Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

Do you want even more stuff in your email box? Facebook thinks so.

Just how important is your email address? Are you willing to read through unsolicited mail, even more than you already receive? Facebook may very well up your numbers as the social networking site has given developers the ability to request, or even require your email address. This means marketers can inundate you with information about even more stuff to buy.

This change has been in progress since October 2009, with developers in on the progress. Now, developers can access Facebook users directly instead of going through the Facebook gatekeeper system.

The email collection process begins with the appearance of a permission box asking the user to grant permission to be contacted. Users can either allow or disallow the request. However, some permissions can only be controlled through the applications settings page.

How much control a user really has depends on the personal settings that were managed before last December’s privacy changes. If a Facebook user chose the recommended setting without really investigating, Facebook has the right to publish your private information such as updates, photos, shared links, and yes, email addresses.

As involvement in social networking continues to expand, users must strike a balance between protecting privacy and well, being social. Due diligence is necessary to be smart about what users assume and what type of information is out there, usually forever.

Is privacy in the age of social media just an illusion? Signs certainly seem to be pointing that way. Thanks to Google, anyone with access to the Web can quite easily draw an accurate profile of who I am, where I work and what I believe. With the aid of LinkedIn and Twitter, potential employers can form an opinion of recruits without even checking references. I don’t want to debate ethics or the legal implications of such phenomenon, but I just wonder how long it will be before the public starts looking for a way to get out from under the microscope. Or, if Facebook is correct, and we’ll accept that it is now normal for strangers to peer into our most personal space.

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, received a fair amount of criticism when he said in a CNBC interview that, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” This is probably not what I want to here from the CEO of the company that stores my emails, voicemails, blogs, etc. But it doesn’t make me want to unplug from the web either. I’ve just come to accept the trade-off that balances the power of free-flowing information and our willingness to share what we know.

Popular social networks are literally banking on the fact that there are millions of other people who feel the same way and becoming increasingly lax about their privacy. While Facebook has lured us in with the promise of intimate networks and full privacy controls. Recent changes in their policies have shown that they would rather we opened up and made our lives searchable. After all, that is where the money is. Advertisers would love to know that I’m in the market for a new something-or-other so they can tell me just where to get it at the right price.

As social media develops, I believe the trend will continue towards people opening up and sharing, and over-sharing. It won’t all be bad, because I believe we all gain when ideas are shared and expanded. For now, I’ve drawn the line at geo-location (there’s something creepy about being tracked as a dot on a map). Besides, I still like the option of being fashionably late without my boss knowing that I stopped to get a donut. And it will be a long, long, long time before I’m willing to put my medical records online. Sorry, Google.

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New Facebook security changes aren’t so secure after all; complaint filed with the FTC
Managing a Facebook account has become even more complicated. Will teens have the patience or interest to keep themselves safe online?

The public face on the new Facebook privacy settings that went into effect on Wednesday, December 9 was pitched as a way for members to have more control over their settings and who could access what information. Now two weeks later the reviews aren’t good and founder Jeff Zuckerman has been zapped by his own “privacy” settings. Also, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), plus 10 more organizations, including the American Library Association, have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charging that Facebook’s recent privacy changes violate the federal consumer protection law.

For teens and preteens, it might as well be business as usual, but under the friends, the comments, photos, videos and fan groups, their privacy and their future could be at stake. At the age of believing they are invulnerable, anything posted in their digital world will have a footprint somewhere on the Internet forever.

As with all social networking communities, the potential for abuse, bullying and cyber stalking exists. Kids don’t understand the anonymity of the computer screen opens their world to millions of people who might not have their good intentions in mind.

The new security settings, done correctly, can increase personal security in some respects, but getting there is extremely complicated. Your teens should beware of the default setting, “Everyone.” Unless this is changed your kid’s information is readily available to everyone for any reason. Even setting security blocks at every level, which is a very tedious process, a Facebook presence is still for sale. Your name, profile pictures, friends list, fan pages, gender, geographic region and networks are still out there.

Some changes have been made to tighten security, especially after Zuckerman found that some of his personal pictures and information were made public. Even so, users have reported that after they jumped through the security settings hoops, the settings reverted to “Everyone,” requiring more time to reconfigure.

Facebook admits that user information is available to third party applications, search engines, Internet users and others, without the user’s knowledge or consent, even if the user has not connected with any of the sites. In this respect, personal safety can be at risk. The EPIC complaint relates harassment incidents concerning Facebook users who had posted opinions critical of the Iranian government. A user said that security agents in Tehran arrested his father because of the Facebook postings, and others received threatening e-mails claiming knowledge of the poster’s home address.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has been accused of abusing their users’ privacy and it certainly won’t be the last time either. It is the time to discuss what’s under the hood of your child’s Facebook page, and urge caution in the very vulnerable Internet.

Written by Myra Vandersall

Facebook put up a post on their blog yesterday on “What Happens If I Ignore a Friend Request?” This is a question that I’ve been asked about on several occasions, and even wondered about myself. Actually, I’ve wondered what happens if I decide that I don’t think this whole “friend” thing is working out.

Well, according to Facebook, if you receive a friend request that you would like to (politely) deny you can just choose to click on Ignore, and that person will not receive notification of your decision. They will still be able to send you another request later and maybe you’ll have warmed up to the idea by then. Of course you have the option to do neither and just leave the “Friend Request” in limbo.

But in the event that guilt or persistence gets the better of you and you do accept this “friend” into your inner circle, you can go to their profile and scroll down to the bottom of the left hand side column and click on Remove from Friends, and they will be none the wiser. Unless, you are one out of five of their only Facebook friends, in which case you’re on your own.

Facebook is following in the footsteps of Flickr and now allowing people to upload photos and video via email. Here’s how it works:

Go to the Facebook Mobile page, while you are logged in and click on the link “Send my upload email to me now”. Then facebook will email you confirmation plus the email address to use for email uploads. Make sure you save it to your addressbook.

After you attach your photos or videos to an email, you can include a subject line that will be used as the caption for the photos or videos you upload. If you’re uploading more than one photo or video in the email, the captions will be the same for all of them. You can always edit the captions later by logging into your Facebook account. You can send as many photos as you like in accordance with the size limits of your email provider.

Facebook already lets you post pictures and video clips by via their website, as well as a host of mobile applications like the Facebook app for the iPhone or Blackberry, among others. But with this new email uploads feature you can now just forward photos as attachments in an email. This is definitely a convenient feature.

In a nutshell

Facebook is a free social networking web site that lets users join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region connect and interact with other people. People can also search for and add friends who are already registered with the site. Key features on Facebook are the ability for people to send and receive public or private messages, update their personal profiles, and share photos, videos, news stories, as well as comment on them. Currently, Facebook has over 200 million users, worldwide, with an average of 120 people in their individual networks.

Why is it useful?

Businesses and organizations are increasingly using Facebook as a point of contact for customers by creating “fan pages.” When users choose to become fans of a particular product or brand, their entire network of friends is notified and thereby represents the holy grail of marketing: personal endorsement by trusted peers. According to Facebook, more than 6 million users become fans of pages each day.

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The Social Media sphere has been abuzz with anticipation since word got out that Facebook would finally allow what many felt was an intuitive feature that was lacking on their site. Beginning at 9:00 pm PST on June 12th, Facebook began allowing the individuals to register vanity/custom URLs. Meaning that guy you once knew as http://www.facebook.com/pages/001234 is now simply http://www.facebook.com/joe. Apparently, over one million URLs were claimed within the first hour.

Of course, if you already use Twitter, you appreciate the fact that vanity URLs, or usernames, make it so much easier to find the businesses or individuals you want to follow. If you have not already registered your URL, I suggest you join the gold rush and do so now – especially if you are a brand owner or brand manager.

How do I get one?

There’s a couple of ways to register: Read the rest of this entry »