Salman Rushdie booted off Facebook because of name

Salman Rushdie, the award winning author of Midnight's Children, has had a bit of a social networking issue. Facebook had deleted his account this past weekend and in response, he sent the social network a copy of his passport to prove he was who he was. He got the boot again from Facebook saying that he could not use his name 'Salman' (his full legal name is Ahmed Salman Rushdie). Even though Rushdie kept requesting Facebook to reinstate his account, the social network did not comply with the author. So then he pitted one social network against another. That which we call a rose by any other name... Rushdie posted on his Twitter account, "Amazing. 2 days ago FB deactivated my page saying they didn't believe I was me. I had to send a photo of my passport page... Then they said yes I was me, but insisted I use the name Ahmed which I have never used. NOW they have ractivated my page as "Ahmed Rushdie", in spite of the world knowing me as Salman". He said all of this over the course of three tweets of course. Gaining support from Twitter ensured that Facebook would finally behave itself. He tweeted that Facebook finally complied and added that an identity crisis at his age is no fun. He mentioned other famous people that use their middle names as their given names like Paul McCartney and Brad Pitt. Facebook later even apologized to Rushdie to which he responded saying, "All is sweetness and light." source:      http://tech2.in.com/news/social-networking/salman-rushdie-booted-off-facebook-because-of-name/257592

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Posted in Facebook , Facebook account , Salman Rushdie , Salman Rushdie Facebook , Salman Rushdie Facebook Page , Salman Rushdie Twitter , Twitter

UsualWords: Taking a Shot at Social Networking Market

First a bit about the product and the company: UsualWords is a venture by a Pakistani company Mindcusp.
It recently had a soft-launch and now the website is in open beta.
The tagline UsualWords uses is "Preserve, and share your life – past, present, and future life experiences with UsualWords".
So it should be clear that its not your regular social networking site. Its not aiming to challenge Facebook, rather carves its own niche among users.
UsualWords is primarily a web-based service which allows you to preserve, and share your life with your family, friends, and people from all over the world. It’s an online network where people can share their life experiences, goals, ambitions, dreams – browse through life experiences of interest, follow friends/like-minded people, and share opinion on life experiences they like.
These days there are so many new ventures that people would just rather stick to the familiars like Facebook and Twitter. So unless a venture is providing something new or revolutionary, its going to be a bust. Which brings us to the question, what does UsualWords have going for it that would make you bookmark it?
Firstly, I think that its idea is somewhat unique. We share our lives through personal websites or blogs. But its not an efficient way of keeping up with someone. Even if the website is designed and categorized well, you usually don’t have a central hub where you can track all the people you want to keep up with. Here’s where UsualWords comes in.
What UsualWords focuses is on on sharing your life experiences. You can share memories, events, goals, dreams, thoughts or something from the other categories. Their visibility can be public, to friends only or only to you.
So it could become a personal journal of sorts which has all significant events in your life, thus providing you with a timeline of your life. It maps these experiences to the dates that they happened to provide an accurate life map. You can link keywords to your updates so people know what its about and can search for it.

UsualWords calculates and presents some statistics and trends based on the life experiences people are sharing which gives a broad insight of user’s life, and over-all community.
It tells you what part of the life user/people are sharing, and to which areas of life most of their experiences relate to. Based on these trends, application suggests you other people who are sharing part of their life you are interested in which you can follow or make friends. All of these things give a very clear picture of the person’s whole life on a single page.
Have a look at following profile (which is public in nature). At top there are profile details, with time line below it. Above timeline there are mentions of dreams, events, goals, ideas, memories, quotes, thoughts etc..

UsualWords is a product that would appeal to everyone. Whether you’re an individual, or a company, track your achievements, memories, and goals using this application. If you’re a celebrity, share with your fans the lessons you’ve learnt in this life in becoming one. If you’re a parent, mark your children’s birthday, graduation day or share anything that matters to you in life.
Recommendation of life experiences to your friends, sharing of opinions, bookmarking, centralized search, real-time notifications are some other major features which UsualWords presents.
All in all, its based on a good idea. But whether it will survive or starve and die because of a lack of users, only time will tell. The internet is a brutal place for start ups these days so lets keep our fingers crossed.


source: http://propakistani.pk/2011/10/10/usualwords-taking-a-shot-at-social-networking-market/

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Posted in Facebook , Social Networking Market , UsualWords