Mediaboss Marketing

Boston, MA (PRWEB) November 15, 2013

Garagesocial, the online social networking community for automotive enthusiasts and consumers, announced today that it will begin distributing private beta-keys this December 2013. Garagesocial is a new social network for people to discover, list and share their vehicles online. The site allows enthusiasts, vendors, racing professionals and bloggers to gather online and showcase their favorite vehicles on a centralized platform.

By creating an interactive and user-friendly interface, the company aims at Connecting the Automotive World through new and innovative ways. The site gives users the opportunity to build personal profiles for their vehicles with albums, spec sheets, descriptions and tags. Users can display the cars they have owned, currently own, wish they owned or have previously driven. Garagesocial users also have the added ability to buy, sell or rent vehicles through the site. Live Facebook integration and information legitimacy verification are a few of the advanced features offered by the networking site. The company plans to introduce company pages where vendors can sell and promote their automotive products online.

President and Founder, Maxime Rassi, describes Garagesocial as the universal key to a whole new dimension of automotive networking. Rassis personal project allows users to network with vehicle owners, locally or internationally. Rassi plans on creating the ultimate automotive social network, where enthusiasts can find and discover anything relevant to this industry on a single platform.

Recently, Garagesocial exhibited at the annual SEMA Show from November 5-8, 2013 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. A press conference and a live demonstration of the networking site was held at the SEMA Show Media Center. The Garagesocial team also hosted an Xbox competition, the winners were awarded an iPad Mini, iPod Touch or an iPod Nano. The Boston startup plans on exhibiting this upcoming March at the 2014 SXSW Interactive Trade Show in Austin, Texas.

For more information and a recap of Garagesocials SEMA events, visit the following: SEMA Pictures (all photos): http://bit.ly/1bniFbq SEMA Video: http://bit.ly/1bsQefY SEMA Brochure: http://sdrv.ms/1dnnzrS

About Garagesocial, Inc. Garagesocial is a revolutionary automotive social networking community for people to discover, list and share their vehicles online. Started in Boston, MA in 2013, the companys objective is Connecting the Automotive World through new and innovative ways. Garagesocial has representatives in Texas, London, and Paris and is actively seeking more partners.

Here is the original post:
Garagesocial Announces Private Beta-Key Distribution

(CNN) -

A social media thread proved strong enough to pull a New Jersey teen back from possible suicide, according to authorities.

And it was a social networking first for officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department -- using Facebook and other outlets this week to track down and help a troubled 18-year-old whose three-word online posting seemed to say suicide.

"Thinking of jumping," the teen posted to his Facebook profile alongside a photo of the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson River.

A concerned Facebook friend who saw the post contacted police in Paterson, N.J., alerting authorities to the apparent suicide threat, according to Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo.

The alert was just the beginning. Pentangelo gave this scenario of events:

Paterson police called Port Authority officers, who serve the major bridges and tunnels of New York and New Jersey.

A photo of the young man was downloaded from his Facebook page and distributed to officers searching the bridge -- unsuccessfully -- for the teen among the bridge's pedestrians.

An officer assigned to Port Authority police's emergency services, Lt. Thomas Michaels, set out to contact the young man through Facebook, leaving his cell phone number on the page and urging the teen to call him.

And Port Authority Sgt. Nadine Rhem also took to Facebook, sending more offers of support and assistance.

Continue reading here:
Police use social media to help suicidal teen

How Does Twitter Make Money?
How Does Twitter Make Money? I have looked but do not see any advertisments. Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables it...

By: MrNewsfromWorld

View post:
How Does Twitter Make Money? - Video

Features listed on the app's iTunes profile include: 'share a selfie', 'browse the real-time feed', 'double-tap selfie that you like', and 'send private messages to friends'.

Shahidi told TechCrunch that the app would take on rival photo-sharing site Instagram, but without mundane pictures of "coffee or salad". He added that people are going to enjoy "seeing their life documented through the app".

Justin Bieber has reportedly invested $1.1 million (689m) in Shots of Me. Other investors include venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, boxer Floyd Mayweather and angel investor Tom McInerney, according to a report in Fortune magazine.

It is coming increasingly common for cdlebrities to invest in technology companies. Ashton Kutcher, for example, has backed a number of firms, including property rental service AirBnB and Summly, the news aggregation app recently bought out by Yahoo.

This is Bieber's first investment in a social network, and the first time the popstar has made a VC investment independently of his manager Scooter Braun.

Bieber already has a massive teenage social media following. He has 46.5 million Twitter followers making him the second most popular member of the micro-blogging website after fellow singer Katy Perry and his first Instagram picture crashed the sites servers.

Link:
Bieber-backed selfie-sharing app 'Shots of Me' launches on App Store

With tech entrepreneurs trying to disrupt entrenched problems in every field, from dating to transit and education, perhaps its no surprise to see them taking on one of the most vexing problems of all: human happiness.

Happify, founded two years ago by a group of veteran tech entrepreneurs, has created a new website that claims to make its users happier through a series of freemium games with social networking features. Activities include clicking on balloons with positive words on them and writing down encouraging recent events. Happify says it works closely with scientific advisers, and several psychology researchers who looked at the site at my request say it appears to be oriented around sound principles from positive psychology, a relatively new subfield based on bolstering positive thought patterns.

But theres clear tension between the companys desire for scientific credibility and its push for user sharing, microblogging, and networking. Happify encourages its users to be as public as possible. Scientific research shows that social support and positive feedback are key to staying motivated on your happiness journey, the website reads. If youd like to interact more with other Happify members, you can update your privacy settings on the Settings page at any time!

That is a stretchquite a bit of one, actually, says Maria Konnikova, a Columbia University psychology researcher who has examined Facebooks impact on user happiness. Theres conflicting work on the effects of social networking sites on happiness. While some studies do show a positive effect, many show the opposite to be the case.

Happify also hasnt undergone the kind of rigorous testing needed to support its prominently displayed claim that 86% of members get happier in two months. Acacia Parks, a positive psychology researcher and one of the companys advisers, allowed me to review an internal document evaluating early data about Happify, and its findings were much more cautious. According to the document, users reported growing happier over time, but its difficult to know what constitutes a clinically significant increase in Happifys happiness scale, which the company says is adapted from established questionnaires used in clinical psychology. The evaluation included no control group, so its difficult to interpret the results.

Theres a controlled trial in the works, says Parks, with plans to submit the results for publication next year. For now, Happify is asking premium users to pay for a service that hasnt been shown to be more effective than free alternatives. Happify co-founder and President Ofer Leidner says, I think it should pointed out how unusual it is for a company to put its framework through scientific studies so early.

The other big problem with Happify is that it doesnt do enough to steer people in serious need of help to more developed resources. While Leidner says, Were not thinking about this as a service for depressed people, the site doesnt offer concrete alternatives, like crisis phone numbers or links, to users who bomb its happiness test. Happify recommends counseling as an option, then resumes promoting its own features, its disclaimer tucked into terms-and-conditions language.

Even if the sites key audience is healthy people who just want to be happier, the authors need to prepare for what happens when clinically depressed or anxious (or people with eating, substance abuse disorders, etc.) use the site, Sonja Lyubomirsky, a happiness researcher at the University of California, Riverside, wrote in an e-mail. Lyubomirsky says Happify asked her to advise the company, but she declined because shed recently given birth.

Happifys long-term challenge is revenue. Leidner says its currently trying to make money by accumulating paid subscribers, though he wouldnt share subscription figures. The company is also weighing other ways to raise revenue in the longer term, he says, including by targeting services to customers based on what theyve revealed in its happiness exercises. A customer looking to change jobs could be offered employment listings or career coaching.

While its easy to envision the lines between research and profits starting to blur, theres a certain genius to this. Someone who might not broadcast unhappiness with their work or home life on Facebook (FB), where hundreds of friends could see, might do so on Happify. Leidner says the company has no specific plans on this front and that any new revenue model would have to pass robust testing.

See the original post here:
Happify Sells Social Networking Science, for Now