Social Software and Tagging

App of the Week: What Is the Deal with Vine Anyway?

If you don't follow social media closely (hey, good for you!), you may be wondering what the hell a Vine is and why it has been in the news lately? Good question. Vine is another free social media app for smartphones built to share super short videos in much the same way Instagram shares videos but ... More >>

Houston's Best Ribs, Tex-Mex and Steaks -- According to You, Social Media Maven

What if you could ask social media sites such as Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and TripAdvisor what Tex-Mex restaurant they'd recommend as the best in Houston? All at once? Without having to mess with the whole following people and enduring their boring status updates part? Triposo is here for you. ... More >>

Opening for Houston Press Web Editor

The Houston Press has an immediate opening for a full-time web editor. This position combines journalism with social media marketing and analytical data management to increase the audience for the Press on its desktop and mobile applications. The web editor assigns and edits photo slideshows, manag ... More >>

Houston Press Partnering with Foursquare, and Not Just to Stalk You

Each September, the Houston Press releases our Best of Houston® issue after slavishly compiling what we consider to be the best this city has to offer -- from theater companies and sports figures to bars and restaurants. With that in mind, we're excited to announce a new partnership with Foursquar ... More >>

When Embedding Social Media Into Your Web Site Goes Bad

Everyone wants to embed live Twitter streams into their stuff these days. You see the streams scrolling across the bottom of your TV screen during live presentations and you see them broadcast with a projector at events. And you see them quite frequently on websites, for restaurants or otherwise. W ... More >>

Local Woman Poses as Teen Girl Online to Catch Alleged Facebook Predator

Acccording to court documents, "Jessica," a 36-year-old Houston-area woman was creeped out by an acquaintance of hers, 26-year-old Daniel Riekstins of Webster. Jessica had heard that Riekstins's behavior with underage teen girls was suspicious and that his relationships with some of them had been ... More >>

Even In Trying Times, The Randy Travis Social Media Train Keeps On a Rollin'

Social media is a fun place, where you can damage your entire career or build up a massive following within just a few strokes. You can engage with your fans and help foster a community, and also you know, sell your shit. Just hours after country quasi-legend Randy Travis was arrested while drunk ... More >>

The 2012 Houston Web Awards

The Houston Press rides the wave to the next group of winners.

Nicholas Scott Grammer: Almost Dies on a Stolen Motorcycle, Swipes Another Weeks Later, Police Say

From looking at his court records and two Facebook pages, it's clear that Nicholas Scott Grammer loves motorcycles. Unfortunately for the 22-year-old Deer Park native and everyone else in the Galveston Bay area, it seems that he loves two things even more: 1) not paying for them, and 2) speeding and ... More >>

"Duck Taco" Lawsuit

Five Dumb Reasons to Hate Social Media: Stand Up For Twitter & Facebook!

There are lots of annoying things about the various social networks that exist and plenty of reasons to think they are stupid. I've enumerated a number of those reasons on this very blog. But, with all things, there are people who will hate just to hate and sites like Twitter and Facebook often make ... More >>

Prison Employees Say The Man (i.e., TDCJ) Is Monitoring Their Facebook Friends Lists

Some employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are accusing wardens of disciplining, and in some cases firing, them for having Facebook friends with criminal records. Duane Stuart, who runs a private TDCJ employee forum, thebackgate.org, tells Hair Balls that wardens regularly inspect e ... More >>

Anti-Social: Employers Want Candidates' Facebook and Twitter Logins

Privacy has increasingly become an important topic in the technology world. There are concerns that web sites like Google and Facebook are collecting data to sell to advertisers. There is the worry that the government is using the massive amounts of information passed around the Internet every day t ... More >>

Republicans Dominate Democrats...in Tweeting

​Our modern technological age has created a lot of new ways to communicate with others. For some, these means seem cold and impersonal. For those who use them regularly, they are simply another option for sending messages into the giant black hole of data that is the Internet. For politicians ... More >>

Five Reasons Why Perry's Attempt to Block Negative Social Media Content Is a Bad Idea

Controlling negative publicity is tough business in the modern world. Virtually everything is caught on tape -- good and bad -- and the Internet provides the ideal place for opposition. From anonymous commenters to bloggers to people on social networking sites, it is impossible to prevent negative c ... More >>

Restaurant Ejects Diner for Tweeting While Eating

Social media isn't always as friendly as it sounds.​Ever since Te House of Tea and its sister restaurant, the now-defunct Saute World Bistro, signed up for Twitter accounts in August 2008 -- the first two restaurants in Houston to do so -- it's become not only de rigeur but almost necessary f ... More >>

Comment of the Day: If Twitter, Google and Social Media Were Around During the First Moon Walk

​We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them. So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even. This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involv ... More >>

Top 5 Musician Twitter Quitters

​Most of us would be happy to have 1,000 Twitter followers. A million is pretty much unattainable, even for some big enchiladas. Yet we see celebs erasing their Twitter pages as if it isn't the best thing since some 5'3" guy in Iowa took a knife to a loaf of bread. What's driving the Twitter ... More >>

Land Of Confusion: A Google Playlist

Join my circle, won't you? ​About a week ago, we finally took up a friend's Google invite offer, and immediately starting tooling around the search engine's new social-media outlet. In Google's words, the new site "makes sharing on the Web feel like sharing in real life." That sounds cool, bu ... More >>

Masters of Cyberspace

The Press hands out its first Houston Web Awards.

App of the Week: MySocialMania

It doesn't get much easier than this.​App: MySocialMania Platforms: iPhone Web site: Apple Link Cost: $0.99 Mania seems to be an appropriate word when discussing the crazed use of social media by millions worldwide. From Twitter to Facebook to Flickr to MySpace (God help us), millions of ... More >>

Amazon Crash Hits Reddit, Others: Social Media Armageddon

Now get some work done.​The spinning of the earth has nearly come to a standstill thanks to major server problems with Amazon.com's Web Services, a cloud-computing platform used by dozens of very popular social networking sites. "The cloud," for you luddites, means stuff that's saved in the ... More >>

Why We Can't Be Friends on Facebook

Why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends.....​Something interesting happened when social media started bearing down on us a few years back. We began to yearn for friends, and not the kind that you can call up on a Tuesday night for a bull session at the bar, or someone to watch your pu ... More >>

What Do Rappers Have Against Facebook?

Some rappers happen to be thoughtful, intelligent people. Every Monday (or thereabouts) that isn't a national holiday, Rocks Off will have some of them here discussing issues relevant to their culture. Photo illustration by John Seaborn Gray​This Week's Panel: Z-Ro, Slim Thug, hasHBrown, Kirk ... More >>

Before Networking Was Social: Ten Early Social Websites That Are Dead or Dying

Who needs Classmates.com when we have Facebook?​Social networking today is a foregone conclusion. Many of us wake up and check Twitter on our smart phones or pull up Facebook on our laptops. We surf YouTube videos in our spare time, find dates on Match.com and spend hours reading music, politi ... More >>

Why, Lord? Now They're Foursquaring From Space

Life just got better​You, like all people, just LOVE Foursquare, the web application that lets you keep up with where people you don't care about are at any given moment.Because if you don't know that someone has earned enough points to be "Mayor of Lupe Tortilla's" or some such crap, your life wi ... More >>

Gravitas Not Closing; The Twitter Rumor Mill Continues to Spin

The blue plate fried chicken at Gravitas.​It started with a Twitter update from @jimbo126 this past Sunday, July 18: "Per waiter, Gravitas closing after today's bruch service. Sure felt like it - out of half the menu and no bread! Out of SALAD DRESSING." Before long, what was merely an out-of ... More >>

The Twitterverse

More than just cyberspace, the tweet life inspires people to make friends and adopt causes in person. It has a few problems, too.

Twitter: The Five Most Annoying Things You Can Do

No Foursquare or proctologist visits, please​In this week's cover feature, "The Twitterverse", we dive into the world of Twitter to spotlight some of the best things going with the social networking hub, and also uncover some of the worst things permeating the site. We talked to tweeting Texans in ... More >>

Seven Followers, But Her Tweets Are Still Monitored By The Authorities, Maybe

​As much as social media broadens our horizons, be it through interpersonal or business relations, it creates a whole new universe of privacy issues. Friendswood-era college student Ashley Marzullo found that out firsthand last week after making an off-hand remark on Twitter last week on a particu ... More >>

Metro Rolls Out Facebook & Twitter Accounts To Zero Fanfare

​In a press release clearly launched from the Stone Age, the Bayou City's Metropolitan Transit Authority (that's Metro, if you're nasty) puffed up its chest and triumphantly declared today that it is "expanding the conversation by adding social media tools Facebook and Twitter to its communica ... More >>

Better Watch What You're Putting On Your Facebook Page

Allegedly, more people use Facebook than e-mail, and during the last several months, Twitter became a verb. But for Corporate America, that could cause some problems, according to Houston attorney Chris Schaeper. "Twenty years ago, you might be having beers with an old frat buddy from college and ha ... More >>

Musicians on Twitter

Is the "microblog" Internet phenomenon the next leap forward or just a tweeting waste of time?

A Call for More Honesty in Facebook Status Updates

I'll admit it...I'm as self-absorbed as the next person when it comes to writing Facebook status updates. I know no one really cares if I'm watching Larry King or filing my nails or whatever, yet for some reason I choose to update my status line constantly. Have you noticed that very few people se ... More >>

Facebook Hamstrings Whopper Sacrifice Application

It was easy to guess that Burger King's somewhat mean-spirited Whopper Sacrifice Facebook application was going to draw some kind of fire; less easy to guess was that the fire would be drawn from Facebook itself, because the application, to put it bluntly, worked too well. In the world of Whopper ... More >>

Burger King Urges You to Abandon Your Friends for Whoppers

I have to say, I wish Burger King's food was better. Because their marketing department is evidently full of interesting people who, unlike other companies who balk at any controversy whatsoever, simply do not care whose feelings get hurt. Burger King has announced the implementation of the Whopp ... More >>

Tweating Out

Twitter, the microblogging and social media tool that's become increasingly popular among the technologically hip, both young and old, has literally thousands of applications.  How any one person (or company) uses Twitter is unique unto them.While some people (also called Twitterers or Tweepl ... More >>

Facebook Lawsuit Has A Houston Connection

Miss Pop Rocks: Special Hurricane Ike Edition

Caught In The Net

Sole of Houston: Strip Mall Taverns on the Southwest Side

Twitter Is Very Important!

Facebook Responds to the Texas Attorney General's Office

Twitter This

“Lawndale Has Many Friends”

Brian Piana creates an entire art installation to gain Top Friend status

Move Over, MySpace: Not So Fast

Local musicians aren't ready to write off MySpace just yet

Move Over, MySpace

With friends like these...

Sex Offenders on MySpace? No Way!

The Upside of MySpace

How it's changed things for the better

Rev It Up

Roaring engines, screaming guitars and...Net safety?