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Tag Archives | Facebook
We’re Using Facebook Differently. Is Your Personal Info Safe?
With the mass migration from MySpace to Facebook by a good portion of the social mediarati, the ways we are using the service is certainly changing. Before, the two sites had rather distinct user types. This lead to the sites being used in different ways.
MySpace always seemed to be more casual, and personal use ruled. The atmosphere was less formal, which meant functionality such as personal information really was not necessary. The people you were adding weren’t always necessarily your true “friends.”
Facebook was different. It’s roots as a connection between college students, and later on businesspeople, made it much more formal. Typically, if you were adding somebody on Facebook, you either knew them, were friends with them, or worked with them.
Thus, Facebook by design allowed you to enter personal data such as contact information. A good portion of us, myself included, likely put this information here because we wanted those on our Facebook to have that information if they needed it.
I have tons of people on there that I completely lost contact with and have reconnected as a result of the service, which I am pretty grateful for.
But things are changing. With MySpace out of vogue, that crowd is coming to Facebook. This means that the less formal use of MySpace, including adding people you might not necessarily directly know, is much more commonplace.
There’s just one problem. The way Facebook stores your personal data has not changed. I found this out the hard way, and didn’t realize it until my contact information was used in a stalking incident by a person I had added who I really did not know.
Laying out in the open as long as they were on my friends list was just about every bit of personal information about me, including address, phone number, email, and IM contact information. I was shocked that I had forgotten this data was there, because typically I am very good with maintaining control over personal information.
Facebook doesn’t make it easy to block the information, either. It’s privacy settings left little to be desired.
Essentially, I would have had to go through every single friend, adding them one at a time, to show my information to select people. This led me to think, how many other Facebookers may be inadvertently sharing information they may not be comfortable giving out?
Take this as a cautionary tale. Double check your Facebook to make sure you’re comfortable with the information you’re giving out: otherwise, you might find out the hard way.
Should Facebook do something? Probably yes. The methods to select who sees your data is a bit too cumbersome. Rather than making it a manual process, it might be better for the company to allow you to group friends, and from there allow/deny access to personal info.
I’m curious as to whether or not the ways you use Facebook have changed in this “post-MySpace era.” Have you checked to see how your data is being shared?
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Facebook is About to Get Better on the iPhone
I’m not sure if I’d rate Facebook’s iPhone app as one of my favorites, but it’s definitely among those that I admire most–it’s an ambitious and thoughtful recreation of much of the social network in phone-sized form, and it feels both like Facebook and an iPhone app. Facebook has submitted a new version to the iPhone App Store, and AppAdvice has a preview with screenshots. It’s got the new Facebook newsfeed, “Like,” events, and more, and generally looks impressive.
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Qik Goes Legit on the iPhone
Livestreaming service Qik finally has an app available on the iPhone App Store. (A version for jailbroken iPhones already existed.) It’s good news, but not without a major gotcha: The App Store version of Qik doesn’t permit you to stream live video from your phone to Qik’s site. It does, however, allow you to record video with an iPhone 3GS which is then instantly and automatically uploaded to Qik (along with your GPS location), as well as share it via YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Which is useful in and of itself, and similar to the tactic taken by competitor Ustream to get into the App Store.
The biggest limitation of this Apple-approved version of Qik is that you can only upload via Wi-Fi, not 3G. Qik says it’s submitted a 3G0-enabled version of the app to Apple, though. That one should be a decent stopgap until the day comes–I’m an optimist and assume it will-that Apple lets developers write apps that stream video on the fly over 3G.
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Facebook Snaps Up FriendFeed
Facebook, the planet’s largest social-networking site, is buying one that’s relatively small but extremely influential, FriendFeed. The deal involves FriendFeed living on as a standalone site for now, but it sounds like the long-term idea is to build new FriendFeed-like features and technologies into Facebook itself. It’s clearly a major move in Facebook’s chess game with Twitter, and presumably reduces (but doesn’t eliminate) the possibility of Facebook buying Twitter itself at some point.
Reaction among serious FriendFeed fans to the news seems to be largely guarded-to-negative (although FriendDeed überenthusiast Robert Scoble is guardedly optimistic, and here’s Louis Gray’s thoughtful take). Me, I’m basically a FriendFeed dabbler/lurker at best, and I’m keeping my mind open. FriendFeed is impressive in many ways, but it’s complex enough that it’s remained kind of a secret weapon of serious geeks. If there’s one thing Facebook has done well, it’s figured out how to make a complicated (confusing, even) service appealing to millions of people of all sorts. Maybe it’ll be able to work some magic with the FriendFeed team that’ll make all of this makes sense.
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New Twitter Frontpage Resembles Search Engine
Twitter’s new home page, which went live yesterday, resembles a search engine, with trending topics taking the place of categories. Twitter is a useful way to learn what is happening now, but it is also a way to become quickly misinformed.
Social media is a nontraditional, but effective means to keep up with the day’s news and events. Event feeds, where friends share information with one another, are a much better way to stay on top of what people are talking about than e-mail ever was. I regularly check my feeds on Facebook, and to a less extent, Twitter, to stay looped in.
People that I add to my social mesh are typically people whose opinions I respect, and I find it useful to read their take on what’s happening. There is a certain amount of trust required, because status updates and tweets are not vetted sources or information (at least upfront).
Therein lies the rub. Twitter has a history of security problems and exploits, and it can be a hotbed of misinformation. In May, a rogue tweet was responsible for causing a civil rights panic, and rumors about other celebrities dying were propagated on Twitter after Michael Jackson passed away last month. The effect was viral.
Twitter is also the target of hackers. The accounts of public figures, including ABC News broadcast journalist George Stephanopoulos have been phished, and taken over by unknown persons.
The site also relies on outmoded, and easily compromised, security questions for account password retrieval.
In short, while Twitter is useful to tune into the day’s buzz, it is not a news organization. A certain degree of skepticism is required when controversial or shocking information surfaces from social media. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t use Twitter, but I am urging people to validate what they read before sharing it with others.
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Facebook Relents a Little on No-Name-Change Policy
Last month, Facebook began letting members choose vanity named-based URLs and told them that they wouldn’t be allowed to change the names they picked.
Now ReadWriteWeb is reporting that the site has backpedaled and says you’ll be able to change your name–once:
It appears that Facebook has quietly launched a new option in the settings area called “username” where you have the option to change your Facebook username. To find this option, go to “Settings” at the top-right of the Facebook page and then click on “Account Settings.” The second option from the top is “Username.” Press “Change” to enter in your new username and then click “Confirm” when you’re ready to set it.
Seems reasonable–if nothing else, Facebook should allow folks to change their Facebook name when they change their names in real life, via marriage or other means.
The name-change restrictions presumably have less to do with technological limitations and more to do with Facebook’s fussy insistence that the people on Facebook should be real people going by their real names. In a Web that’s rife with anonymous trolls, pseudonymous jerks, people posing as other people, and fictitious characters, I sort of admire its stance. (And hey, I go by the very real name of harrymccracken on Facebook–feel free to friend me there if you’re a friend of mine or feel like one…)
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Facebook Crushes E-mail When It Comes to Sharing
Given Facebook’s immense popularity, it comes as no surprise that it is the top place to share information, according to Mashable and sharing widget maker AddToAny. Facebook accounts for 24% of the sharing of links to articles, videos and other content, far outpacing second-place e-mail at 11%. E-mail’s hold on the second slot is in jeopardy though, as Twitter quickly rises through the ranks. The microblogging site accounts for 10.8% of information shared, AddToAny says.
E-mail’s demise as a sharing medium is not a surprise either: Its use among netizens stands at 65.1 percent, while “community sites” reach 66.8 percent. That data seems a bit odd, given that to do anything online, you need an e-mail address. Try signing up for Facebook without one. My guess is that figure refers toactive e-mail users.
At last week’s New Hampshire Social Media Breakfast, John Herman, a teacher at Epping (New Hampshire) High School, said his students barely use e-mail, mainly as a way to sign up for other services before forgetting their passwords and never checking e-mail again. Herman’s story is anecdotal, but does show e-mail’s decline as a central hub for information sharing.
Good or bad, e-mail is not going away. Corporations are not going to share vital company data via Facebook or other public service. But, social networks are perfect for sharing non-critical information with group of people and then aggregating responses from the recipients. Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the social networks could be the antidote for the dreaded “reply-all” disease. Rather than in-boxes cluttered with “Me too” and “That’s great!” replies from a litany of people you may not know, social networks are serving as the catchall for everyone’s need to chime in and giving hope to those that desire to “zero” their inboxes.
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Starbucks Gives Away Ice Cream on Facebook
Starbucks Coffee Company has turned to social media to promote its new ice cream brand. The bean peddler is giving Facebook users complimentary prints of ice cream–provided they install an application to solicit their friends with offers for free Starbucks ice cream.
Starbucks is paying Facebook for ads to promote the application among the social network’s 200 million active users. To be clear, Starbucks is NOT giving away 200 million pints of ice cream; the offer is limited to 20,000 people in the U.S. between now and July 19.
When I installed the application, I was told that there would be no free pints to “surprise a friend” with for about another hour. It did, however, direct me to a Starbucks Web page where I could fill out a form with my personal information to receive a $1 off coupon to redeem at my local grocery store.
Whenever I do something on Facebook, such as install an application, my 500+ ‘friends’ that tune into my event stream are notified. That’s not such a bad reach for Starbucks. In fact, it’s almost viral. If I cared enough about it to send free ice cream to my friends, Starbucks’ frozen concoctions would receive even more exposure.
Could Starbucks become Facebook’s sweet success when it comes to figuring out how to make advertising effective on the service? Starbucks will doubtlessly be monitoring how well its campaign is working.
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Michael Jackson’s Death Shows the Web at Its Best. And Worst.
The untimely and shocking death of Michael Jackson is proving to be another milestone moment for the Internet, confirming the medium’s ability to spread news quickly while at the same time steps still need to be taken to handle massive, unexpected spikes in traffic.
For many, including myself, the Internet–most likely Twitter or Facebook–was the first place they heard the news of Jackson being rushed to the hospital followed quickly by the news of his passing. To wit, Twitter reached a 5,000-tweet-per-minute rate on Jackson related items, while Facebook saw triple the traffic to its status updates. For Twitter, the rate of posts reached levels last seen around the historic US Presidential election, co-founder Biz Stone told he the LA Times. Even the Times itself saw record traffic, with nearly 2.3 million page views in an hour, which it says is more traffic than any single hour during its previous peak on Election Day.
In general, online news sites tracked by Akamai saw traffic jump 20% above average as the news broke.