Social media sites multiply

Should Facebook worry? Google+ opens its doors to everyone

The long national nightmare is over. Google has opened up its social media venture, Google + to everyone. No longer is an invitation needed to join the latest attempt to usurp Facebook from the “King of all Social Media Hill."

Google + has grown to 25 million users in just three months — not bad until you realize that Facebook has over 750 million users. Competition is said to be a good thing, and you can already see Facebook responding by adding new features such as better privacy control, larger pictures and video chat.

Expect to see even more upgrades and tweaks to both services, but all this leads to the question of how many social media sites are people willing to participate in?

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, You Tube, My Space already take up a ton of on-line time. Checking friends’ statuses, watching the latest hysterical video and updating a professional profile can become a bit overwhelming. Now, we have to decide if we want to create and follow our friends on another social media site.

If anyone can make a dent into the growth of Facebook, it’s Google. A Senate hearing on anti-trust issues aside, Google has the resources to challenge Facebook for Social Media supremacy. So what happens if your friends go exclusively to Google +? Would you follow them? And if the answer is yes, will you still use Facebook as well?

unspecified

Thanks, Queen Bey

Pop icon Beyoncé donates $100,000 to University of Houston Law School

Photo by Erza Shaw Getty Images

undefined

Pop megastar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has donated $100,000 to the University of Houston Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic through her BeyGOOD Foundation. The gift will allow the clinic to hire fill-time faculty to head it, benefiting the students who study there.

“I am delighted that the BeyGOOD Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” said Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”

The clinic is one of nine at UHLC. It helps students learn to navigate the criminal justice system, especially on behalf of clients that are underserved by skilled attorneys. People of color are affected disproportionately by a lack of good, ethical representation.

Beyoncé, the most decorated artist in Grammy history and easily the biggest musical star native to Houston, has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform. She was a staunch supporter of the police reform following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, asking law enforcement to “stop killing us” in a web post. In 2020, she penned an open letter to the Kentucky attorney general asking for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Through her BeyGOOD Foundation, established in 2013, Beyoncé has focused mostly on expanding the prospects of Black-owned business and offering education opportunities to students. Forwarding the cause of legal representation in Texas while also helping out marginalized communities compliments her other philanthropic work.

“At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGOOD envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings,” Baynes said. “And together, through this gift, the BeyGOOD Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”