How social media changed teens’ lives forever

Social media is one of the fastest-growing industries in today’s interconnected world, attracting more users every day. At the forefront of this movement are teens—a Pew Research Center study stated 92 percent of teens report going online daily, making them the most active social media participants of any demographic.

“For people entering college next year, social media will be ubiquitous—next year’s freshman class will have largely been born in 1998,” said Paul Booth, associate professor of media and cinema studies at DePaul University. “They will not remember a world without YouTube, Facebook or Twitter … They’re certainly more ‘plugged in’ than earlier generations because that’s the world they grew up in.”

As a result of this ubiquity, teens have seen a monumental shift in nearly all facets of adolescent life.

Changing relationships

Lyons Township junior Elly Cooper said she thinks that social media often detracts from face-to-face communication.

“I think it definitely makes in-person relationships harder because of people’s attention given to their phones or devices instead of their boyfriend or girlfriend,” Cooper said.

Beyond diminishing a couple’s time spent together, some think there’s a greater possibility for things to get lost in translation over social media.

“You also lose a more personable experience because if half of your relationship is over social media, you don’t really know how the other person is reacting, and it may not feel as intimate as other relationships,” St. Charles East junior Sienna Schulte said.

Though there may be a greater risk for disconnect in teen relationships over social media, some argue that bonds are more easily initiated and accessible through the online platforms.

With this accessibility, teens are able to generate relationships with anyone, regardless of location. St. Charles East senior Beth Kaplan met her long-distance boyfriend of a year through social media. He currently lives in Scotland, but with the help of social media, they’re still able to frequently communicate with one another.

“I can feel close to someone that I’m talking to via FaceTime,” Kaplan said. “I can be miles away from someone and feel like they’re in the room. Social media has made this virtual intimacy a reality.”

While social media has made it possible for some teens to grow closer together, it can also cause problems in the event of a breakup. St. Charles East senior Jake Battista said his ex had an anonymous Twitter account that she used to share the details of their breakup with her followers. Battista said he didn’t know about the account until a friend showed him.

“Relationships are personal and the problems that occur in the relationships don’t need to be broadcasted to everyone. You know?” he said. “It ain’t cool. And it definitely makes you lose trust in people.”

In light of this dilemma, Facebook recently introduced a tool to help make it easier to separate from an ex. When a user changes their relationship status to single, he or she is now given the option to see less of that person in their feed and keep Facebook from automatically suggesting their name in tagging.

Tricky parenting

M.J. Wallace is the mother of two teens, one of whom is a Cary-Grove junior. She said she thinks social media is beneficial in the way it keeps people connected.

“Family out of town gets to see as they grow up (with) activities being posted like choir, plays and stuff,” Wallace said. “Family out of town used to have to miss performances and then never got to see it.”

On the other hand, Wallace said she recognizes the danger in how much teens post on social media. Future employers or college admissions officers can search and find whatever kids put online. Despite this reality, she said she doesn’t actively supervise her kids’ social media accounts but she does try to be aware of what’s going on.

“I don’t have time to monitor their social media things, but I am on Facebook so if I do see something that’s a little inappropriate, I will give them a call to take it down,” she said.

Wanting to be ‘liked’

The rise of social media has granted more opportunities to meet new people and begin relationships, but it also has changed the way teens view themselves and compare each other.

This trend made news recently when 19-year-old Instagram star Essena O’Neill announced that she was quitting social media because it made her miserable and obsessed with appearing perfect online.

Negative posts or comments also can do great damage to a teen’s self-esteem. According to a Livescience Health study, about 23 percent of teens report being targeted in some means over social media.

“I’ve seen social media lowering a teenager’s self-esteem,” adolescent therapist Kathy Catenacci said. “They can’t escape the constant barrage of negative posts, how they should look, dress and act without being able to escape it for very long.”

In particular, anonymous apps such as Yik Yak function as incredibly large and easy outlets for cyberbullying and targeting. The app allows users within a five-mile radius to create and add to discussion threads about anything and everything. Cooper said that teens targeted anonymously on these sites can’t help but feel embarrassed and hurt.

Opening new doors

On the other hand, Lyons Township junior Armin Korsos takes advantage of the feedback he receives over social media. Korsos runs his own YouTube channel and uses the reactions and comments to his video—positive or negative—to help him improve his channel for the future. Through social media, his videos reach people across the world.

“Social media can help people show themselves and their talents to the world in a way that has never been possible before,” Korsos said.

Nonetheless, Korsos recognizes the distraction that social media has become.

“People begin to forget that social media isn’t a necessity to live,” he said. “Yes, it helps people connect with their friends and stay updated on what’s going on, but it’s not all necessary.”

Social media has forever changed teens’ lives, making them more connected—and disconnected—than ever before. But for everyone labeling social networks a social disaster, Booth said it’s just the latest change in technology.

“And in 60 years, when a new form of communication technology comes out, people who are teens today may look at each other and think about how much better it was when people were texting and sending emojis back in 2016,” Booth said.

Source : http://bit.ly/1P6N1ma

5 Tips That Can Make Anyone a Branding Rockstar

Your online brand identity plays a huge role in attracting new customers and retaining your existing ones. Building a good reputation is one thing, keeping that reputation intact is another. Your brand might be shining in flashing gold lights now but will it still be that way tomorrow? There are many contributing factors to keeping your brand image to your standards. While you may have little control over what a few disgruntled customers have to say, you do have control over how you handle it.

A recent PR Daily report came out displaying the most and least respected brands on the market. While Coca-Cola, Hershey’s and Apple were recognized for their familiarity and favorability by customers, companies such as Delta Airlines, Best Buy and Papa John’s Pizza weren’t so lucky.

Here are five ways to stay ahead of the game:

1. Keep your brand message consistent: It’s important for your audience to be able to easily identify who you are and what you do. Devising a consistent brand strategy throughout your online channels helps increase brand recognition. Every business should ask themselves “Who are we? What do we stand for? What do we want to be recognized for?” Establishing this early on will help create consistency through all content that you share.

2. Track your brand: Monitoring all reviews, comments and any content pertaining to your brand is crucial to your brand image reputation. Create a “Google Alert” to be notified when anything about your brand is mentioned online. Social media is no longer an option, it's a necessity. Staying active on social is imperative to success in this digital age. Many customers now turn to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to communicate for both good and the bad.

3. Set the facts straight: Whether it’s a comment left on your social media or a public company crisis, it’s always vital to respond quickly. The longer you wait, the less authentic your answer will appear to be. The last thing any company wants is bad publicity. There's nothing like bad media attention to put a dent in your reputation. Do yourself a favor and address the problem head on, don’t leave room for rumors! Make sure to distribute content pertaining to the issue throughout all your channels when a big problem occurs. Remember, be consistent with your message. Failing to do so will only further tarnish your brand image.

4. Trademark your name and snag social media handles before someone else does: Does your company have a unique name? If the answer is yes, slap a trademark on it! Unfortunately if you have something common like “Joe’s Pizza” it might be a bit of a struggle. As soon as you've registered your company, it’s not only important trademark it but also to create social media accounts under that name to avoid it being used by another party. You may not be active on all social media channels, but it would be a pity to later discover your name is being used for an entirely different product or service other than your own. A bit hard to be affective when managing your brand's image when you have zero control over what’s being produced from those accounts.

5. Shape your human brand: The people behind your brand are what makes your brand succeed. From the CEO to the customer service representatives, all involved with your company must represent your brand to the highest standard. Don’t allow anyone to slip through the cracks. At its core. your company is the people who work with it. Train your employees to have extensive knowledge of the company itself, and help them work on techniques to improve. Do they know to ask for positive feedback when a customer expresses how happy they are? Do they know the right way to handle a complaint? Ensuring the quality of your service/product is just a fraction of what it takes to keep your brand image strong. The people behind it are what helps drive you towards success. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1lnJo4C

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7 Ways to Use Images to Boost Conversion Rates

The fact that images can help boost your content marketing is old news. Still, it’s impressive that blogs with images receive 94 percent more views than those without.

High quality images can be an excellent way to increase conversions if used to their fullest capacity. All it takes is a little knowledge of how images and customer psychology go hand-in-hand. Here are just a few ways you can use images to boost conversions on your website:

1. Use High Quality Images

Pixilated images, clipart, cheesy stock photos, and irrelevant pictures all detract from your brand’s reputation. It’s hard to convince customers to purchase a product if it doesn’t look stunning in photos.

For example, consider real estate. Without high quality images, online listings would be irrelevant. People would be much more hesitant to buy properties without seeing them first in person. Great photos are vital and serve to drive conversions in a real estate setting, just as they would in any retail setting.

2. Replace Copy With Graphics

“A picture speaks a thousand words.” There’s a lot of truth to that saying when it comes to conversions, especially if you’re trying to explain a great deal of information or describe a complex concept. It’s better to replace text with a helpful graphic that can explain things more clearly.

For example, you could use an infographic with intricate charts and graphs to explain how a certain type of software could increase collaborative efficiencies. This information display makes it significantly easier for customers to get on board with your products and services.

3. Showcase Your Product

High quality product photos that show the product from multiple angles are a must. The images should also be highly detailed with no background distractions. Furthermore, avoid using confusing images that make it difficult to immediately pick out the product in question.

For example, if you’re selling a pair of jeans, but you show the full body of the model, it can be difficult for the consumer to determine if you’re selling the top, accessories, or bottoms. In addition, photos with plain backgrounds always convert better because they show the image in the best possible light.

4. Show the Product in Action

Provide the customer context for how they would use the product. If you’re selling a pair of sunglasses, show what they would look like with someone wearing them on the beach. If you’re selling a sofa, show how it would look in a well-designed room. It’s amazing how many more sofas you’ll sell when customers can see a product in action.

5. Allow a Zoom Feature

Let customers see every detail of your product up close, particularly if there are small, intricate details. Being able to zoom in to see the stitching on a pair of boots can mean the difference between customers making the purchase and abandoning their cart.

6. Include Images in Site Search

Good search features within a website are very important to customers, and adding images to the drop-down menu within the site search windows can boost conversions.

This concept was put to the test by BrickHouse Security. “With the product images in the site search drop-down window, we get a 100 percent lift in conversion rate among shoppers who use site search,” explained Ryan Urban, BrickHouse manager of customer acquisition and analytics, to Internet Retailer.

7. Let Images Guide the Customer

Finally, make sure that the images you use to enhance your website serve to guide the customer’s eye. For example, if you’re trying to make a bottle of shampoo stand out, show a picture of a woman with luscious locks splayed around her head, looking at the bottle. This will direct the customers’ focus and make the product look more enticing.

Internet retailers make mistakes that impact their conversions all the time, but poor images shouldn’t be one of them. With the right placement and context, significantly higher conversions can be a reality for any company. Images in every aspect of your marketing strategy can be exactly what your blog and website need to bring in more customers and exchanges.

Sourdce : http://bit.ly/1OOjDGM

Instagram Images: How to Stand Out on Instagram

Is your business on Instagram?Are you curious about what to post?

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Peg Fitzpatrick, the co-author of The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, which she wrote with Guy Kawasaki. She is also a social media strategist and an expert in visual marketing. Her clients include Motorola, Audi, Google, Virgin and others.

Peg will explore Instagram marketing ideas that are easy to put to use right away.

You’ll discover tools to use for your Instagram images.

Instagram Images

How Peg got started on Instagram

Peg first discovered Instagram when looking for apps for her iPad. This was shortly after the iPad first came out. She loaded Instagram and loved it, but no one she knew was on it.

Then, when Pinterest came out, Peg, like a lot of people, thought Pinterest and Instagram were the same, because they were both about images. Although she initially chose to focus on Pinterest, after she learned more about both platforms, Peg discovered how different the two were.

When Peg went back to Instagram, she saw it was a great place for people to have conversations.

Even if you know lots of people on Facebook, Peg believes Instagram is where you can build a community. As a blogger or entrepreneur, it’s the kind of place you want to go to meet new people.

Listen to the show to learn about why more people didn’t get on Instagram immediately.

Instagram challenges for marketers

Peg believes social media is challenging for marketers because they want to look at things in a more traditional way: how to get people to do x, y and z. The newer platforms, like Snapchat and Instagram, are even more challenging. It’s not easy to write a viral blog post or post a YouTube video that goes viral.

Instagram is limited, Peg says, because you just get that one link in your bio and there are no links in the comments.

While a blogger might not see the value in Instagram (“Why should my blog be on Instagram if there’s no link for people to click every day?”), brands are getting more engagement on Instagram than any other social platform. It creates brand awareness that leads more people to your business, events and products.

The biggest mistake marketers make, Peg says, is they aren’t posting enough. On a recent panel, Peg heard Instagram people who have 500,000+ followers say they post multiple times per day. One of them posts 8 or 10 times per day. And they post excellent content.

It takes more time to create an Instagram post. Although you can share a blog post immediately, with Instagram you have to create the image, write the text and figure out all of the things that go with it.

On Facebook, people don’t post enough either. On Martha Stewart’s Facebook pagethey post every hour. Of course she probably has the biggest backlog of content of any person ever, Peg adds.

Ideas for what to post

Peg says there are basic things to post on Instagram, such as pictures of what you’re doing or where you are. If you’re at an event, it’s fun to post pictures of people you meet or do selfies. You can post a day in the life at your blog or business, pictures of your team or behind the scenes at your company.

Show pictures of wherever you happen to be to give more of a human connection with your company.

For example, Peg explains how she uses Instagram to promote a webinar before it starts to give people one more chance to click and join. She’ll share a photo of her computer monitor with something related to the webinar on it.

Before a Google+ hangout, she’ll take pictures in the green room to share. She’ll either take a photo with her phone or do a picture of the screen. For example, if she’s about to do a Google hangout with Guy Kawasaki and Gary Vaynerchuk, she’ll take a behind-the-scenes photo that’s interesting and funny, and also chronicles what they’re doing.

It’s part of creating and sharing your journey, as well as celebrating the things that go on.

Listen to the show to hear what picture Peg posted when she was a guest at the first Social Media Marketing World.

What to put in an Instagram post

Peg explains her method for creating Instagram posts for her blog content.

She creates a square image and then treats the description as a mini blog post, rather than a quick update. It’s important to give enough information in the post that people will get a sense of it and start a conversation.

Start with a good image. While 640 x 640 pixels is the official Instagram biggest size, they will scale it down. You never want to have them scale images up, because that’s when they get blurry. Peg does a 735 x 735 image.

Next, write an intro in the text. Peg will ask a question, add a couple of sentences and then ask a closing question. She also writes “click the link in my bio” in the description, as well as in the “location” for the photo.

Instagram allows you to add a location. If you’re somewhere else, that’s one thing. However, if you’re at home or in your office, you can put a call to action in the location section manually. It will save to your phone too, so you can pull it up again.

Another option is to put the link as text in the comments. This is especially easy, given the way Instagram looks on desktop. Rather than say “cut and paste this,” write it as a call to action that reads, “If you’re on desktop or mobile, just cut and paste this.”

When you add that in your comments, it stays on your Instagram post. So next week when you switch your main link to a different blog post, someone who’s looking back through your old content will be able to cut and paste the exact link.

Listen to the show to discover what kinds of behind-the-scenes photos we took while getting ready for Social Media Marketing World.

Instagram marketing strategy

Peg says you don’t want to build your entire Instagram marketing plan on quotes, but they really are popular. She tries to put her own spin on everything, so if she does a quote, she asks a question with it. Just make sure the content you’re sharing relates to your business goals somehow. There needs to be a reason to share it, other than to post a quote.

Infographics and anything with bullet points or lists are also good. For example, on list posts, share a few tips and tell your audience to click through to read the rest.

Another idea is to put multiple pictures together using a tool like Canva. If you take a bunch of photos at an event, just make a collage to share, rather than overwhelm your audience (and yourself) with tons of photos.

Peg suggests branding your Instagram images. Unless you do this, when people repost your images, their audience won’t know they came from you. Include a watermark with your URL or a line at the bottom with your logo or website.

Listen to the show to learn about Iconosquare and the Facebook Mentions app.

Instagram tools

Peg doesn’t take photos in the Instagram app, because they don’t save on your phone. If you take a few pictures and only share one, the others could get lost.

Instead, she takes pictures in SmugMug’s Camera Awesome app for iOS and Android. It has a grid, plus you can crop and edit photos in the app. Peg doesn’t spend a lot of time editing. She’ll just take the photo and use one filter in Instagram.

Peg also likes the Over app, also for iOS and Android. It takes photos and adds different fonts and overlays. For example, if you’re a coffee fan, they have coffee art. They also do seasonal updates for things like back to school or holidays.

Word Swag, a popular iOS app, allows you to add your logo to photos. Word Swag looks templated because there are tons of things you can do with it, and Over looks more personalized and customized.

Peg also mentions a video tool called Phhhoto, which makes animated GIF videos that are perfect for Instagram.

As far as scheduling is concerned, Hootsuite came out with a brand-new Instagram integration. Now, you can load images for your Instagram account into Hootsuite ahead of time.

Although Hootsuite calls it “scheduling,” what it actually does is send a message to your phone telling you to post. Then you go into the app, and manually post the image to Instagram. This is great for brands that have several people posting for them.

Listen to the show to discover how to find people to follow on Instagram.

Discovery of the Week

Katch.me is for all the diehard Meerkat and Periscope users who want more functionality from those apps, and are frustrated with some of their limitations. For example, you can’t have replays after 24 hours on certain apps and there isn’t a quick way to easily share. Katch offers solutions.

Sign in to Katch, connect it to your Meerkat or Periscope account or both, and it will collect your broadcasts in one place with cloud storage and instant replays.

It works automatically, as long as the account is hooked up. Shortly after you finish your broadcast, Katch sends out a tweet to watch the replay.

Katch is a free app.

Source : http://bit.ly/1FlteBu  If you have time you must listen the podcast . 

8 Ways to Boost Your Confidence

Successful people often exude confidence—it’s obvious that they believe in themselves and what they’re doing. It isn’t their success that makes them confident, however. The confidence was there first.

Think about it:

1. Doubt breeds doubt. Why would anyone believe in you, your ideas, or your abilities if you didn’t believe in them yourself?
2. It takes confidence to reach for new challenges. People who are fearful or insecure tend to stay within their comfort zones. But comfort zones rarely expand on their own. That’s why people who lack confidence get stuck in dead-end jobs and let valuable opportunities pass them by.
3. Unconfident people often feel at the mercy of external circumstances. Successful people aren’t deterred by obstacles, which is how they rise up in the first place.

No one is stopping you from what you want to accomplish but yourself. It’s time to remove that barrier of self-doubt.

Confidence is a crucial building block in a successful career, and embracing it fully will take you places you never thought possible. With proper guidance and hard work, anyone can become more confident. Once you pass a certain point, you’ll feel it from the inside.

Here are eight bulletproof strategies to get you there.

1. Take an Honest Look at Yourself

Johnny Unitas said, “There is a difference between conceit and confidence. Conceit is bragging about yourself. Confidence means you believe you can get the job done.” In other words, confidence is earnedthrough hard work, and confident people are self-aware. When your confidence exceeds your abilities, you’ve crossed the line into arrogance. You need to know the difference.

True confidence is firmly planted in reality. To grow your confidence, it’s important to do an honest and accurate self-assessment of your abilities. If there are weaknesses in your skill set, make plans for strengthening these skills and find ways to minimize their negative impact. Ignoring your weaknesses or pretending they’re strengths won’t make them go away. Likewise, having a clear understanding of your strengths enables you to shake off some of the more groundless feedback and criticism you can get in a busy, competitive work environment—and that builds confidence.

2. Say No

Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco showed that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression, all of which erode confidence. Confident people know that saying no is healthy, and they have the self-esteem to make their nos clear. When it’s time to say no, confident people avoid phrases such as “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” They say no with confidence because they know that saying no to a new commitment honors their existing commitments and gives them the opportunity to successfully fulfill them.

3. Get Right with Your Boss

A troubled relationship with the boss can destroy even the most talented person’s confidence. It’s hard to be confident when your boss is constantly criticizing you or undermining your contributions. Try to identify where the relationship went wrong and decide whether there’s anything you can do to get things back on track. If the relationship is truly unsalvageable, it may be time to move on to something else.

4. Seek Out Small Victories

Confident people tend to challenge themselves and compete, even when their efforts yield small victories. Small victories build new androgen receptors in the areas of the brain responsible for reward and motivation. This increase in androgen receptors increases the influence of testosterone, which further increases your confidence and your eagerness to tackle future challenges. When you have a series of small victories, the boost in your confidence can last for months.

5. Find a Mentor

Nothing builds confidence like a talented, experienced person showing you the way and patting you on the back for a job well done. A good mentor can act as a mirror, giving you the perspective you need to believe in yourself. Knowledge breeds confidence—knowing where you stand helps you focus your energy more effectively. Beyond that, a mentor can help educate you on some of the cultural inner workings of your organization. Knowing the unwritten rules of how to get things done in your workplace is a great confidence booster.

6. Schedule Exercise

A study conducted at the Eastern Ontario Research Institute found that people who exercised twice a week for 10 weeks felt more competent socially, academically, and athletically. They also rated their body image and self-esteem higher. Best of all, rather than the physical changes in their bodies being responsible for the uptick in confidence, it was the immediate, endorphin-fueled positivity from exercise that made all the difference. Schedule your exercise to make certain it happens, and your confidence will stay up.

7. Dress for Success

Like it or not, how we dress has a huge effect on how people see us. Things like the color, cut, and style of the clothes we wear—and even our accessories—communicate loudly. But the way we dress also affects how we see ourselves. Studies have shown that people speak differently when they’re dressed up compared to when they’re dressed casually. To boost your confidence, dress well. Choose clothing that reflects who you are and the image you want to project, even if that means spending more time at the mall and more time getting ready in the morning.

8. Be Assertive, Not Aggressive

Aggressiveness isn’t confidence; it’s bullying. And when you’re insecure, it’s easy to slip into aggressiveness without intending to. Practice asserting yourself without getting aggressive (and trampling over someone else in the process). You won’t be able to achieve this until you learn how to keep your insecurities at bay, and this will increase your confidence.

Bringing It All Together

Your confidence is your own to develop or undermine. Confidence is based on reality. It’s the steadfast knowledge that goes beyond simply “hoping for the best.” It ensures that you’ll get the job done—that’s the power of true confidence.

Source : http://bit.ly/1LRDK0b

Agora, The Dark Web’s Biggest Drug Market, Is Going Offline

THE DARK WEB’S biggest marketplace for drugs seems to have learned a lesson from the downfall of the Silk Road: When cracks start to appear in your anonymity’s armor, it’s time to quit while you’re ahead—or, at least, retreat and regroup.

Agora, the reigning marketplace in the Dark Web’s bustling, bitcoin-based narcotics economy, announced Tuesday evening that it will go offline at least temporarily to shore up defenses against potential attacks that it believes might be used to identify the site’s servers and operators. In a message posted both to the market site and to the “darknetmarkets” Reddit forum, Agora’s anonymous admins say they’ve recently moved their servers after detecting “suspicious activity” they believe was intended to break the protections offered by the anonymity software Tor—activity that would reveal their servers’ IP addresses, possibly allowing law enforcement to track down the site’s owners, as well as its buyers and sellers.

The Agora admins say they plan to implement a software update to protect the site, but need to take a hiatus to make those changes. The admins don’t say when the market could be coming back online. “At this point, while we don’t have a solution ready it would be unsafe to keep our users using the service, since they would be in jeopardy,” reads the message. “Thus, and to our great sadness we have to take the market offline for a while, until we can develop a better solution. This is the best course of action for everyone involved.”

The Agora admins don’t spell out exactly what Tor vulnerability they’re referring to. But it’s likely they’re responding to a paper published last month ahead of the Usenix security conference by a group of researchers from Qatar University and MIT. The paper proposed a new method of “fingerprinting” that it said would allow Tor hidden services—the cloaked servers that run dark Web sites—to be identified with as much as 88-percent accuracy.

The Tor Project responded to that research by pointing out that it requires controlling large numbers of Tor nodes, the volunteer computers that bounce traffic around the Tor network. In a blog post, Tor director Roger Dingledine suggested methods that could be used to foil the attack, and pointed out that researchers have long over-estimated the ease of such fingerprinting methods.

In the meantime, Agora’s admins say they’re not entirely comforted by the attack’s high-resource limitations. “Most of the new and previously known methods do require substantial resources to be executed,” they write. “But the new research shows that the amount of resources could be much lower than expected, and in our case we do believe we have interested parties who possess such resources.”

Agora’s disappearance, even if it is temporary, represents a major blow to the Dark Web’s drug world. It had become the online underground drug trade’s largest site by far, with more than 17,000 listings of drugs for sale and well over 20,000 total listings, including counterfeits, drug paraphernalia and other contraband. (The site had only recently decided to no longer sell guns.) In a recent study, Carnegie Mellon researchers estimated that the site was doing $150,000 a day in sales last February. At that time, it was only the second largest market behind the competing marketplace Evolution. After Evolution went offline in March, stealing all buyers’ and sellers’ bitcoins, Agora took over much of that marketshare.

On Reddit’s darknetmarkets forum, most people applauded Agora’s decision to go offline rather than risk arrest, endanger customers or abscond with their funds as Evolution did. “Props to Agora and their iron testicles,” one redditor wrote. “Yes its a major inconvenience for vendors and users alike, but hey, who knows, maybe some people will even get clean during this period!”

During Agora’s downtime, competing market sites like Abraxas, Alphabay and Nucleus will no doubt absorb its customers, says Nicolas Christin, one of the authors of the Carnegie Mellon study. “I don’t know who will be the new crowned king, but people will pick up the pieces,” he says.
“The demand is here and people aren’t going anywhere. They want their drugs and people will find ways of selling to them.”

But Christin also says the Tor vulnerability, while it’s by no means the end of the Dark Web, should give the administrators of anonymous sites pause. “The world isn’t coming down. It’s not like there’s an attack that immediately de-anonymizes everything,” says Christin. “But it may be a reality check for some of these site operators. Tor is not a magic box that provides you a cloak of invisibility, Harry Potter style.”

Source : http://wrd.cm/1hGnibC