 1) Urban populations have climbed, 2) Fewer people in the aging population have to get to work and 3) More young people are able to work from home or, due to social media, are less interested in leaving the house. We've become a nation less demographically inclined to drive.

h't Quartz

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/u_s_gas_sales_declining/feed/ 2 Instagram says your photos won’t end up in ads, after all http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/instragram_says_your_photos_wont_end_up_in_ads_after_all/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/instragram_says_your_photos_wont_end_up_in_ads_after_all/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13149660 After the hearing the Internet's audible outcry over Instagram's updated terms of service, which technically give Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, the right to sell users' photo for profit without consent, compensation, or notification, Instragram is backpedaling and revising their terms. Lawyers, reporters and rights activists interpreted the vague language to mean that Instagram will sell its users' photos to ad agencies. Yesterday, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom issued a note saying, "This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing." "We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear," he wrote.

Systrom also assuaged fears of users appearing in ads without their consent:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/instragram_says_your_photos_wont_end_up_in_ads_after_all/feed/ 1 Instagram sells us out! http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/your_instagram_photos_might_be_in_ads_soon/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/your_instagram_photos_might_be_in_ads_soon/#comments Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148585 The popular digital filter and photo sharing app Instagram might become a lot less popular in a few weeks. The company announced changes to its Privacy and Terms of Service yesterday that are meant to "protect you, and prevent spam and abuse as we grow," which go into effect on Jan. 16. Instead, as the New York Times reported, Instagram's parent company, Facebook, quietly gave itself the right to share and sell its users' photos for profit.

Nestled within the "Rights" sections of Instagram's updated terms, Instagram and Facebook can share or sell photos (to ad agencies, for example) without notifying users or compensating them for it:

"To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/your_instagram_photos_might_be_in_ads_soon/feed/ 15 Online privacy’s new iconography http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/online_privacys_new_iconography/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/online_privacys_new_iconography/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:52:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13124296 The online syndicate Disconnect has joined forces with Internet nonprofit Mozilla and a team of designers to demystify web privacy for the masses. Their weapon of choice? A visual rating system that pops up in your browser bar. Since reading the fine print on how your personal information gets used is time-consuming and confusing, which is why you don't do it. As a result, average web surfers (Hi!) has absolutely no idea what information sites are mining for, or how they use it. That's where the icons come in.

There are currently nine symbols representing different degrees of compliance with privacy standards. If a website sells your data to outside parties, it gets a dollar sign inside an orange circle with an upward pointed arrow. If it doesn't, it gets a plain old green circle around a dollar sign. Confused? You're not alone. The new set of icons is complicated, and that's pretty much by design. As Casey Oppenheim of Disconnect explains, Internet privacy is a hard concept to boil down to a visual language. "How do you convey data, intent, all these different things?"

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/online_privacys_new_iconography/feed/ 0 I quit! Now fork over the Twitter feed http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/i_quit_now_about_that_twitter_feed/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/i_quit_now_about_that_twitter_feed/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13124010 When an employee and a company split, who gets the Twitter feed? Nobody knows.

A lawsuit that might have clarified this increasingly important question, PhoneDog LLC vs. Kravitz, has settled out of court, Fortune reports:

The mobile device and app review site sued former employee Noah Kravitz in federal court, claiming that, when Kravitz quit and took 17,000 Twitter followers with him, he was in effect stealing a client list. According to PhoneDog's calculations, each follower was worth $2.50 per month over the 18 months Kravitz tweeted on the company's behalf. So, the lawsuit said, Kravitz owed his erstwhile employer $340,000.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/i_quit_now_about_that_twitter_feed/feed/ 1 Pizza Hut perfume now exists http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/pizza_hut_perfume_now_exists/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/pizza_hut_perfume_now_exists/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:42:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13116022 Taking a cue from Internet nerd culture, Canada's Pizza Hut has launched a marketing campaign based on a joke from its Facebook page: the creation of Pizza Hut perfume. The joke turned into a reality when the food chain's advertising agency thought it would be a great way to commemorate its milestone of reaching 100,000 Facebook fans.

But sadly, Eau de Pizza Hut, a scent "boasting top notes of freshly baked, hand-tossed dough," will only be shipped to a few of said fans. "For now, we've only produced 110 bottles of Eau de Pizza Hut," said Beverley D'Cruz, marketing and product development director for Pizza Hut Canada. "But who knows what the future has in store," she added.

Until then, the rest of us will have to smell like Pizza Hut pizza the old-fashioned way.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/pizza_hut_perfume_now_exists/feed/ 5 Pope joins Twitter http://www.salon.com/2012/12/03/pope_joins_twitter/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/03/pope_joins_twitter/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13113382 VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Benedict XVI, the pope known for his hefty volumes of theology, is now trying brevity - spreading the faith through his own Twitter account.

The pontiff will tweet in eight languages starting Dec. 12 using his personal handle (at)Pontifex, responding live to questions about faith during his weekly general audience, the Vatican said Monday.

Within four hours of the Vatican's announcement, Benedict had already garnered 100,000 followers on the English version of (at)Pontifex alone. He may never hit 1 billion faithful that the Catholic Church counts around the globe, but he's odds-on to get 1 million followers by the end of the year, British bookmakers Ladbrokes said.

The pope sent his first tweet last year from a Vatican account to launch the Holy See's news information portal, part of efforts to increase the church presence in social media and spread the faith. A personal Twitter account for the 85-year-old Benedict has been the subject of intense speculation ever since; Monday's news conference was packed in an indication of the interest it has generated.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/03/pope_joins_twitter/feed/ 0 A Facebook lesson for terrorists http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/a_facebook_lesson_for_terrorists/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/a_facebook_lesson_for_terrorists/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:51:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13111623 On January 19, 2012, 23-year-old Ralph Deleon, a legal permanent resident of the United States living in Ontario, Calif., "liked" a link to a video shared on Facebook by Sohiel Omar Kabir, a naturalized citizen of the U.S. originally from Afghanistan.

The link in question was one that might have given many Facebook users pause. According to an affidavit filed by N. T. Elias, a special agent with the FBI, the video, titled "Dua of Sheikh Muhammad al Mohaisany masjid al haram makkah," appeared "to be a prayer for the success of the mujahideen and features various photos including Al-Qa'ida leaders Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, 9/11 attacks, bloodied adults and children, and Islamic fighters."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/a_facebook_lesson_for_terrorists/feed/ 5 Cop gives boots to homeless man, becomes online sensation http://www.salon.com/2012/11/29/cop_gives_boots_to_homeless_man_becomes_online_sensation/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/29/cop_gives_boots_to_homeless_man_becomes_online_sensation/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:44:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13110233 The NYPD have received the gift of holiday-period good P.R.: A tourist in Times Square snapped a photo of an NYPD officer giving a pair of boots and warm socks to a barefoot homeless man. The image -- an undeniably heartwarming scene of protection and service -- became an online sensation once the NYPD posted it to its Facebook page on Tuesday. More than 370,000 users “liked” it as of Thursday morning, and over 109,000 shared it.

Officer Larry Deprimo, the cop who gifted the boots and reportedly told the recipient, "I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let’s put them on and take care of you,” showed the sort of human kindness worthy of sharing online and "IRL" (in real life). Little wonder the NYPD would use the photo of Deprimo as an image boost over social media. There is, however, something galling about the viral celebration of the image as something representative of NYPD's attitude toward the homeless when there is an ongoing battle by homeless advocates in New York to combat mistreatment by cops. Equally, it's worth noting that images of severe police brutality get far less online attention. Meanwhile, reporters and citizen journalists have repeatedly in the past year been physically prevented from filming NYPD aggression.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/29/cop_gives_boots_to_homeless_man_becomes_online_sensation/feed/ 19 Please stop posting that fake Facebook privacy notice http://www.salon.com/2012/11/27/please_stop_posting_that_fake_facebook_privacy_notice/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/27/please_stop_posting_that_fake_facebook_privacy_notice/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:51:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13108588 Even though news outlets yesterday reported that the Facebook personal privacy notice that recently went viral is fake, many Facebook users continue to post the note, incorrectly assuming that it protects their personal information. To drive the point home, College Humor has created a sketch called "Facebook Law for Idiots":

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/27/please_stop_posting_that_fake_facebook_privacy_notice/feed/ 4 Viral Facebook copyright notice is false http://www.salon.com/2012/11/26/viral_facebook_copyright_notice_is_false/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/26/viral_facebook_copyright_notice_is_false/#comments Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:03:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13107484 You may have seen friends posting a personal copyright notice on their Facebook pages this weekend, meant to protect their information from being shared or used without their consent. Unfortunately, the notice, like others in the past, is fake. Mashable reports:

The idea behind the “notice” is that Facebook’s listing as a publicly traded company will negatively affect its users’ privacy, which is not true. Simply put, Facebook and its users are still bound to the same terms and conditions that are accepted by users when they sign up for the service, and posting a legal “talisman” of this kind on your profile does nothing to change that.

The note went viral in response to Facebook's recent decision to block users from voting on what the company does with personal information and how it manages privacy.

Read the note, below:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/26/viral_facebook_copyright_notice_is_false/feed/ 9 Her Facebook disaster show http://www.salon.com/2012/11/20/her_facebook_disaster_show/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/20/her_facebook_disaster_show/#comments Tue, 20 Nov 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13066845 This is a story about a woman named Paula. That’s not even her real name, and my instinct was to call her “girl” because that’s how I remember her: a sturdy, pale girl with greasy, straight-cut bangs and glasses and grey teeth.

Paula and I were never friends, even though we went to middle school together. She was poor (never mind that I, too, was poor), and she didn’t wear the right clothes (never mind that I didn’t, either), and if she wasn’t stupid, it was somehow implied that she was stupid, or that her future was less bright than the rest of our classmates'. It was never talked about, but it was there; it was apparent in the way that everyone ignored her and in the way that she shuffled sullenly from class to class.

And that’s where I would have left her if this story took place 15 or 20 years ago. I wouldn’t know Paula at all today. She’d be forever lost in the shadows of youth, a plump ghost who once ate with me in the small, cramped cafeteria of our middle school.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/20/her_facebook_disaster_show/feed/ 49 I was a music snob, until I fell for One Direction http://www.salon.com/2012/10/25/i_was_a_music_snob_until_i_fell_for_one_direction/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/25/i_was_a_music_snob_until_i_fell_for_one_direction/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:33:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13051787 I have two embarrassing admissions to make: One, I discovered that there is a benefit to the erosion of privacy that social media affords. I was in pursuit of the perfect boyfriend, and I thought I found him, in the Georgetown University library: We’ll call him Tucker. But before I asked my crush out on a date, I had to vet him a little: I had to know what kind of music he liked, so I peeked on his Facebook page. Which brings me to my second, more important admission: This was how I found out about One Direction. A British boy band! Did he like them ironically? Who in college listens to boy bands? It hardly matters, because I never fell for Tucker. But I did fall for One Direction – a piece of good fortune for which I will always owe him a profound debt.

Before meeting Tucker, I had heard of One Direction in the way I had heard of NAFTA – which is to say, I could tell you what it was in a vague, unhelpful way. But Tucker’s passion for the musical act spurred me, one quiet weeknight, to give them a listen.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/25/i_was_a_music_snob_until_i_fell_for_one_direction/feed/ 18 My BF went Twitter-crazy http://www.salon.com/2012/10/17/my_bf_went_twitter_crazy/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/17/my_bf_went_twitter_crazy/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13042235 Dear Cary,

Here we go.

I love my boyfriend: He's kind, devoted, helpful, thoughtful and supportive. Met the parents. We're a newish couple, and I would love to see where this relationship goes. I really love him, but I am struggling, feeling "stuck" in some jealousy issues I can't seem to move away from.

As with most people, especially "das IT volk," my boyfriend has his smartphone with him all the time -- all the damn time. When I leave the room, he immediately gravitates to it, and regularly checks his Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter accounts.

Lately I've been consumed by the worries about his going online and following a work colleague of his on Twitter. The only other people he follows from work are his bosses. She was the first person he immediately began following, although they do not have a Facebook friendship.

At first he told me her tweets were techie (work)-based. They aren't. It's basically a lot of personal "banter" (a word he uses to describe their relationship as having) and flirty talk with friends and other people in her industry. And also? She can get kinda spicy.

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