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College students are often early adopters, the first to try the latest social networks and mobile devices. But how do the colleges and universities they attend stack up? Here are 10 HBCUs that are doing cool things in the digital and social media space.

An image from a fundraising effort to benefit women’s education in Africa. via Catapult.org

A new crowdfunding platform, Catapult, is preparing for a boost in awareness and donations thanks to a fundraising concert set for June 1. The organization, started in October, focuses on issues and causes supporting women and girls, and allows donors to pick which projects they want to fund.

As the only charity crowdfunding platform focusing on women and girls, Catapult has more than 80 organizations from around the world currently listed on the site, with plans to add more as the June 1 Sound of Change concert approaches. Catapult itself is funded by Bill & Melinda Gates and MacArthur Foundations and has a partnership with Gucci’s Chime for Change initiative, which is presenting The Sound of Change charity concert in London. After the show, attendees will receive an email with information on how to choose a project on the Catapult platform and can send the cost of their ticket as a donation to that organization.

Scheduled performers include Beyonce, JLo, Florence & The Machine, John Legend, and Rita Ora. Beyonce along with Gucci’s Frida Giannini and actress Selma Hayek Pinnault are leaders with the group.

Catapult’s projects fall into 28 different categories, including maternal health, HIV/AIDS, leadership, human trafficking, violence against women, and more.

“We’re just the platform. They’re the experts,” Catapult founder Maz Kessler told MadameNoire. “We provide a place where they can bring their work to the public and engage through an online tool. People can support the causes easily, at any level, and know the organization is excellent, has been vetted, and has done great work.”

She added that Catapult encourages transparency, supplying donors with updated information about where their funds are going.

Kessler was a musician before founding Catapult, and said she has always been passionate about supporting and help women and girls.

“Girls and women are 52 percent of the world’s population and so many issues come under that heading,” Kessler said. “Catapult, by funding all these individual projects, allows people to engage for girls and women exactly the way they want: around education, a specific geography or region, or health. Crowdfunding allows us to do that while overall contributing to generally advancing the lives of girls and women.”

As the organization grows, it is collecting data and working to understand what issues certain groups and communities care about.

“We are young and new, so we are excited to take this new community that’s coming through the concert and the performers,” Kessler said. “A lot of these young fans are new to the issues that affect girls and women around the world. We’ve done well to-date, but we are about to have a global movement.”

Like many charitable organization, Catapult values partnerships as a means of advancing its efforts.

“We are excited to move to the second half of the year and giving season and continue to have these vibrant partnerships,” Kessler added. “We want to bring these issue forward so we can all help create a world where girls and women do not have to encounter these very outdated obstacles.”

What about you, readers? Of all the issues affecting girls and women, what issues do you care about? Where would you put your donations?

Image Source: WENN.com

If you didn’t believe Chris Brown was a bit narcissistic, news of his “Chris Brown Channel” app might change your mind.

The singer announced that he’s launching a new app that will allow his fans to follow him around and know his whereabouts 24/7. The app will inform you of his tweets, pics, videos and songs.

Here’s what Chris had to say about the app.

“I am so excited to get closer to my fans- to bring them into my world, hearing from me directly, in my own words wherever I am, whenever they want. Through my channel app, they can be a part of my music, my art and my life, day in and day out.”

All of the content will be controlled by Chris himself. So while there might be a few gratuitous documentaries and subtweets, he won’t [intentionally] post anything to damage his career.

But we say that now…

While I don’t quite understand why he needs this in addition to his Twitter and Facebook accounts but I’m sure the Chris Brown stans and groupies around the world are glad about it.

“The Geography of Hate” map shows where tweets using the “N” word are posted from. via

Social media has a way of bringing to out racist behavior as people make racial slurs and comments without thought and, in some cases, anonymously. And now a new map by Floating Sheep, a group of geography academics, analyzing the use of racist and homophobic terms on Twitter across the United States. The group actually mapped out the use of derogatory statements made, by region.

Floating Sheep examined geotagged tweets from June 2012 to April 2013 and students at Humboldt State University manually read and identified the sentiment of each tweet to determine if a specific word was used in a positive, negative or neutral way, reports NBCLatino. In all, 150,000 tweets were determined to be negative.

Slurs against Hispanics were among the words used in the negative Tweets describing Hispanics or immigrants and the “n-word” targeted blacks.

The state of Texas was found to to have pronounced usage of slurs against Hispanics, which is telling in that the immigration debate is a hot-button issue there. There were other areas of note, “But the areas with significant concentrations aren’t necessarily that close to the border, and neither do other border states who feature prominently in debates about immigration contain significant concentrations,” the authors wrote in a blog post.

Tweeting racial slurs against blacks was not specific to one area, the report found. “[It's] not concentrated in any single place or region in the United States; instead, quite depressingly, there are a number of pockets of concentration that demonstrate heavy usage of the word,” the academics notes. Floating Sheep also looked at how many unique users were tweeting these words.

“For example in the Quad Cities (East Iowa) 31 unique Twitter users tweeted the [n-word] in a hateful way 41 times,” they explained. “There are two likely reasons for higher proportion of such slurs in rural areas: demographic differences and differing social practices with regard to the use of Twitter.”

Have you seen a lot of racist behavior on Twitter?

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From HelloBeautiful

Death to Facebook and their invasive notifications! Seriously! Not too long ago, I was scrolling through my news feed and realized another one of my “friends” was engaged, and the comments kept rolling in.

“Congrats!”

“Ah man, I’m so happy for the both of you.”

“When’s the wedding? I better get an invite!”

The comments continued for God knows how long. So I did the polite thing, hit the “LIKE” button and kept it moving. I logged off and checked Instagram, and I was only two or three pictures in, and what do I see? Another college buddy of mine who posted pics of their wedding.

“You look gorgeous!”

“So proud of you two! Congrats again.”

“That dress is everything!”

By this point, I was scared to check Twitter because If I saw an I’m-expecting-my-first child-Tweet, I don’t think I would’ve been able to handle it!

I’m six years removed from college and I feel like I’m just getting started in a lot of aspects of my life. I’ve finally found my dream gig, working in the entertainment-media industry after years of trying to climb through the back window. But now that I’m finally here, folks are starting families and buying homes. It makes me wonder–Am I behind in life?

Read more on HelloBeautiful.com.

Source: WENN

21-year-old Azealia Banks is no stranger to Twitter beef. To be perfectly honest, there a lot of people who don’t know her for her actual occupation, which is a rapper/entertainer. Instead, many only know her for having diarrhea of the mouth and her infamous social media squabbles with other celebs. In 2013 alone, the Harlem emcee has made headlines for using her Twitter page to blast Rita Ora, deeming her as a “Rihanna understudy,” telling rapper A$AP Rocky that he needs to “come out of the closet” and  justifying her use of derogatory gay slurs. And that’s just in 2013, not even counting previous issues she’s had with T.I., Nicki Minaj, Lil Kim, Iggy Azealia, Jim Jones and a host of others. Basically she’s been doing the most and many have expressed concern that her sharp tongue could be irreversibly damaging her budding career.

It appears that the “212″ rapper’s management team may have shared similar concerns because according to The YBF,  Azealia has turned her Twitter account over to be managed by her label. While this is may be bad news for fans and Twitter users who follow the rapper just so that they can watch drama unfold, this is probably one of the best decisions that Azealia has made in awhile. We can’t say that it will do much for her short temper, but it will serve as somewhat of a barrier, keeping her from tweeting before she really takes time to think the damaging messages that she tweets out for her 344,865 followers to see.

There’s been no word on whether or not any of her other social media accounts have been turned over to Universal Music Group as well, but she appears to still be managing her own Instagram account.

What other celebs do you think should consider having their social media pages managed by their labels?

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Last week, Rihanna added another accolade to her resume, becoming the first artist in the history of Billboard’s Pop Songs radio airplay chart to tally ten number one songs. No disrespect to Mariah Carey, who had at a handful of number ones before Billboard launched the chart in 1992, but, Rihanna’s achievement cements her status as the quintessential pop star of the 21^st century.

Say she sings like a goat. Say she dances like she’s on the last five minutes of her shift. Pan her side projects. But fix your lips to say that Rihanna hasn’t mastered the business of music. The numbers don’t lie.

How is the Barbadian provocateur pulling off massive success in an industry changing so quickly even veterans have trouble keeping up? If you pay attention, she teaches lessons everyday. And we’re taking good notes.

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From BlackVoices

Offensive posts and comments are rampant on the internet, but they don’t make for particularly good business when associated with a restaurant. A Delaware eatery is learning this after derogatory comments and inappropriate photos popped up on its social media accounts earlier this month.

The News Journal reports that someone recently posted racial slurs and photos of receipts with low tips on Facebook and Instagram accounts associated with Padi Restaurant in Hockessin. The accounts have since been removed, but Daily Mail posted screen captures of the offensive posts.

Among the photos in question is an image of a paid bill of $53.80 with a tip of $5.20, which is less than 10 percent, from a customer with an Indian surname. It was accompanied by the caption, “What do you expect from a last name like that? Sand ni****s will never change #cheap #jew.” Another reads, “Cheap a**, order takeout and eat it at the bar. #notip #monday #cheap #trash.”

Read more at BlackVoices.com

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According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 21.6 million students were enrolled in American colleges and universities in 2012. With today’s youth constantly texting, tweeting, Tumblring, posting statuses on Facebook and updating Instagram, among other social networking sites at a rapid pace, schools need to engage with applicants and current students regularly. It’s clear the days of shiny brochures, flashy websites and in-person campus visits are no longer enough to attract high-caliber students.

Colleges and universities should embrace social media as a means to build relationships and create emotional connections with prospective students.

Black Enterprise looks at four ways that colleges and universities can improve their digital game. With this new option, it’s definitely something that higher education is exploring.

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This probably is a no-brainer. But according to a new survey the one person you do not want to befriend on Facebook is your boss.

A survey of 722 people conducted by survey site SodaHead and anonymous feedback site YouTell, found that 81 percent say you should not be Facebook friends with your boss. But there was a gender gap; slightly more men than women said it was okay to friend your boss, and those aged 25 to 34 (who were college-age kids when Facebook debuted) were the most comfortable with the practice, reports the The Huffington Post. When asked if you should be friends with coworkers, a parallel survey found that 55 percent said yes it is a good idea, while 45 percent said no.

Why? Because you might not want your boss to see all of your personal photos, your social life, your comments. “People generally like to keep a professional distance at work, and when your boss and coworkers can see every photo taken of you in the past 5 years, things feel a lot more personal,” notes HuffPo. And imagine your boss checking out last night’s party picture when you called in sick today.  It can have an adverse affect on your career or your working relationship with your boss.

And people have actually gotten fired for Facebook posts. According to HuffPo (and seriously, WTF?), a Swiss woman was fired from her insurance job in 2009 because she had told her boss that she couldn’t work at her computer and needed to lie down in the dark. When her boss saw that she had been active on Facebook, she was let go. She shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.

The issues of friending folks at work have even been dealt with my some state governments. According to HuffPo, a bill was passed by the Oregon House of Representatives that prohibits employers from forcing their workers to friend or “like” them on Facebook.

Even without an official “friending,” many bosses may be actively checking out your page, so it is best to make your information private and viewable only to friends.