By Breeanna Beckham
Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the East Coast from North Carolina to New Hampshire. Watch this footage from 51 stories above the streets of New York City. The four-day time-lapse video not only captures the wind and rain, but also the power outages. See the video at The New York Times.
The big entertainment news this week was Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm Ltd., which includes the Star Wars franchise. This is the third major deal for Disney in the past six years, who acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009 and Pixar Animation Studios in 2006. The twofold announcement also revealed that Star Wars Episode 7 will be released in 2015. Mashable has the full scoop on what else to expect from the merger.
Don’t worry it’s not just you. Everyone is suffering from Apple’s iMessage outages this week. This isn’t the first time the messaging service has had problems; there were issues in September and some of its 140 million users even had problems following the iOS 6 launch. Head to Wired to read the full story on iMessage.
Twitter user @ComfortablySmug caused a stir following panic-inducing tweets sent out during the height of Hurricane Sandy in New York. The user, later identified as Shashank Tripathi, spread rumors about blackouts, flooding in the New York Stock Exchange, and Governor Andrew Cuomo being trapped in Manhattan. Read more about the controversy, including possible criminal charges, at TechCrunch.
Sending a tweet is restrictive enough with only 140 characters, so how much of an impact does tweet length really have on engagement? According to Social Media Today medium length tweets (71-100 characters) see the highest engagement, followed by large (101+) and then small tweets (41-70). Other tips are to use images to increase tweet length and avoid crushing up against the 140-character limit unnecessarily.
This post originally appeared on the Carousel30 blog.