The Day The Music Died..... #OneDirection

Today's biggest social media story has a sad, sad tune.

It broke online earlier today, with a post on Facebook from mega-star band One Direction, announcing that member Zayn Malik was leaving the group.

Immediately, the hearts of a million girls worldwide tore apart, and social media went crazy.

Usually, if a story is SUPER popular it will take up one spot on Twitter's "Trending Topics".  It is a big deal to be a Twitter trending topic, as there are only 10 at any given moment.  Well, right now, Zayn's departure is the story on 4  trending topics in Los Angeles, and 2 of them WORLDWIDE.   The most popular sentiments include #AlwaysInOurHeartsZaynMalik and #ZaynWillAlwaysBeAPartOf1D.

These cries are reaching far beyond Twitter, though.  Of course, the original post on Facebook is blowing up, with over a half a MILLION likes and comments.  But it goes even deeper than that.  YouTube has been flooded with videos of fans crying and in hysterics, begging Zayn not to leave.  

He's still alive, people!! Zayn claimed that he wants to be able to "relax and have some private time out of the spotlight." Right, just like any other normal 22-year old guy.  Except with a hoard of devastated fans in his wake.  

Think Zayn's dreams of normalcy will ever happen?  What are your thoughts on Zayn's departure?

Social Media's Hottest Dress of the Season!

Since it is the end of awards season, you would think it is the end of dresses being the top hit on Twitter. 

But last night, Twitter was overtaken with a new dress that caused a huge controversy.

Dubbed #TheDress, this color optical illusion basically divided the internet into two camps, #TeamBlackAndBlue and #TeamWhiteAndGold.

To explain a bit, depending on your brain's perception of color, viewers can see an image of the same dress as either black and blue striped, or gold and white striped.  The concept is fascinating, but since this isn't a brain function blog, I'll let you read about the science elsewhere.  If interested, I think WIRED's recap of it is the best.

Another fascinating aspect, though, is just how quickly this sensation swamped our newsfeeds!  #TheDress was first posted to Tumblr on Wednesday.  Apparently, as Washington Post reported, the dress was intended to be worn in a wedding.  And when the mother of the bride snapped a picture of it to send to members of the wedding party, they all saw the dress as different colors!  To settle the debate, they posed the question to social media and BAM.  

Tens of millions of tweets siding on either end of the debate led to trending hashtags #TheDress, #whiteandgold, #blackandblue.  Even celebrities from Taylor Swift to Mindy Kaling to Julianne Moore chimed in about #TheDress.

When I first saw it, I thought people were pranking me!  It was clearly white and gold.  But now, a few images that I've seen actually do look blue and black!  We are clearly going mad!

What colors do you see?  

Classy Lady Gaga Broke Twitter!

People usually have a lot of thoughts when you bring up Lady Gaga.  Not the least of which are flying costumes, dresses made of meat and weird gigantic head gear.

But the words that aren't usually top of mind are PURE CLASS.  At last night's Oscar's awards, though, that is exactly what she was.

Lady Gaga looked GORGEOUS and sounded even better during her "Sound Of Music" tribute performance.  And basically, the performance all but broke Twitter.  In a night of awards and great speeches, Lady Gaga's performance beat every other moment during the broadcast as far as number of tweets.

I have to admit, the whole time I was watching I couldn't keep my jaw off the floor.  She was so, so amazing.  It's no wonder she beat all the other Twitter numbers, she was the highlight of the night! 

There were, of course, other topics at play during the evening.  You know, like the nominees and awards.  Time Magazine put out a pretty cool timelapse chart to show which Oscar nominated movies were trending in real time during the show.  Of course, the Best Picture winner ended up on top by the end of the night.  Go, Birdman!

What was your favorite moment of the show?  And were you just thinking OMG the entire time Lady Gaga was on!?

How Kanye Actually Won The Grammys

Kanye West didn't win an actual Grammy Award last night, but he definitely won on social media.

If you didn't see the big show last night, then you missed Kanye's fake out stage crash. Reminiscent of his 2009 crash of Taylor Swift's award speech (gosh, that video still makes me cringe), Kanye headed up to the stage after the Album of The Year Award was presented to Beck.  The whole audience seemed to hold their breath until Kanye stopped, smirked and sat back down.  Whether he was joking all along, or just decided not to actually crash another speech, who knows.  But I am glad he sat down!  

The Twittersphere was not pleased with Kanye's antics.  The awkward interaction ranked as the most tweeted moment of the Grammys in terms of tweets per minute, and landed Kanye as the most tweeted about celeb at The Grammys.

What did you think of Kanye rushing the stage?  'So funny' or 'So rude'?

It Was A Super Social Super Bowl!

The Patriots might have been named champions last night, but the Super Bowl itself also won a prize.  Namely, the "most tweeted Superbowl ever".  

With 28.4 million tweets, almost 20% more than last year's game, Super Bowl XLIX was a huge social media success.  

The game's three most tweeted moments were stacked toward the second half: 

3) The end of Katy Perry's halftime show (284,000 tweets per minute)

2) The moment the Patriots finally won the game (379,000 tweets per minute)

1) Malcolm Butler's interception, 20 seconds before the game ended (395 tweets per minute)

But, as we know, the Twittersphere doesn't end at the game itself.  Super Bowl commercials are a huge deal in the social media world.  In fact, almost half of the 66 TV advertisements that aired during the game incorporated a specific hashtag for viewers to tweet promoting the spot or the brand.  Facebook and Snapchat took home a piece of that action too, both being mentioned in commercials including the "Pitch Perfect 2" movie spot, which was Snapchat's Super Bowl debut.  

How do you think the brands did?  What was your favorite Super Bowl commercial?

The New Wave of Celeb Hackers

"And the hackers gonna hack hack hack hack hack"

Yeah, I couldn't help but get Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" song stuck in my head again today!

Poor Taylor was hacked on Instagram and Twitter yesterday
!  Of course, the social media accounts of stars being hacked is nothing new.  But Taylor just happens to be one of the most-followed celebs in the social media world, so you can bet her fans noticed when something was fishy about her account!

And that leads me to what might be the most interesting point about this celeb-hacking: its purpose.  Many times, hackers have done so to post a lewd photograph or start a juicy rumor or something similar.  But not this time.  No, this hacker seemed to mainly be after one thing: followers. Yeah, followers!!

The hacker posted a tweet as though it was from Taylor telling her fans to follow his actual Twitter account.  And later, he asked them to do the same for a supposed friend.  What a crazy thing to do to gain some social media followers!!  And while most of Taylor's followers recognized the hacker and told him to take a hike, a few had a different plan.  They messaged Taylor's account (while the hacker was on it) and asked him to follow them from Taylor's account!  

This "follow-for-a-follow" type of world is crazy and the things people do to elicit social media followers are just as nuts.  What's the craziest thing you've heard of someone doing to get social media followers?

Bye Bye Fake News!

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on you again!

That's how I feel about misleading headlines.  Shame. On. Them.

At Casey & Sayre, we believe that a well-written headline should be both honest and intriguing.  But for the past year, Facebook News Feeds have been dominated by hoax-headlines that are purposefully misleading. We've dealt with everything from headlines saying Betty White "dyes" in her home (and when you click, you realize they are saying she dyes her hair) to blatant lies about new technology operating systems that offer insane features that aren't technically feasible. 

Well, friends, Facebook has heard how annoyed we are, and the company is doing something about it!  Starting this week, News Feeds will be equipped with a "false news story" notification option that you can click when this type of hoax is shown in your News Feed.  Similar to the "spam" or "hide from my timeline" options, the new "false news story" option will be in a dropdown menu on the top right of the news stories.  

There are already reports about the possibility of people misusing this feature, but here's to hoping that it keeps our News Feeds a bit more honest.  I'd like to never be fooled again!

Do you think the new "false news story" feature will help Facebook?