HOW TO: Get Notified When Someone Hacks Your Facebook

Facebook just announced a tool that notifies you by e-mail or SMS text message when someone logs into your Facebook profile from an unknown computer.

The idea is to help you recognize when a hacker has broken into your account so you can respond quickly by either changing your password (if that’s still possible) or contacting Facebook.

More at HOW TO: Get Notified When Someone Hacks Your Facebook

Any Way It’s Sliced, Appeal of Social Media Grows

Following my earlier post, it is still undeniable that social media appeal is still on the rise. Facebook is not the only one around. Sure it is the most popular, but there are many others that you are probably using. Individuals and corporations are jumping into the bandwagon to create and be part of the buzz online.

You’ve heard of Meetup, the online social networking portal? A couple of consumer marketers are bringing out campaigns that could be called “meatups.” More at Any Way It’s Sliced, Appeal of Social Media Grows

Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook

Facebook, ah yes, another story about this social networking tool. There are some people who use them regularly (I’m one of them), and there are some that completely avoid it like a plague. I personally think it is a balancing act of knowing what to share out there. Not an easy task especially when there are changes in the privacy settings that were sneaked in every now and then. More often than not, I miss those changes until I read about them somewhere.

There are 4 nerds in NYC who are frustrated with these changes and are taking their own steps by starting something on their own. Read more about it here : Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook

How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization

Here’s another story about Facebook and it’s privacy issue. It is pretty hard to keep track with the changes sometimes but I will try to keep up and share with you whatever news that comes my way.

This week, Facebook introduced the “open graph,” a giant expansion of the “social graph” concept on which Facebook is built. The word “open” alone should be a tip-off that there are significant new privacy issues to weigh.

In the open graph, Facebook sees us as connected not just to other people – our friends — on Facebook, but to myriad things all over the Web. These things could be favorite bands, news outlets or restaurants.

Confused? Read more about it here How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization

Five hidden dangers of Facebook (Q&A)

Facebook claims that it has 400 million users. But are they well-protected from prying eyes, scammers, and unwanted marketers?

Not according to Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online.

She says your privacy may be at far greater risk of being violated than you know, when you log onto the social-networking site, due to security gaffes or marketing efforts by the company.

Facebook came under fire this past week, when 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, charging that the site, among other things, manipulates privacy settings to make users’ personal information available for commercial use. Also, some Facebook users found their private chats accessible to everyone on their contact list–a major security breach that’s left a lot of people wondering just how secure the site is.

Read more via Five hidden dangers of Facebook (Q&A)

People finally realize Facebook intends to make money off of their data

With the frequent changes in the “Privacy Settings” in Facebook, you do have to keep yourself updated everytime there is a change in its policy, and make sure that private information remains private. Like any other business entity, Facebook is also out there not only to help us get connected with real people but also for profit.

Read more via People finally realize Facebook intends to make money off of their data

Privacy chiefs keep watch over Facebook

(Reuters) – Over the past six years, social networking has been the Internet’s stand-out phenomenon, linking up more than one billion people eager to exchange videos, pictures or last-minute birthday wishes.

The sites, led by Facebook with more than 400 million users, rely in large part on people’s willingness to share a wealth of personal information with an ever-expanding network of “friends,” either ones they actually know and see from time to time, or those they have met virtually through the Internet.

Members’ eagerness to add contacts has given the sites a powerful global reach, attracting users from 7 to 70 years old, from skateboarders to investment bankers, and with them a deep and potentially rich vein of targeted advertising revenue.

But at the same time it has concentrated vast amounts of data — telephone numbers and addresses, people’s simple likes and dislikes — on the servers of a small number of companies.

In Facebook’s case, the social networking tsunami has spread in barely six years from the Harvard dorm room of founder Mark Zuckerberg, 25, to envelope almost half a billion people — enough to be the world’s third most populous country.

That in turn has raised profound privacy issues, with governments in Europe and North America and Asia concerned about the potential for data theft, for people’s identities to be mined for income or children to be exploited via the Internet.

Data protection authorities from a range of countries held a teleconference this week to discuss how they can work together to protect what they see as a steady erosion of privacy, and the European Union too is studying what role it can play.

They may not be able to hold the social networking wave back, but policymakers are looking at what they can do to limit what they see as the “Big Brother”-like role of some sites. A showdown between privacy and Internet freedom is looming.

“We cannot expect citizens to trust Europe if we are not serious in defending the right to privacy,” Viviane Reding, the European commissioner in charge of media and the information society, said in a speech in January, laying out her concerns.

“Facebook, MySpace or Twitter have become extremely popular, particularly among young people,” she told the European Parliament. “However, children are not always able to assess all risks associated with exposing personal data.”

PRIVACY, MEET THE WEB

The privacy debate has been around as long as the Internet, but the explosive growth of social networking, and deepening concern about the impact it may be having on social interaction, has intensified discussion in recent months.

Incidents such as the Israeli soldier who announced details of an upcoming military raid via Facebook, and the murder conviction in Britain of a serial rapist who posed as a boy on the site, have fueled the fears of both lawmakers and parents.

In 2009 and again this year, Canadian authorities challenged Facebook’s default privacy settings and its use of personal information for targeted advertising. Norway filed complaints after a year-long study of the site’s terms and conditions.

Facebook has added fuel to the debate, with the company deciding in December 2009 to substantially change its privacy settings, effectively making members’ profiles more openly accessible unless users altered the settings themselves.

Zuckerberg explained the move in January, saying social behavior was shifting as a result of the Internet and that privacy was not the same now as it was even six years ago.

“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,” he told an audience at a technology conference.

“That social norm is just something that has evolved. We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are,” he said.

That may well be the case — and the trend for teenagers to share naked or near-naked pictures of one another online or via mobile phones may suggest mores are changing — but privacy campaigners believe the slope is getting too slippery.

Thomas Nortvedt, the head of digital issues at the Norwegian Consumer Council, a government body, sees Facebook’s alteration of its privacy settings as a turning point.

“The privacy settings on Facebook have raised awareness on … privacy as a whole, not only by the people but also by the governments and the regulating authorities,” he told Reuters.

“They see that this is, if not a problem, then at least a challenge and something has to be done about it.”

As Canada’s privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, told data protection experts on Tuesday: “We want to send a strong message that you can’t go on using people’s personal information without their consent… Do your testing before, and make sure they comply with privacy legislation.”

FACEBOOK’S GLOBAL TUG-OF-WAR

With government authorities raising their concerns ever more loudly, Facebook and other sites have amended some of their practices, or highlighted the range of measures they say they are already taking to protect members’ privacy and data.

As a result of the Canadian Privacy Commission’s investigation, Facebook agreed to adopt some recommendations, including explaining why users have to provide their date of birth at registration and introducing ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’ privacy settings for user-published content.

But other recommendations — such as limiting the ability of third-party applications to pull non-essential user information — were not immediately applied. Though the Commission was satisfied with Facebook’s further proposed privacy changes as of last August, a new investigation began this January in light of the site’s amendments to its privacy policy.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union and its 500 million citizens, does not regulate on privacy issues, leaving it up to the EU’s 27 member states, but it can issue guidelines or directives for corporate practices.

In February, the Commission unveiled its “Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU,” a voluntary pact involving 25 websites that agreed to safety measures for users under 18, including making profiles private and unsearchable by default.

But the agreement was drawn up before Facebook announced the changes to its privacy settings, a move that frustrated the EU.

“I can’t understand that,” Commissioner Reding said on the EU’s Safer Internet Day in February. “It’s in the interests of social network sites to give users control of their privacy.”

In the coming months, Reding and her team are expected to study the activities of sites such as Facebook and Google, which recently launched its own social network, and pay close attention to any perceived privacy slippages.

Authorities in Canada, Spain, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands are watching closely too.

Officials want to emphasize to users, particularly young and vulnerable ones, that too much sensitive information can easily be posted to sites, and can then be mined by advertisers and third parties through applications like games or quizzes.

No one wants to be seen be legislating against the freedom and fun of the Internet. But watchdogs also see privacy as an cornerstone of democratic societies that also needs defending.

“What we’re going to do in the coming months and years is organize ourselves as enforcement agencies in an international way,” Jacob Kohnstamm, the chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority, told privacy protection chiefs this week.

“So that the gap between the online market being global and the enforcement being national is going to be filled up by actions like we start today.”

(Editing by Luke Baker and Paul Casciato)

Fast-growing Facebook aims for more social Web

(Reuters) – Facebook’s user base is growing at its fastest rate ever, the online social network company said on Wednesday as it rolled out features that link the company’s platform more tightly with outside Web sites.

Facebook’s “open graph” would let people see information tailored to their lives and interests wherever they are on the Web, the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the f8 conference in San Francisco.

The idea, Zuckerberg said, is to make Facebook the center of the increasingly social and more personalized experience that people encounter when they use the Internet. Facebook also wants to make it easier for other websites to share information across Facebook’s user base of more than 400 million people.

“We’re building toward a Web where the default is social, every application and product will be designed from the ground up to use real identity,” he said.

Facebook users would be able click on a “like” button next to content on sites such as Time Warner Inc’s CNN and Walt Disney Co’s ESPN, and share the information on their Facebook profiles in a better way than the “share” button that many sites use.

Those sites in turn could display content from a Facebook user’s network. For example, a box on CNN.com could show that three friends “liked” a certain story.

Facebook has also partnered with review site Yelp and music discovery service Pandora, to enable more widespread sharing of users’ preferences across those sites.

In addition, Facebook and Microsoft, which owns a small piece of the social network, are launching a document creation and sharing application, based on Office 2010, that can be accessed through Facebook and an outside site.

Facebook, which has faced criticism for sharing too much user information, deflected questions about privacy concerns.

In a press conference following the keynote, Zuckerberg said applications on third-party sites will share no more information than before.

“I think what this actually means is that people are going to be sharing less of their information when they don’t need to around the Web,” he said.

GROWING FAST

Since its creation in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook has emerged as one of the Internet’s most popular destinations and is increasingly challenging established Web powerhouses like Yahoo Inc and Google Inc.

Facebook is the fourth-most visited site in the United States, and displaced Google in January to become the top U.S. site by total number of Web pages viewed.

Facebook’s event comes a week after rival social networking sensation Twitter held its developer’s conference in San Francisco, and announced that it had signed up more than 100 million users — marking the first time the company has revealed its number of users.

In September, Facebook said that it had recently turned free cash flow positive, meaning that it makes enough money to cover operating costs and capital spending.

Facebook director Mark Andreessen also told Reuters last year that the company would surpass $500 million in revenue in 2009.

Last year, Facebook received $200 million in funding from Russian Internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, in a deal that pegged the value of Facebook’s preferred shares at $10 billion. DST also bought more than $100 million of common shares directly from Facebook shareholders, valuing Facebook’s common shares at $6.5 billion.

(Reporting by Gabriel Madway. Editing by Maureen Bavdek and Robert MacMillan)

Fast-growing Facebook aims for more social Web

Facebook? Twitter? Microsoft tops social media use

(Reuters) – Twitter and Facebook are the bane of many bosses, but a new survey has found that employees at Microsoft Corp are the most social media-savvy in the world.

The survey, the first by sales and marketing contact database NetProspex, ranked the top 50 companies based on their social network membership, frequency of social media posts on Twitter and other blogs, and the friendliness or connectedness of a sample of employees for each organization.

The NetProspex Social Index was determined after an analysis of more than 100,000 business executives from the Fortune 1000 companies in the first quarter of 2010.

“This report shows that in today’s business environment, employees throughout many of the country’s largest corporations are using social networks,” Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex, said in a statement.

“This presents a new opportunity for sales and marketing prospecting and lead generation, as strategies adapt to encompass the landscape of social networks.”

The survey found that almost half of companies analyzed have employees throughout their organization on social networking sites, with Microsoft leading the way.

Not surprisingly, the list was dominated by technology and software companies, while online retailers such as Amazon.com and eBay claimed two of the top five rankings.

Google and Walt Disney Corp rounded out the top 5, while Microsoft’s rival Apple ranked number 10.

Microsoft’s tech-savvy ranking comes almost a week after the company launched two new phones — the Kin One and Kin Two — aimed at the youth market and which will enable users to use Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts with ease.

(Writing by Miral Fahmy, editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Facebook? Twitter? Microsoft tops social media use

Web Ink Now: Social business beyond just the marketing department

Many will be aware of my keen following of David Meerman Scott – below is an excerpt from his blog relating to business social media – something that many people keep asking me… the distance between the US and Asia Pacific is only based on hours in flying time – yet even whilst many companies are checking out social media in Asia Pacific the steps are small.

Social business beyond just the marketing department – by DM Scott

It seems there are three phases of development as an organization matures its social business:

1 Fear and distrust of social networking and a culture of saying “no” to tools like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. I’d say this is where 25% of companies are right now.

2 Putting a few people in the marketing department “in charge of that social stuff.”This is where more than half of companies are today.

3 Developing a social culture throughout the organization, including social business in each department. Less than 25% of companies have matured to this stage. IBM is there. The U.S. Department of Defense is too. Many others have written on this theme.

Just this weekend, I found these posts: Jeff Bullas asks: Who Is Winning At Social Media Marketing: Ford or General Motors? Jeff talks about how Christopher Barger at GM and Scott Monty at Ford are leading the way in social media. I’ve travelled to Detroit to meet with both and have video interviews with Christopher and Scott. I can say with certainty that both of GM and Ford are pushing social business down into the organization.Also writing on this theme is Peter Kane who asks: Why You Don’t Need Your Communications Team? Peter asks who’s important on the communication front? Customer service representatives? Sales departments? The $10 per hour worker on my floors? Peter answers his own question by stating the obvious: All are. All are new marketers.

Read nore : Web Ink Now: Social business beyond just the marketing department.