Items tagged with Facebook
The Pope has embraced social networking. No, you can't poke him or send him a private message, but the Vatican has indeed launched a Facebook page for the Pope as well as a Facebook application called "The Pope meets you on Facebook" which will allow users to "receive the messages of Pope Benedict XVI through the most important social network...
Read more...
We wrote earlier that Facebook was going to allow site users to vote on its new Terms of Service. Well, the polls are now open, and users can start voiting. You probably remember the massive explosion that happened when Facebook modified its Terms of Service (ToS) such that it implied Facebook owned all your content, forever. They eventually...
Read more...
While one study indicates that a little Internet leisure time at work can increase productivity, a second study now shows college students who regularly use social networking site Facebook have lower GPAs than those who do not. My comment, or rather question: they actually found college students who didn't use Facebook? Researcher Aryn Karpinski...
Read more...
200 million. Just let that sink in. That huge, immense number is how many Facebook members the social networking site has, and it took less than half a decade to make it happen. CEO Mark Zuckerberg proudly proclaimed that his site would meet and exceed the 200 million member mark today, and if you just so happened to finally jump in after...
Read more...
It's pretty amazing, really. While Blockbuster has withered as the world shifted from in-store DVD rentals to by-mail rentals and now to streaming rentals, Netflix has managed to keep itself relevant by staying one step ahead of the curve. Rather than pushing out its own proprietary "Netflix box," it instead created software and an API that...
Read more...
Facebook has begun to respond to the criticism over the recent redesign of its home page. While it's unlikely they will make wholescale revisions (like returning to the prior version), they outlined some tweaks they are going to make in response to feedback. Live updating: Automatic updating of the stream (yes, that Twitter-like stream that's...
Read more...
Facebook announced the new Facebook Connect for iPhone service at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX today. Facebook Connect for iPhone is now available with several participating applications. This new Connect service lets users link their apps with their Facebook profile to share data with friends, just as Facebook Connect currently...
Read more...
For Facebook users who might have noticed that some previously-uploaded photos were mysteriously missing from their Facebook pages, Facebook wants you to know that it is aware of the problem, it is fixing the problem right now, and perhaps most importantly: "Don't worry: Your photos are safe." Apparently, while Facebook engineers were performing...
Read more...
The Internet is a wondrous thing, but it's also made teasing and bullying, formerly restricted to schoolyards, something you can do online for all the world to see. A Long Island teenager is suing her tormentors, their parents, and Facebook over a Facebook group "calculated to hold the plaintiff up to public hatred, ridicule and disgrace."...
Read more...
So as not to give companies more excuses to kick employees to the curb in this tough economy, we've warned before about watching what you post to your social networking site. After all, MySpace photos have gotten an Oregon mayor recalled, and now a Facebook post about how boring her job was has gotten Kimberley Swann of Clacton on Sea in England...
Read more...
Facebook is doing something unheard of, announcing at a press conference on Thursday that it is giving its users the right to weigh in on changes to its policies and Terms of Service (ToS), in effect creating what some have called a virtual "Bill of Rights." You probably remember the massive explosion that happened when Facebook modified its...
Read more...
Facebook's Terms of Service (TOS) changed a couple of weeks ago, but wasn't noticed until brought to people's attention by the site Consumerist. Despite some fast tap-dancing by Facebook, the cat's out of the bag, and it's not going back in. In fact, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is preparing a formal complaint to be sent...
Read more...
There's a big kerfuffle brewing over on Facebook over the posting of photos showing moms breastfeeding their babies. Apparently, Facebook has not only pulled some of these photos, but it has also sent warnings to some users who posted the photos; and even terminated the account of at least one user. Facebook claims that the pictures it pulled...
Read more...
Following the 2006 suicide of Megan Meier over a MySpace hoax, Missouri revised the the state's already existing harassment law to include telephone and electronic communication, effectively outlawing cyberbullying. And now they are starting to prosecute violators of that law. The law has only been in effect for three months, and according...
Read more...
As a company, Google has never really been one to sit back and just watch what the other guys are doing; instead, the company is continuously venturing into new areas. Now, they’re looking to get in on the social networking action by going head-to-head with Facebook’s newly launched Connect. Similarly named, Google’s new Friend Connect makes...
Read more...
Social-networking giant Facebook is continuing to grow like mad. In fact, the company grew its active membership total from 90 million users in early July to 120 million now, according to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer. While speaking at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference, Sandberg also noted, “We got more (members)...
Read more...
Before you post photos of your night of drunken debauchery to your Facebook profile, you might want to consider what kind of impression it might make on prospective employers. And lest you think that baby-boomer-generation hiring managers wouldn't know Facebook if they tripped over it, think again: 22 percent of hiring managers say they research...
Read more...
Triple word score! Hasbro can now stop worry about a server overload on its Facebook Scrabble application: only two days after disappearing from Facebook, Scrabulous is back, but with a new name (Wordscraper), and minor tweaks to hopefully eliminate any copyright issues. Obviously the name is a good start in terms of deflecting lawsuits. Besides...
Read more...
Don't worry, Rupert (Murdoch); MySpace still outdraws Facebook in terms of unique U.S. visitors. But in terms of worldwide visitors: second place.comScore statistics indicate that Facebook drew even with MySpace in April. At that point, the networks interested about 115 million users each. If we're allowed mentally to extend the...
Read more...
Facebook has 70 million members, so if the owners change something about it the users don't like, the angry virtual mob that appears outside the window with digital pitchforks and torches is something to behold. Facebook's attempt to share information about user's purchases through a utility they called Beacon didn't go down too well, ...
Read more...
Facebook has been garnering all sorts of bad press lately about the iffy security and privacy of their users' information. Today's version of Whoops! for Facebook is a security lapse that allowed unauthorized strangers to see personal photographs posted in areas on Facebook that were supposed to be private. And I wasn't just making a cheap...
Read more...
You may recall that Chris Avenir, a first-year chemical engineering student at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, faced expulsion after it came to light that he had created a Facebook-based chemistry study group. The horror, the horror!Chris Avenir's apparent exhortation to fellow Ryerson University engineering students to "input...
Read more...
