Facebook's privacy fixes can't cure stupid
Facebook deserves plenty of blame for messing too much with its privacy settings, but no amount of fixing will stop people from embarrassing themselves on the Internet.
Facebook deserves plenty of blame for messing too much with its privacy settings, but no amount of fixing will stop people from embarrassing themselves on the Internet.
Want an expert lesson in how to respond without actually responding and how to apologize without saying you're sorry? Then you need to read Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg's quasi-mea culpa in today's Washington Post. Do it now; I'll wait.
New Yorker Barry Hoggard draws a line in the sand when it comes to online privacy. In May he said farewell to 1251 Facebook friends by deleting his account of four years to protest what he calls the social network's eroding privacy policies.
Facebook's privacy problems reportedly have the social network rethinking its approach, and a new poll suggests that the threat of user decline is real, but don't expect a mass exodus any time soon.
As complaints about Facebook continue to pile up to epic proportions, its competitors are receiving glittering press, financial support, and spikes in site traffic. Is this a signal that the Great Facebook Exodus has begun, and can the trend maintain momentum?
Facebook appears to be working diligently at establishing itself as the site that people love to hate. Don't get me wrong, passionate views are a mark of success--just look at Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Still, the trick is to foster that passion (and generate revenue) without inviting undue regulatory scrutiny or legal backlash.
Facebook wants to know "What's on your mind?" Twitter asks "What's happening?" But that's getting old already. The burning question for the next wave of social networking is "Where are you?"--and services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Loopt want you to use your smartphone to answer it.
People all over the world spend a total of eight billion minutes a day on Facebook. Some 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared every week, 400 billion Web pages are viewed every month and the site logs a staggering 25TB of data every day. David Recordon, senior open programs manager at Facebook, talks about how the social networking giant uses open source tools to achieve its massive app scalablilty.
Facebook has been awarded a patent for "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network."
Dear Facebook, I appreciate your service. I really do.
The most popular Web sites are under increasing pressure to add support for IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to IPv4, the Internet's main communications protocol.
Facebook is tracking your every move on the site -- or so says one purported Facebook employee, according to an anonymous interview with the Rumpus. In the interview, the Facebook employee, whose identity was protected so she wouldn't lose her job for talking to the media, also said that Facebook employees have relatively easy access to user accounts.
Lost in the flurry of products announcements at last week's Consumer Electronics Show was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's suggestion on Friday that some aspects of privacy are a thing of the past. The Facebook founder's comments were part of an interview with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington during last week's Crunchie awards presentation.
The experimental Fishbowl for Facebook application connects you with all your Facebook data without a browser. Its layout differs somewhat from what you'd get on the Web page, but it's otherwise pretty similar.
Facebook was built as a powerful social connector, allowing users to befriend others with similar interests, locations, schools, and more.