Facebook notches up 500million members... that's eight per cent of world's population

By Daily Mail Reporter

Popular: Facebook now has half a billion users, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg, which is eight per cent of the world's population


More than 500 million people have joined the social networking site Facebook, the company's founder has announced.

It means almost eight per cent of the world's population use the tool to connect with friends, family and colleagues.

The 'important milestone' comes only months after Facebook announced that 400 million users were active on the site.

The company's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said: 'As of this morning, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them.

'This is an important milestone for all of you who have helped spread Facebook around the world. Now a lot more people have the opportunity to stay connected with the people they care about.'

To mark passing the 500 million figure, the company is launching a new application from today known as 'Facebook Stories' which will encourage people to upload their real-life stories to share with others.

Recently Mr Zuckerberg said the company is likely to reach the billion-user mark but technology bloggers are sceptical and have suggested the current figure may be a peak.


Student: Facebook.com's mastermind, Mark Zuckerberg, created the website while at Harvard University


The company - which is based in Palo Alto, California - now employs more than 1,400 people around the world.

The website, which was originally created for college students to keep in contact with one another, was launched in 2004 by Mr Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin in their dorm room at Harvard University.

Now it is one of the busiest websites in the world - people spend 500 billion minutes a month trawling through the site.

The average member has more than 130 friends and creates 70 pieces of content each month.

In the last five months it has gained more than 100 million unique users - a member who returns to the site more than once in a month.

The large number of users, and the information they post about themselves online, has made the website vulnerable to criticism over its privacy settings.

Online security experts, internet users and the European Commission lambasted the company over alterations of the privacy settings which made it more difficult for users to keep their personal information private.

Recently Facebook, which says privacy is a 'top priority', launched a new 'simplified' setting to enable users to easily safeguard their data.

The rapid growth of users has come as bad news to other social networking sites such as Bebo.

The website, which was launched in 2005, was recently saved from the axe after AOL sold it to Criterion Capital.

It has 4.4 millions members in the UK who were responsible for generating well over half of the social networking site's 1.9 billion page impressions a month.

Online rumours are speculating that web giant Google is planning to take a step into the social networking market and could launch its own site in the near future.


source: dailymail

How low can she go? Courtney Love posts provocative photos of herself on Facebook

By Marcus Barnes

Controversial: Courtney Love poses on all fours as transexual model Amanda Lepore pretends to whip her in the outrageous new photoshoot


She's become a controversial figure thanks to her inane internet ramblings, her apparent drug habit and, of course, the fallout after the death of ex-partner Kurt Cobain.

So this provocative photoshoot starring Courtney Love should come as little surprise considering her carefully cultivated outrageous image.

The 45-year-old rock musician posted a series of near-the-knuckle photographs - which we have edited for reasons of taste - from the shoot on her Facebook page.

Courtney proudly poses topless in the shock pictures which are thought to be from a few years ago - hence the absence of her more recent body art.

In one particularly bizarre shot, she is seen crouching on all fours dressed in leopard print underwear, with a matching hat and stockings as famous U.S. transexual Amanda Lepore prepares to whip her behind.

Lepore, who was born Armand Lepore, is well-known for her extreme cosmetic surgery, resulting in large breasts and her plumped up lips.


Thriller: The Hole singer recreates Michael Jackson's crotch grabbing move in one of the shots - although she doesn't appear to be wearing any underwear


In another photo Courtney appears to adopt Michael Jackson's infamous crotch grabbing move in a revealing black dress.

Other shots show the Hole singer sitting on a swing, her make-up seemingly inspired by the 'heroin-chic' era that became popular in the fashion industry during the mid-Nineties.

She is also seen nude, but for a pair of frilly knickers, posing in a deserted warehouse.


Swings and roundabouts: The singer's career has consisted of a series of controversies including drug abuse, eating disorders and revelations about her apparent sexual encounters with other celebrities


The shots add to the singer's already controversial image, having carved out a niche for outrageous behaviour with her band Hole.

She has battled drug addiction and an eating disorder in the past, also losing custody of her daughter Francis Bean after she was treated for an overdose of prescribed drug oxycodone in 2003.

Miss Love has raised concerns about her mental well-being with frequent rambling blog posts on her MySpace page.

She made headlines recently when it was claimed she said she had a lesbian romp with supermodel Kate Moss - although she later took to her Twitter page to deny making any such statement.


Arty? One of the shots takes place in a deserted building where Courtney is seen nude, apart from a pair of flesh coloured knickers


Her alleged secret lover, hotelier Andre Balazs, is said to have ended their relationship after the allegations that she romped with Kate, 36, in Milan in the 1990s.

A friend is reported to have said: 'Andre was very fond of Courtney, but found some of her behaviour embarrassing.

'And after a series of rows last week - including one over why she felt the need to 'out' Kate - he told her it was over.'

She also revealed that she had an affair with Bush rocker Gavin Rossdale during the early stages of his relationship with Gwen Stefani - to whom he is now married.

The former Bush frontman set the record straight via Facebook, writing: ‘Gwen and Gavin Rossdale would like to assure fans that anything may have occurred prior to their marriage has no impact on their current situation.'


source: dailymail

I believe Facebook is a toxic addiction

By Janet Street-porter

Social networking isn't just a pointless waste of time, because for a worrying number of young people it is proving to be harmful, if not deadly

Janet Street-Porter is no fuddy-duddy. But here, she reveals her growing alarm over young Britons' obsession with social networking websites...

A year ago, I wrote 'Life's definitely too short to log on to Facebook'. A series of tragic deaths has given that throwaway phrase a chilling new meaning.

Social networking isn't just - as I complained last year - a pointless waste of time, because for a worrying number of young people it is proving to be harmful, if not deadly.

Earlier this month, serial sex offender Peter Chapman was convicted of raping and murdering a sweet 17-year-old girl he initially contacted through Facebook using a fake identity.

Ashleigh Hall didn't get a choice about what to do with her life - it was brutally cut short by Chapman, who dumped her body in a field.

This week, there was further terrible news: 15-year-old Demi Wright, from North London, has been missing since Tuesday after leaving home for a rendezvous with a self- styled gangster she became obsessed with chatting to online.

And what about teenagers like Holly Grogan, Megan Gillan and Sam Leeson? Innocent, normal kids who took their lives after being bullied on social networking sites. What a waste.

My flippant remarks about the downside of Facebook provoked a huge debate. Some accused me of being a fuddy-duddy, the cyber equivalent of a grumpy old woman.
The truth is, however, that despite my fears there's nothing we can say or write to stop the relentless growth of social networking on the internet.
Kids may decide one site is more fashionable than another, but hooking up and making friends online has become a central part of modern life, whether we agree with it or not.
The singer Lily Allen might have declared she's logged off for good, but Facebook attracted 23 million new users in the first month of this year, an astonishing statistic.
Going online to chat is like taking crack. It's so addictive, you soon find yourself constantly tweeting, texting, messaging, emailing. Mostly harmless bilge, but for vulnerable teenagers it's a drug that can end in death


Tragedy: Holly Grogan committed suicide after being bullied online


The fact is, Facebook is unstoppable, so there's no point in talking about policing it, censoring it or shutting it down. It's too late for that.

Look at the sheer volume of stuff - more than five billion pieces of content, web links, news stories, blog posts and photos, are shared on the site worldwide each week.

How do you sift through a tsunami of trivia like that? And how long does it take to spot that something is unacceptable and remove it?

Facebook has 400 million users, the majority of whom are young.

When I asked the company how they control content to make sure it isn't violent, pornographic or unsuitable, they replied: 'We have a team of more than 100 professional reviewers based in our U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto and in Dublin, Ireland, and they work around the clock reviewing and taking action on user reports from around the world.

'They treat reports of harassing messages as a priority - acting on most within 24 hours.'

It doesn't take a degree in maths to calculate that of these specially trained men and women - assuming they work in 12-hour shifts - just 50 people or so are policing around 350 million pieces of content on each shift.

Clearly, this is impossible - so the system relies on users making complaints.

And if those users are already lying about their age and their sex and creating cyber versions of their personalities that bear very little resemblance to the real teenager or middle-aged paedophile, then it's expecting a lot from this motley army of users suddenly to morph into responsible net police, online Mr Plods who will spend time ratting on their mates for posting pictures of themselves holding guns, knives, or pictures of their naughty bits.

The most important thing to remember about young people using the internet is that they have little privacy in the real world.

Adolescents need a haven to escape to - and the internet provides the perfect place to set your own rules and talk to your chosen circle of confidants in a secret language.

In the past two years, the number of 12- to 15-year-olds with internet access in their bedrooms has soared from 20 to 35 per cent. These can be miserable, lonely, misunderstood kids.

Professor Sonia Livingstone, of the London School of Economics, found that Facebook was the sixth most popular social networking site among six to 11-year- olds, a fact that was buried in a report written by the media regulator Ofcom.

Although Facebook proudly tells us that their users have to be 13 to sign up, who's doing the checking?

An EU study of online behaviour found that 40 per cent of teenagers had seen pornography and 20 per cent had been bullied. They just accepted it as part of the experience.

The amount of time people now spend on social networking sites has soared to six hours a week - that's up more than 80 per cent in a year, and the longer we spend online, the harder it is to connect with the real world.

Psychologist Arthur Cassidy says that friendships forged via social networking sites and messaging services are different to those we make in the real world.

These online relationships can build up very quickly, they can be very secretive and, as a result, the people involved can feel special. It's like being in an exclusive club no one knows about. Emotionally, it's very intense.

People who work with children's charities can always tell the kids who have spent too much time online - they shun eye contact and have trouble connecting with other people.

They lack empathy. If kids are shy and insecure about their appearance or their conversational skills, then the internet seems like a great place to make friends and create a social scene - as Ashleigh Hall found out to her cost.

Online, she could be flirtatious and chatty to a complete stranger, something she would never have had the confidence to do in real life.

Proof that young people routinely create fantasy versions of themselves online is shown by the Information Commissioner's Office findings that 71 per cent of 14- to 21-year-olds said they would not want employers or colleges to do a web search on them before they have been given a chance to clean up their profiles.

Children don't encounter risks at school or at home as a result of the massive amount of health and safety legislation to prevent them getting harmed.

But we seem to have conveniently forgotten that when they sit in front of a computer screen they can be anywhere, doing anything, chatting to anyone.


Of course, parents can limit time online. But you can't police texts, messages and images 24 hours a day - it's as bonkers as Facebook trying to filter everything that goes through their website.

So, what's the solution? Facebook, like other social networking sites, believes that users have to self-regulate the world they inhabit online.

The firm told me: 'Facebook is based on a real-name culture - it is a violation of our policies to use a fake name or operate under a false identity - and we encourage people to report anyone they think is doing this. Facebook is highly self-regulating.'

Yet the site has refused to place the CEOP (the Child Exploitation And Online Protection Centre) warning button on their pages - claiming that their own system works more efficiently.

CEOP says it dealt with 115 cases of children who had been groomed by paedophiles on Facebook last year alone.

The site's managers counter that an under-age girl cannot receive messages from any adult who is not her friend, or a friend of a friend, or someone she shares a network with.

But if you create a fake identity and post a picture of an attractive man (as Peter Chapman did) and create a sexy, attractive persona, then it's easy to see how impressionable teenage girls might want to befriend you.

And how does anyone know a fake name when they read it? I've had plenty of emails from people with weird names. Haven't you?

There is another aspect of social networking which I find offensive, and that is clubs which are set up to discuss individuals without their permission.

For example, Amy Louise Paul was a normal 13-year-old, but her life changed completely after she had a disagreement with one of her friends, who set up a group on the internet called We Hate Amy Louise and tagged it 'for all of those people who hoped she would die already'.

Louise said the experience left her wanting to kill herself and now she is withdrawn and distressed.

It's not surprising that Childline gets more calls about cyber-bullying than any other topic.

In another twist, 27-year-old David Calvert was wrongly identified on Facebook as being Jamie Bulger's killer Jon Venables and 2,370 people joined a group to discuss the case.

The internet is held up as the ultimate organ of free speech, but this is just one example of how it can actually destroy an individual's human rights.

Finally, you might wonder why serial sex offenders such as Peter Chapman are even allowed access to the internet in the first place.

Convicted sex offenders have to register their addresses, dates of birth and National Insurance numbers with the police when they are released from jail.

In 2007, the Government decided to expand this requirement to include their email addresses and any identities they used on the internet.

The plan was to pass this information to social networking sites such as Facebook to prevent sex offenders from joining.

However, this has been blocked by a High Court ruling in 2008, after two sex offenders claimed that handing over this information indefinitely infringed their human rights.

The Home Office lost an appeal last summer, but the case is now going to the Supreme Court.

That might be a small crumb of comfort, but don't hold your breath. Panic buttons, content monitoring teams and registering sex offenders won't make any difference.

It's a jungle online, and it's too late to do anything about it. The police want to be able to spend a huge amount of time creating fake identities to entrap paedophiles.

I doubt it will make much difference in the end.

Social networking is not my cup of tea, but millions of fans claim it's enriched their lives. But for the young and vulnerable, it should be added to the list of addictions, like gambling, drink and drugs, that can cause terrible harm.

Censorship and control will have limited effect - our best hope is that teenagers treat their current passion for online friendship in the same way as they do with fashion and music - it's a passing trend which will lose its appeal the more it's adopted by the mainstream.

If Mum, Dad and the grandparents are on Facebook, then pretty soon the kids will have moved elsewhere.


source: dailymail

Father and daughter reunited on Facebook after 50 years apart

Reunion joy: Frances Simpson discovered her father Tony Macnauton (right) on Facebook, 50 years after they last saw each other


A father and daughter who have not seen each other for nearly 50 years have been reunited after meeting on Facebook.

Frances Simpson, 51, last saw her father when she was just three-years-old after her parents separated.

She had spent 33 years trying to find him with no joy until a friend researched her family tree as a surprise.

Frances discovered for the first time she had a half-sister called Kim Macnauton whom she never knew about.

She looked Kim up on Facebook and sent her a message in which she wrote: 'This is going to be a bit of a shock... but I think I am your sister.'

By chance, the two women's father Tony Macnauton, now 72, was sitting by Kim's side when the message arrived.

Stunned Kim, 19, immediately wrote back confirming they were indeed related.

They exchanged phone numbers and Frances spoke to her father for the first time in 48 years. The pair have now met face to face in an emotional reunion.

Frances, from Market Drayton, Shropshire, said: 'It's unbelievable, I'm absolutely over the moon.

'I don't have the words to describe how I'm feeling, it's amazing.

'After all these years I've finally got my dad back.'

She has now introduced Tony, a retired lorry driver from Poole, Dorset, to the five grandchildren and great-grandchild he never knew he had.


Treasured memories: Frances kept this picture of herself as an 18-month-old toddler with her father and mother
Frances, a full-time mother, had not seen her father since she was a toddler when he left the family home after splitting from her mother.


She began searching for him when she turned 18, scouring phone books, electoral rolls, and newspapers across the country to track him down.

But unbeknown to her, he had changed his name to make a fresh start and despite her best efforts she never found him.

It wasn't until her friend started researching her family tree that she found him, living 200 miles away in Poole.

After searching social networking site Facebook for clues about him, Frances made contact with Kim, his daughter from his second marriage.

Frances said: 'When I first started looking for him we didn't have the internet and things were so much harder.

'But as soon as I knew Kim's name, I looked her up and sent her a message saying: "This is going to be a bit of a shock if you are who I think you are, but I think I might be your sister."

'It only took a few minutes before I got a message back saying: "Do you want to talk to my dad? He's sitting right next to me."

'I couldn't believe it. I started talking to him and we haven't stopped since.

'I've got so many memories of him. I remember him being able to play the accordion and I remember him making me a swing.

'And now we're finding out all these other things we have in common - we've got the same sense of humour and we've even been on holiday to all the same places over the years.

'My children are absolutely thrilled to be able to meet him - I've always talked about him and they're so excited to finally meet him.'

Frances travelled to Poole to meet her father and half-sister for the first time last Friday.

After an emotional weekend, she took Tony back to Shropshire on Sunday to meet his grandchildren Robert, 25, Jody, 22, Callum, 19, Andrew, 17 and Kelvin, 15, and great-granddaughter Jessica, two.

Tony said: 'Even though we lost touch, I've never ever forgotten Frances.

'It's remarkable. We've each been clinging on to a precious photograph of the two of us together - the only ones in existence.

'I've always dreamed of being reunited again, and now I've finally got my daughter back.
'It's absolutely marvellous. I don't know what cloud I'm on at the moment.'


source: dailymail

Escaped prisoner taunts police on Facebook, boasting his home is 'warmer than the Caribbean'

Escaped prisoner Craig 'Lazie' Lynch is taunting police by posting his whereabouts on Facebook


An escaped prisoner is taunting police by posting his whereabouts on Facebook, boasting that his home is so warm it feels like the Caribbean.

Craig 'Lazie' Lynch vanished from Hollesley Bay Prison in Suffolk in September, close to the end of a seven year sentence for aggravated burglary.

Instead of hiding away from police, Lynch has set up a Facebook account with a photograph of him sticking his middle finger up.

He also boasts about eating 12lb steaks and his home being so warm it feels like the Caribbean.

The brazen burglar has made 199 friends on Facebook and has posted when he is going round to friends' houses and attending parties and events.

He has even boasted that he will be at a New Year's party.

In a status update via mobile phone Lynch said: 'Craig "Lazie" Lynch just had bundles of fun on the ice in me motor. Pure a*** out action, but well controlled.

This new whip is the one trust!!'

In another he wrote: 'Craig "Lazie" Lynch just nearly wrote my motor off again.
'Ice everywhere i went round the corner and ended up halfway on someone's driveway!!'

He also boasted about tucking into extravagant meals: 'Craig "Lazie" Lynch mmm i just had a 12lb venison steak. Roasted veg and chips, bangin meal.'

And instead of spending time in a prison cell, he taunted police by saying his home is so warm it is tropical.

He said: 'That's on already if it gets any colder durin xmas we'll have to stick the sun bed on as an extra heater we did it the other night it felt like the caribbean in the bedroom ha ha.'

The brazen burglar has made 199 friends on Facebook and has posted when he is going round to friends' houses and attending parties and events


The 28-year-old, who has links to Edgware and north east London, escaped from the open prison on September 23 and has not been seen since.

But according to his Facebook page, police could find him at a New Year's Eve party in Lowestoft or another event in Norwich in February.

In a section with information about him Lynch states: 'Life is what you make it, live fast, die young!!!'

The criminal is also thought to have posted messages on local newspaper websites asking if there is a reward for his recapture.

John Gummer, MP for Suffolk Coastal, said the astonishing case made a mockery out of the entire prison system.


Lynch escaped from Hollesley Bay open prison in Suffolk in September. A Prison Service spokesman said that only prisoners who are assessed to be a low risk to the public are given places in an open prison


The former Health minister and Environment Secretary said: 'I think it's very dangerous to assume the police could easily locate someone through a social networking site.

'We all know that one of the problems of a virtual world is that people can be very difficult to track down in the real world.

'However once again it does show that Hollesley Bay is being used for detaining people who should not be in an open prison because of a shortness of prison places that the Government seems unwilling to admit.'

The MP added: 'Every time there is an absconder it undermines the confidence of my constituents.

'I will now be writing to justice secretary Jack Straw to draw his attention to this particular situation and highlight the damage that it being done by the Government failing to adhere to proper measures.'

A Prison Service spokesman said the search for Lynch is a police matter and added that only prisoners who are assessed to be a low risk to the public are given places in an open prison.

He added that 96 per cent of prisoners who escape are recaptured.

The Metropolitan Police refused to comment about Lynch's Facebook account but a spokeswoman for Suffolk Constabulary said routine checks are carried out on addresses he is linked to and his details have been circulated on the Police National Computer.

She added: 'Because he has no links to Suffolk, other than the fact that he was in prison here, then these checks may be carried out by colleagues in other parts of the country.'

Anyone with information about Lynch's whereabouts can contact Suffolk Police on 01473 613500


source: dailymail

Parents pose as their 11-year-old daughter to snare Facebook paedophile grooming her for sex

An 11-year-old girl's parents took over her Facebook account and snared a paedophile who they discovered was grooming her for sex

The parents of an 11-year-old girl posed as their child on the internet to snare a paedophile who they discovered was grooming her for sex.

The pair took over the girl's Facebook account and, pretending to be her, lured perverted Thomas Gibbs into a trap.

Today the 52-year-old was behind bars, starting a 16-month jail term.

A judge heard how the couple became concerned about online conversations between their young daughter and another person.

They stepped in and assumed her internet identity as they realised the correspondent's depraved intentions.

Gibbs suggested meeting the 'young girl' and turned up on two occasions for the arranged rendezvous.

On the first occasion the girl's mother and other relatives watched him, noting his appearance, but did not contact him.

After the second time the predator was arrested.

Gibbs was jailed at Oxford Crown Court after admitting two counts of meeting a child following sexual grooming.

Prosecutor Jennifer Edwards explained how the family took matters into their own hands.

She said the victim was using a laptop in the living room when her mother's suspicions were suddenly aroused.

'She saw over the little girl's shoulder and immediately appreciated she was communicating with Mr Gibbs,' she said.

She said Gibbs was commenting on the girl's profile picture and said he wanted to kiss her, writing: 'I really like you' and 'I want to meet you.'

Mrs Edwards said the mother then took over the laptop and continued to chat to Gibbs posing as her daughter.

The family alerted the police immediately but carried on communicating with him.

'The contact continued for the following week. Each time her daughter went onto the computer Mr Gibbs was there ready, willing to respond,' said Mrs Edwards.

When Gibbs from Witney, Oxfordshire, suggested meeting, the girl's mother continued the pretence and arranged to see him in Witney town centre at noon on April 18.

Family members saw him in the area but did not confront him.

The next time he was on Facebook they agreed to another meeting at 7pm in Carterton, Oxfordshire, on April 30, and Gibbs was arrested.

Mark Dixon, defending, said there was no discussion of sex itself in the communication.

However, he conceded: 'It has caused the family hell and he (Gibbs) accepts responsibility and guilt for that.'

Gibbs was jailed for 16 months and ordered to sign onto the sex offenders' register for at least five years.

Outside court, the girl's mother said: 'We knew once we'd got involved she was 100 per cent safe and she's a very bright girl but you obviously think about all the others that could have been targeted.

'When it first happened she didn't want to go out but now she knows it's all over and he won't be able to do this to any other families.'

She added: 'It does make me more wary of Facebook and parents should be aware of what their children are doing on the internet.'

Detective Constable Jon Capps said: 'I would like to pay tribute to the family who have prevented any further offences being committed, as well as the young girl who was brave enough to tell her parents.'


source: dailymail

Facebook 'sex chats' blamed for one in five divorces

By Emily Andrews

Virtual discovery: Amy Taylor, who is divorcing her husband after he cheated on her online

For most couples, social networking websites such as Facebook are a harmless way to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances.

But many are finding out the hard way about the online temptations on offer, as the sites are blamed for an increasing number of divorces.

According to one firm of lawyers, almost one in five of the divorce petitions it deals with cite Facebook as a factor.

Mark Keenan, managing director of Divorce-Online said: 'I heard from my staff there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was.

'I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook. The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.'

Critics claim the internet tempts the weak to cheat on their partners, while suspicious spouses turn to the web to find evidence of unreasonable behaviour, from flirting to full-blown affairs.

Companies are also cashing in with software which allows customers to spy electronically on their partners.

Karen Moores, at Sydney Mitchell Solicitors, said: 'Over the last five years there has been a definite rise in the number of internetrelated divorces, and increasingly so over the last two years.

'It started off with Friends Reunited where people were hooking up with exes from their school days, arranging to meet up and then starting affairs.

'Now it's Facebook, with people discovering their partners emailing or pictured with other people, or on websites that they really shouldn't.

'And we've often found it's not necessarily the wife or husband who has discovered their errant partner's wrongdoing.

'It's the friend of a friend who you added 12 months ago and forgot about, who then says "you'll never guess what I found your husband doing with my friend".

'The internet is very dangerous and people are deeply complacent about their privacy. If I was up to anything, I would never do it anywhere near the internet.'

Around 14million Britons are believed to use social networking sites regularly.

Last year a 28-year-old woman, from Newquay in Cornwall, ended her marriage after discovering her husband had been having a virtual affair in cyberspace with someone he had never met.

Amy Taylor split from David Pollard after discovering he was sleeping with an escort in the game Second Life, a virtual world where players reinvent themselves.

The divorce rate has fallen in recent years, but two in five marriages are still failing, according to statistics.

The online temptations
Emma Brady only discovered her husband wanted a divorce after he posted a message on Facebook reading: 'Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady.'
Mrs Brady claims she had no idea he even wanted a divorce and only found out when a friend, who read the post on the social networking website, rang to console her.
To make matters worse, she also discovered someone else had commented her husband was 'better off out of it'.
'The first I knew about it was when I received a phone call at work from my best friend, who lives in Denmark,' said the 35-year-old conference organiser.
'She asked me if I was okay. I was shell-shocked. I have had people who I haven't spoken to for years contacting me asking what is going
'I only joined Facebook because the girls at work said it was good fun.'
Mrs Brady, from Accrington, went on: 'I asked Neil if he had anything to tell me and he simply said no.
'He acted like everything was fine so we carried on as normal.'
The couple's six-year marriage limped on for another five months and finally disintegrated after a row just before Christmas last year.
Mr Brady later pleaded guilty in court to assaulting his wife by throwing her out of the house.
He was fined £580 and ordered to pay £100 compensation.
The 39-year-old IT consultant, who is now living with his mother, claims he talked to his wife about separation and insisted: 'I'd had enough of her.'



source: dailymail

Facebook's Secret Code

By Dan Fletcher


Probably not a big shocker that the minds behind Facebook are a little dweeby. Proof positive? They've incorporated an old video-game code into the site.

The Konami code, named after the Japanese company behind classics like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and the Nintendo Contra classics, is one of video-gaming's most storied cheats. During development of the 1985 Konami arcade game Gradius, a programmer found the game to be too difficult and programmed in a key sequence — up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A — that, if entered, gave the player a set of the game's power-ups. As word of the shortcut spread, other programmers aped his cheat, working the same sequence into their own games. The Konami code works in nearly 100 video games developed since — everything from Frogger to Dance Dance Revolution.

And now it works for Facebook, too. Try it for yourself — log in to Facebook and type the code: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter. It doesn't matter where you type it: just have the Facebook page open and active. The result? Lens flares — those groovy circles that appear when pointing a camera into the sun — appear on your page with every click of the mouse. Useful? Not in the slightest. But they're easy enough to get rid of — logout and they're gone.

Facebook isn't the only site that makes use of the Konami code. There's even a dedicated website — Konami Code Sites — chronicling what the code does on sites around the Web. (Naturally, you have to type the code to access the site.) Some other big names make the list: on the social news site Digg it expands all the comments in a given thread, and on MLB.tv, it lets you watch highlights in slow motion. The folks behind konamicodesites.com encourage you to try other sites too, in case some developer with an acute sense of video-gaming history has inserted a surprise.



source: Time.com

Facebook to lose geography networks, add privacy features

By Doug Gross, CNN

Facebook users will lose geographic networks but gain the ability to decide with every post which friends get to see it

(CNN) -- Facebook users will soon lose the ability to join a network of friends who live in the same area but will gain the widely desired ability to control who sees every piece of information they post.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in an open letter to users that appeared on the site Wednesday morning, said the social networking site has outgrown the usefulness of regional networks.

"[A]s Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy," he said in the letter.

Almost half of all Facebook users are members of at least one regional network, according to Zuckerberg. Users can specify that some of their posts on the site only go to specific networks.

Other networks like high schools, colleges and places of employment will not be affected by the change.

In place of the geography networks,Facebook will be creating what it calls a simpler network for privacy controls.

The highlight will be the option of deciding which Facebook friends see updates, photos or other posts at the time they're posted -- "something many of you have asked for," Zuckerberg said.

"In addition, we'll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy-settings page simpler by combining some settings," he said.

The letter said that, in the next couple of weeks, Facebook's roughly 350 million users will be asked to review and update their privacy settings. A message on the site will explain the changes and take users to the page where they can update the settings, Zuckerberg said.

In the several hours after Zuckerberg's letter was posted, more than 18,000 users had posted replies to it. Most of the feedback appeared positive.

"Great idea!!" one user wrote. "Privacy is seriously important on Facebook, I got about 800 friends that come from different groups of people and places. Thanks."

Others took the opportunity to write about a persistent pet issue for some users -- the desire for a "dislike" button to criticize other people's posts. Facebook has made no statements about whether that potentially drama-inducing feature will ever be added.


source: cnn.com

Top 10 People Caught on Facebook

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Facebook isn't as private as you might think. Everyone from underage drinkers to White House gate-crashers has been undone by the proof of their misdeeds on the social-networking site

The White House Gate-crashers

In an apparent bid to burnish their Q rating and boost their chances of being selected for the cast of a Washington-based reality show, Washington socialites Tareq and Michaele Salahi slipped into a Nov. 24 White House state dinner given in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The couple snapped pictures of themselves posing with the rest of the VIP guests, including Vice President Joe Biden and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and posted them on Michaele's Facebook profile. The Washington Post broke the story the following day. The Secret Service apologized for the glaring security lapse, although a spokesman downplayed the risk the couple posed to President Obama and other event attendees. The gambit did reek of a Balloon Boy-esque grab for fame rather than anything more nefarious. It's as yet unknown what if any charges the Salahis face. Read more:


source: Time.com

Facebook acts on follower trade

Facebook has an estimated 250million users worldwide

Facebook has threatened legal action against a service that sells friends on the social networking site.

It said it would take the action against marketing firm USocial unless it stopped violating Facebook's rights.

It also wanted USocial to stop helping members break the site's terms and conditions, specifically letting people profit from their profile.

In response, USocial agreed to a change in its practices but would not shut down its service.

Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to USocial claiming that the way the marketing firm operates violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.

Customers of USocial use it to boost follower and friend numbers on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

On micro-blogging site Twitter, followers can be bought in blocks starting at £53 for 1,000. The biggest block USocial is selling is 100,000 people.

USocial defended itself against Facebook's claims, saying that it did not spam users or use web tools to gather information about profiles.

However, in response to the legal letters, USocial said it would delete the login information it had collected and broadly stop offering to sell Facebook friends. It also put a notice on its site saying it was not affiliated with Facebook.

However, it said, there was "possibility" that it would resell the service in the future. If it was to re-start the service it said it would let Facebook know beforehand.


source: news.bbc.co.uk

Gamers can now access Facebook through their Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

UPDATE 2:13 p.m. ET: Facebook also will be accessible through the PlayStation 3 after the console's next firmware update. According to a posting on the PlayStation blog, PS3 users will have the option of automatically updating Facebook news feeds with trophy and PlayStation store activity. There is no announced date for the firmware release.

In an effort to blur the line between gaming and social networks, owners of Xbox 360s will have the chance to bash zombies and then post Facebook updates about it without leaving their consoles.

Microsoft announced that several social media and audio/video services can be accessed through the Xbox 360, starting today. The new features will be part of an automatic update, so when users turn on their consoles and the update kicks in, all the features will be ready for use. Most of the services are limited to Gold members, but a few are available to Silver members.

Facebook and Twitter have signed up to allow connectivity through Xbox LIVE directly from the console. All current features of the social networks will be available, and gamers will be able to share their favorite gaming moments (in supported games) with their friends.

In addition to watching movies from Netflix, as part of a previous deal, Xbox users also will be able to stream high-definition video through the Zune media player - coincidentally, also made by Microsoft. The Zune Marketplace, which includes the Zune Video player, is available to Silver members.

Also, as of today Last.fm joins with the new Xbox LIVE music channel, allowing for access to streaming music directly from the Xbox 360. The updated music channel lets users listen to personal recommendations from Last.fm’s dedicated menu on the console’s dashboard.

All Xbox users will be able to check out the new features during a “Free Gold Weekend” Friday, November 20 through Monday, November 23. Silver members will be able to try out everything that comes with Gold membership, including Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm.


source: cnn.com

Vietnamese Net Users Fear Facebook Blackout

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam's growing legions of Facebook users fear that the country's communist government might be blocking the popular social networking Web site, which has become difficult to access over the past few weeks.

Facebook has more than 1 million users in Vietnam, and the number has been growing quickly since the company recently added a Vietnamese language version of the site.

Over the last week, access to Facebook has been intermittent in the country, whose government tightly controls the flow of information. The severity of the problem appears to depend on which Internet service provider a customer uses.

Access to other popular Web sites appears to be uninterrupted in Vietnam, a nation of 86 million with 22 million Internet users.

Government officials and managers at several of Vietnam's state-controlled Internet service providers did not respond to a request for comment.

But technicians at two of Vietnam's largest Internet service providers said they had been swamped with calls from customers complaining they could not access Facebook during the last week.

A technician at Vietnam Data Corp. said government officials had ordered his firm to block access to Facebook and that VDC instituted a block on the site Nov. 11. He declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

However, Vu Hoang Lien, the firm's top executive, said he was unaware of any such order.

"I don't know anything about that," he said.

Word of the access problems has not yet filtered back to Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, California, said Debbie Frost, a company spokeswoman.

"We would be very disappointed if users in any country were to have difficulties accessing Facebook," she said.

Most Facebook users in Vietnam utilize the site to communicate with friends and family, and to expand their social network, sharing photos, Internet links and blogs.

Earlier this year, Vietnam's government tightened restrictions on blogging, banning political discussion and restricting postings to personal matters. Police have arrested several bloggers for writing about politically sensitive subjects.

It appears that Vietnam might be following in the footsteps of China, its massive northern neighbor, with whom it shares a similar economic and political system. China has blocked Facebook since July and has also shut down Twitter and YouTube.

One Western diplomat said he was aware of the Facebook access problems but did not know what had caused them.

The diplomat, who declined to be identified, citing embassy protocol, said Vietnam's government might be concerned about Facebook blogs and that the site facilitates communication between Vietnamese citizens and overseas Vietnamese who fled after the war, whom the government often views with suspicion.

An unauthenticated document circulating on the Internet — which says it was issued by Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security — has fueled fears of a shutdown. The document, dated Aug. 27, instructs Internet service providers to block Facebook and a handful of other lesser-known Web sites.

The document does not appear to bear the official security ministry seal, however, and was issued weeks before Facebook users began reporting problems.

Vietnamese Facebook users have been chatting about their access problems online, and some who have managed to get onto the site have voiced their frustrations.

"Why do you block Facebook, Vietnam? Why? What's next?" wrote a despondent Vietnamese Facebook user who managed to get onto the site.

Users also vented their frustrations in a Yahoo chat room.

"I spent all afternoon trying to log on to Facebook but couldn't get in," one user wrote. "What's going on?"

Some tech-savvy Facebook fans have found ways around access problems by readjusting their Web browsers to a different configuration. They have been sharing instructions for doing so online.

The Facebook problems have also frustrated tourists and expatriates living in Vietnam.

An expatriate living in the capital, Hanoi, who was unable to access the site said it was a huge inconvenience as it meant he could not use Facebook to keep in touch with his extended family back home.

He declined to give his name for fear of government reprisal.


source: foxnews.com

5 tips for fixing your Facebook page

By Doug Gross, CNN

(CNN) -- With more than 300 million active users, Facebook has come a long way from its roots as a way for Harvard students to keep in touch.

Teens, grandmas, musicians and politicians have all joined those early college students, making the social-networking hub one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet.

But for some users, the site's popularity -- and the periodic tinkering with "the old Facebook" -- means growing pains, too.

More friends means more people to spam up your news feed with links, photos and update boxes from the applications they use. Sure, you're happy to be in touch with Aunt Ethel -- but do you really need to know who she just murdered in Mafia Wars or which member of the House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials she is? (Yes, that's a real quiz.)

And then there are the changes. Last month's switch to two distinct feeds -- a "live feed" offering constant updates and a "news feed" featuring what Facebook considers highlights from your friends' activities -- still has some users baffled.

"Like you, we know it can be disruptive when things are moved around, but we hope that these changes make Facebook a more valuable experience for you," wrote Raylene Yung, a blogger for the site. "We put a lot of thought into all the changes we make to the site and do a lot of testing before releasing anything."

Many users are warming to the changes. But in the days that followed the switch, others were confused, or worse.

"I personally think facebook shouldnt [sic] have changed our news feed," one user wrote in reply to the blog post. "Why do we only get to see what fb 'thinks' we'll enjoy. Half the stuff on my live feed and news feed is stuff I dont care for. I really dont care who is friends with who and who is a fan of what."

And this from another: "I hate the new home page. The live feed has too much content, and the news feed has too little content."

Those switches also mean that more details about your activities are being broadcast to your network. Just became friends with someone? Joined a group? Commented on a discussion board? Your friends get alerts about all that.

Some friends also may have slipped off your e-radar. If you have more than 250 friends, Facebook decides which of them you really want in your feed and which you don't.

A spokeswoman told CNN the site chooses the 250 based on several factors, including who the user interacts with the most. "This 250 default limit is an attempt to show users engaging content without overwhelming them with updates from people they don't interact with on a daily basis," she said.

But the good news is that Facebook makes it possible to change just about all of those settings, and to do some basic retooling to increase privacy and get rid of annoyances.

In the attached tutorial, we outline a few fixes that will help you customize your Facebook page and improve your social-networking experience.






source: Cnn.com

Texas Woman Sues Facebook for Privacy Violations

Worried about your privacy online? So is a woman from Texas, who's suing Facebook and Blockbuster for posting too much information about her on the Web.

Cathryn Harris found out after the fact that Facebook added a note every time she rented a movie from Blockbuster — a note that contained her full name and the name of the movie she was renting.

"I wasn't renting any movies that I'm ashamed of, but what if I had been? It's nobody's business," Harris told MyFoxDFW. "They need to follow the laws and respect their customers' privacy and not try to go behind the curtain."

The 25-year-old homemaker from Dallas County, Texas, said she made the discovery last year when she rented the 1985 adventure film "The Jewel of the Nile," starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. She said an alert appeared on her Facebook profile detailing the transaction.

As a result, Harris filed two lawsuits — one against Blockbuster last year and one against Facebook last month. The suits claim a partnership between the two companies allowed Blockbuster to send Harris' movie-renting habits to Facebook without fair opportunity to opt out.

At the heart of the suit is Facebook's controversial Beacon system, essentially a tracking flag that follows you across a network of sites and reports back to Facebook on your activity. For consumers, it's a way to share more information about your daily activity; for advertisers, it's a way to learn a great deal more about an individual.

Following public outcry over the system in late 2007, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized for the Beacon system, noting that "the problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends."

Facebook's policy has been changed, but Harris' lawsuit alleges that whether a consumer opts in or out, Beacon is a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act. That piece of law prevents a company from disclosing information about a customer's rental habits without their knowledge; the suit alleges that Beacon still transfers information, it just doesn't display it.

Harris initially sued Blockbuster, arguing that the company is responsible for her privacy. But Blockbuster disagrees. A spokesman for the company said "…any information we send our customers is done in accordance with all privacy laws … a customer with a Facebook account is in control of whether they elect to keep their Facebook information private or disclose it to others."

In the meantime, the online social networking giant is settling a similar California lawsuit and has agreed to discontinue the Beacon advertising program. In response to the case, Facebook said it learned "how critical it is to provide extensive user control over how information is shared."

The outcome of the California case could determine whether Harris can move forward with a class-action lawsuit.

source: foxnews.com

Facebook, Twitter crooks just a click away

By Stephanie Chen, CNN

(CNN) -- (CNN) -- If you're on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim.

Experts say cybercrooks are lurking just a mouse click away on popular social networking sites.

That's because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending you a message with an innocent link or video. Maybe your friend is in distress abroad and needs some help.

All you have to do is click.

When the message or link is opened, social network users are lured to fake Web sites that trick them into divulging personal details and passwords. The process, known as a phishing attack or malware, can infiltrate users' accounts without their consent.

Once the account is compromised, the thieves can infiltrate the list of friends or contacts and repeat the attack on subsequent victims. Social networking sites show there is ample opportunity to find more victims; the average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site.

"Security is a constant arms race," said Simon Axten, an associate for privacy and public policy at Facebook. "Malicious actors are constantly attacking the site, and what you see is actually a very small percentage of what's attempted."

Social Media Crimes

As some social networking sites experience monstrous growth, they are becoming a new -- and extremely lucrative -- frontier for cybercrime. Facebook says it has 300 million users, nearly the size of the U.S. population, and it continues to attract users outside the college student niche. From February 2008 to February 2009, Twitter, a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages known as tweets, grew 1,382 percent to more than 7 million users.

"They [cybercriminals] are very adept to using social engineering," said Donald DeBold, director of threat research for CA, an Internet security company. "Your friend is in trouble traveling in another country, 'I lost my wallet. I need help.' They exploit the curiosity aspect out of human nature."

A few decades ago, malicious software and viruses were usually the result of a prank, but Internet security experts say today's attacks are profit-driven. A study from the Indiana University in 2005 discovered that phishing attacks on social networks operated with a 70 percent success rate. These users had fallen for the scam, opened the foreign link and released personal information.

Cybercriminals are employing phishing and malware attacks for a number of reasons, including trying to redirect users to sites where profit is fueled by the number of visitors. They also try to elicit private information like passwords and bank account numbers to perform scams.

Early this year,Twitter experienced several phishing attacks in which a Web page that looked identical to the widely recognized light blue Twitter page was a hoax. The company warned users to double-check the URL to ensure they were visiting the correct site.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 72,000 complaints about Internet fraud in 2008 that were referred to law enforcement agencies for further investigation. These cases involved financial losses amounting to $264.6 million, an increase from 2007. Each person lost an average of $931.

"Most of us would want to help a friend in need, but if it's an online friend, and they want you to wire money, you should double-check," FBI spokesman Jason Pack said.

Security experts said it makes sense that cybercriminals are turning to social networking sites. Personal information is abundant on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Each time users give out valuable information like birth dates or addresses, they could be providing hints about their password, security experts say.

The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concern about the information visible through Facebook quizzes and applications.

"They'll have access to all that information, so they can sell it, they can share it, they can do an awful lot with it," Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy-related issues with the ACLU, told CNN.com in September.

Many Internet security experts consider the first virus attack on the PC to have occurred in 1986. By the early 1990s, viruses transmitted on floppy disks became ubiquitous. When the World Wide Web became widely available that same decade, viruses, worms and malware became problems in e-mail accounts, frustrating users who clicked on messages thought to be legitimate.

In the new millennium, the most common form of malware attack has become known as drive-by downloads. While surfing on Google or Yahoo, spyware or a computer virus is automatically and invisibly downloaded on a computer, requiring no user interaction for the computer to be infected.

"We are on the verge from shifting from the Web being the No. 1 victim of infecting to social network," said Mikko H. Hypponen, chief of research technology at F-Secure Corp. His company sells anti-virus software and malware protection programs. "It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better."

Social networks are fighting the aggressive attacks from cybercriminals. Most sites have information pages dedicated to educating users about the risks of Internet scams. Users can become a fan of "Facebook Security" and receive updates on how to protect their accounts. One of the most common pieces of advice given by security experts is to change passwords frequently.

Facebook has also developed complex automated systems that detect compromised accounts. They spot and freeze accounts that are sending an unusually high number of messages to their friends. Company security officials said Facebook is a closed system, which can be helpful in erasing phony messages from all accounts.

At News Corporation's MySpace.com, the company creates blacklists of phony accounts to prevent people from clicking on a faulty link. Hemanshu Nigam, first chief security officer for MySpace, said the firm warns about suspicious links and educates users about the harm phishing and malware attacks can bring. "We are prepared for them," he said.


source: CNN.com

Defriending can bruise your 'digital ego'

By Breeanna Hare, CNN

(CNN) -- If you harbor a bit of angst over Facebook friend requests gone unanswered, a surprise "defriending" or being deserted by your Twitter followers, you're not alone.

Elaine Fogel has amassed more than 500 connections on LinkedIn, a professional networking Web site, by extending invites to those who appear to fit her wide array of career interests.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, people just say yes," she said.

But then came "this one woman" who Fogel encountered on one of the 40-plus discussion groups she belongs to on LinkedIn. The woman offered interesting opinions, so Fogel sent her an invitation to join her network.

"She sent an e-mail saying, 'I only connect with people I know, and hopefully our paths will cross one day,' " said Fogel, of Phoenix, Arizona, her voice still carrying notes of disbelief. "I read that, and I said, 'Oh, my God, I've been rejected.' "

Fogel echoes other users who have felt the twinge of hurt and surprise from social media rejection. Some may think hers is an overreaction -- it happened online, with a woman she didn't know -- but recent research shows that our "digital egos" can bruise as easily as we do in person. In fact, rejection online may have the potential to sting even more.

"People tend to think that these relationships are trivial and not very deep, but this is what we're moving towards, having a lot of our communications play out over the Internet," Purdue University social psychologist Kip Williams said. "That's the way it's becoming; this is how we interpret our worth. People care how many [online] friends they have."

Or, increasingly, how many Twitter followers they have. This year, a third-party service launched Qwitter, which allows Twitter users to determine who's stopped following them and which tweet may have turned them off.

Experts say rejection on social networks can hurt worse than an in-person snub because people are usually more polite face-to-face than they are online.

"I think the thing that is often clearly worse online is when it's relatively anonymous, and people use that as a cover and are more cruel than they would be otherwise," said Jean Twenge, a San Diego State psychologist who has studied the way social networking affects personality development.

Online rejection also doesn't lessen the physical reaction we have to emotional pain.

"Pain is divided into two components," said Baldwin Way, a UCLA researcher who studies the way human brains respond to social rejection.

"If you put a red-hot poker on your arm, one part of your brain says, 'This pain is on your arm,' and the other part says, 'Ow, that hurts' and is less concerned with where it is and more concerned about the emotional meaning of it," he said. "That [second] part also seems to be activated when someone's left out or excluded and rejected."

To Way's surprise, that neurological reaction holds true even when the rejection comes in a digital form, lacking the real-world body language, vocal intonations and other aspects that can influence the way rejection is perceived and felt.

"If you'd asked me a few years ago if you'd get the same effect online as you would in person, I'd say no way," Way said. "I thought doing something in person would have stronger effects than doing something online, but interesting data has come out in the last few years that show mental representations are just as powerful as the real thing."

These data include Williams' "cyberball" studies, which ask a participant to play a virtual ball-tossing game with two other icons. In one study group, the participant plays the game for the entire six minutes, but in the second group, he or she is included for only a fraction of that time and then ignored. The second group reports feelings of anger and lower levels of self-esteem.

Whether participants believe they're playing with humans doesn't appear to affect their feelings of rejection.

"Even when people get rejected by the computer, they feel bad," Twenge said.

Kenneth Loflin, a student who participated in Williams' study, got so frustrated by his fellow players that he gave the computer screen an offensive gesture.

"I'm a people person, and I like people to like me," he said.

The study also affected the way Loflin interacts online. Out of the 1,200 friends he has on Facebook, 400 of them he doesn't really know, many of them being friends of friends.

"I thought about defriending them, but I didn't want them to feel how I felt" during the "cyberball" game, Loflin said.

By contrast, Bruce Hammond doesn't have a problem giving the rejection slip to Facebook hangers-on.

"For the most part, the people that I'm defriending are the people that I don't have a relationship with: the people I haven't talked to in 15 years," said Hammond, 30, of Chicago, Illinois. "I don't let someone know if I'm going to defriend them. I just do it."

Similarly, Hammond doesn't expect any of his Facebook contacts to let him know before giving him the ax. If someone rejected him in real life, he would ask why the person felt that way, but when the relationship is online, his thinking changes.

"If I come on [Facebook] tomorrow and see I have 425 friends instead of 426, I'm not going to go through my list and see who did it and be upset with them," he said.

Cecilia Sepp, a Washington, D.C.-area consultant, said she avoids the issue entirely by limiting her online network to about 100 friends.

"I don't have a problem with defriending because I don't accumulate [enough] to have a high number," Sepp said.

"When I first heard that defriending was beginning on social networks, it was through a blog post by someone who was shocked that this person had defriended them because they didn't understand why," she said. "The person wanted to know had they done something, had they said something, should they ask, 'What did [I] do?' "

Sepp believes that online "defrienders" should extend the courtesy that Fogel's LinkedIn rejecter gave her: an e-mail explanation.

"You have no facial expression online; you have no tone of voice online; it's very easy to misinterpret phrasing in an e-mail. You have to be very careful about your wording and be more explicit with people when you're making or removing connections," Sepp said. "That's why it's so important to connect with people that you actually know."


source: CNN.com

MySpace Talks Content-Sharing with Facebook

The social network wars may be over as traditional rivals Facebook and MySpace reveal they're in talks about sharing content.

Facebook says it'd be happy to feature content from MySpace now that the two are moving in different directions, according to the UK's Telegraph.

"Facebook is focussing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focussing on more a content-led strategy," Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg told the newspaper.

"We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users."

MySpace boss Owen Van Natta — who left Facebook in April to lead News Corp's social network — confirmed the talks.

“Facebook is about core communications with your friendship network, whereas MySpace is about congregating around popular content with people who share your interests," he said, adding that partnerships would be a large part of MySpace's future.

Ms Sandberg said Facebook could use its Connect feature for users to share MySpace content, although "nothing has been formally arranged yet."

Connect allows Facebook users to discuss and share content as they are viewing it on a partner website.

MySpace recently launched a new music service in Australia — the second country to get it after the US — adding a raft of music tracks from major labels and independent aggregators. The audio tracks — which stream in full and can be playlisted on profiles — are linked to Apple's iTunes for purchase.

A spokesperson for MySpace Australia said they couldn't comment on the Facebook talks "at this stage."


source: foxnews.com

What Happens to Your Facebook After You Die?

By Dan Fletcher

In an Oct. 26 blog post, Max Kelly, Facebook's head of security, announced Facebook's policy of "memorializing" profiles of users who have died, taking them out of the public search results, sealing them from any future log-in attempts and leaving the wall open for family and friends to pay their respects. Though most media reports claimed this was a new Facebook feature, a spokeswoman for the company told TIME that it's an option the site has had since its early days.

The company decided to publicize the policy because of a backlash caused by a new version of the site's homepage rolled out Oct. 23, which includes automatically generated "suggestions" of people to "reconnect" with. Within days of the launch, Twitter users and blog posts from across the Web complained that some of these Facebook suggestions were for friends who had died. "Would that I could ...," complained a user on Twitter before ending her tweet with the hash tag #MassiveFacebookFail.

"We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized," Kelly said in the post. To discourage pranksters, Facebook does require proof before sending a profile down the digital river Styx. Family or friends must fill out a Facebook form, including a link to an obituary or other information confirming a user's death, before the profile is officially memorialized. Once that is completed, the user will cease showing up in Facebook's suggestions and certain information like status updates won't show up in Facebook's news feed, the stream of real-time user updates that is the site's centerpiece. If relatives prefer not to have the profile stand as an online memorial, Facebook says it will remove the account altogether.

Better publicizing memorialized profiles is an attempt by Facebook to answer lingering privacy concerns. Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart investigated the company in July and issued a report that asked Facebook to explain certain areas of its privacy policy, including policies regarding the profiles of deceased users. In response, the company promised to issue a new privacy policy that better articulates how user information is treated postmortem and offered the commissioner an outline of its memorializing policy, nearly three months before the blog post explained it to users. Spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden says the privacy commissioner was "quite pleased" with Facebook's response to the office's concerns and says the commissioner will review the detailed version of the site's new policy, expected in late October.

Facebook's attempt to clearly state its policy is prudent, as other social-networking sites have struggled with the question of users' deaths. MySpace in particular has had a difficult time with digital rubbernecking — during the site's heyday, a handful of well-trafficked blogs specialized in matching MySpace profiles directly to obituaries and posting the pairings online for all to see. By sealing profiles to family and friends and removing profiles from search results, Facebook assuages users' fears that they'll be fodder for online voyeurs in the event of their untimely demise — and hopefully will put the issue to rest.


source: time.com

Asia: Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia Gained More Than 1M Facebook Users Last Month

Facebook grew from 44 million to 50 million in Asia last month, according to our Global Monitor report, gaining six million new users over August — and mostly in three countries. The Philippines grew by 1.38 million people to 5.78 million monthly active users. Taiwan grew by nearly as many people, seeing a massive surge of 1.37 million to reach 3.32 million. Indonesia, already the largest Facebook country in Asia, grew by 1.19 million to reach 9.71 million monthly actives.
We’ve also seen a surge in Facebook gaming applications that are available in widely-spoken languages in the region, especially Chinese. As in the rest of the world, virtual farming and aquarium-decorating games have quickly become popular. In fact, developers active in the region have told us that many users are playing Facebook because of the games, and many don’t even realize that the games are not hosted and owned by Facebook.

Simulation games like these have been popular in China and other parts of Asia for years, so perhaps the most surprising part is that users are moving on to Facebook to play.



Asia-built aquarium games include Happy Fishbowl, with 12.8 million monthly actives and My Fishbowl, with around 5 million — no wonder Zynga, the largest Facebook game developer, is planning a “FishVille.” Regionally-produced farm games includes “Happy Farm” with more than 3 million monthly actives. Other popular simulation style game apps include Animal Paradise and Sunshine Ranch.

Across other parts of Asia, Facebook saw relatively less growth, although in some countries that appears due to the site saturating the population. The second-largest Facebook country in the region is Australia, with 6.93 million monthly actives: It only grew by 258,000 in September, but that means 32.2% of the country is now on the site. Ahead of the island continent, Hong Kong and Singapore saw similar growth numbers and slightly higher penetration rates.

Facebook, which makes the raw data we analyze publicly available, groups Russia, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent in with the rest of the region. So, looking at the 20 largest countries in all of Asia, we see a number of other show up.

Not every government in this region allows Facebook — China, Iran and North Korea have blocked it, for example, so many countries either don’t show up or show falling numbers. Others, like some in Central Asia, don’t have large internet populations.

And some countries, we expect to see serious growth, at least based on regional and worldwide Facebook growth patterns, as well as anecdotal reports. Most obviously, India grew 222,000 to reach 4.27 million — 0.73% of the country’s 1.14 billion people. Indian users of Zynga’s farming game, FarmVille, for example, staged a successful protest in recent weeks to get the company to create an Indian flag to decorate virtual farms with. Other reports suggest Facebook is sucking up users from Google’s Orkut. Another country we expect to see grow is Malaysia, which gained 309,000 to reach 2.91 million last month. That’s 10.5% of the country’s 27.7 million users.

And one final note on Malaysia — and Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, the current home to Friendster. It seems that Facebook’s somewhat inadvertent gaming strategy could be what’s disrupting Friendster, a company that has only now decided to focus more heavily on games. Perhaps a Hi5-like refocus to gaming could give it a new boost?


source: insidefacebook.com