Social Media Newsfeed: Kissing YouTube Video | Twitter Notifications

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Kissing YouTube Video Goes Viral (Oh, No, it’s an Ad) (CNET)

Here is the lesson from the Web this week: It takes just a couple of days to get 25 million people to pay attention. All you have to do is show them other people enjoying their first kiss. And, preferably, being slightly embarrassed about it because they’re total strangers. TIME As it turns out, that video of 20 strangers kissing that has spread to all corners of the Internet over 48 hours (and racked up more 24 million views on YouTube) is not exactly what it seems to be. Rather than 10 pairs of total strangers meeting for the first time and — after a brief interlude of awkward small-talk — passionately losing themselves in each other’s lips, its 20 actors, models and musicians who seem just a little confident for the video’s premise. Business Insider As pointed out by Slate’s Amanda Hess, the video was published by the Los Angeles womenswear brand Wren to promote its fall fashion collection. The cast is made up of Wren founder Melissa Coker’s friends, the majority of whom are models, actors and musicians with plenty of experience acting in front of a camera. The Telegraph The result is a candid display of human interaction — at times cringeworthy, at others, really moving. Did any of the strangers become good friends — or even more than that? “Soko and Mary-Anne [the two girls kissing] left the shoot and went to the park together,” reveals Melissa Coker, founder of fashion label Wren. “I know that Tatia ran into them at an event … so I don’t know…” The Huffington Post Some of the millions who have watched “First Kiss” shared their confusion after watching the clip, wondering what made it so special. Some viewers could only deride the encounters, based on who the partners were. But some (including me) were brought to tears by the purity of each encounter.

The Twitter Connect Tab is Now Called Notifications (AllTwitter)

After quite a severe outage during a “planned deploy” Tuesday, which left the website unavailable for over an hour, Twitter has made a subtle change to the interface on Twitter.com and its official Twitter apps — the Connect tab has been renamed Notifications. To me, Connect never really computed particularly well as it implied that an action was about to take place, and Notifications makes a lot more sense.

WSJ‘s Liz Heron Jumps to Facebook (SocialTimes)
The Wall Street Journal lost its emerging media editor on Wednesday. Liz Heron, who oversaw multimedia and social efforts at the newspaper, announced in a Facebook post that she will be joining the social network.

Kirk Out: William Shatner Tweets He’s Quitting Twitter (USA Today)

Captain Kirk is quitting Twitter, actor William Shatner announced in tweets today. He didn’t say why but he quoted from “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” the Lewis Carroll poem (not the Beatles song).

F8 Registration Opens (AllFacebook)

Registration is now open for Facebook’s F8 global developer conference, which will be held at the San Francisco Design Concourse April 30. Interested developers can register via the F8 page, but the social network cautioned that there are a limited number of tickets available, and they will be doled out via an application system.

Bomb Threat Temporarily Shuts Facebook Campus (San Francisco Chronicle)

Speaking of the social network, Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters were locked down for over an hour on Tuesday night after police received a bomb threat against the social media giant. The threat was ultimately determined to be “unsubstantiated and not credible.”

Popcorn Time is Like Napster for Pirated Videos (AppNewser)

There was a time when Napster brought music to the connected pirates of the internet. Now, it’s Popcorn Time that’s bringing movies to the masses.

YouTube Down for You? You’re Not the Only One (The Next Web)

It seemed that YouTube had a bit of a hiccup Wednesday with some users being left unable to access the site or videos via the YouTube.com homepage. The Next Web received an update from a YouTube spokesperson on the situation, which the company says is now fixed: “Some people encountered errors, or a slower than normal experience on YouTube [today]. We worked quickly to address the issue and fixed the problem. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this caused.”

Shopify Tracks the Most Spendy Social Networks [Infographic] (SocialTimes)

E-commerce platform Shopify has made some huge strides since its founding in 2006. The light infrastructure has enabled some 90,000 stores to flourish online. Shopify compiled its expansive data into an infographic about which social networks refer the most traffic.

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Social Media Newsfeed: Kissing YouTube Video | Twitter Notifications