Monday 27 October 2008

Keeping parents away from your friends list

Randomly came across this opinion by a columnist in the Boston Herald about why parents should stay off Facebook.

Facebook might shock your family, but it can spur a self-esteem death spiral, too. Like if you’re always the connector, never the connectee. Or watching a request go ignored. And then there are the godforsaken status updates. Not only are they written in third person, so everyone sounds a little like Sesame Street’s Elmo: “Lauren is . . . making breakfast,” they border on passive-aggressive bragging: “Amy is . . . volunteering at soup kitchen and working on her screenplay.”

Not to mention everyone looks as though they’re re-creating the Miley Cyrus shoot by Annie Leibowitz.

So true. Coincidentally there was a recent Desperate Housewives episode where Felicity Huffman's character Lynette Scavo pretends to be a teenage girl and befriends her own son on a social networking site. Invariably Lynette's son falls in love with her, in the wrong kind of way. When Lynette sends a break-up email to her son she accidentally signs it "Love, Mom", in a modern-day version of the joke where the kid writes his own sick note and signs it "My mom".

Friday 24 October 2008

When your boss is your Facebook friend... SICKIE WOO!


So. You're sick. Sick of work, that is. And you don't want to come in. So, what do you do? You call your boss and say, "I can't come in this morning. I'm unwell."

In the old days, your boss would sigh and say, "I hope you feel better soon."

But these days, your boss doesn't feel sympathy. They know how to prove you were lying. It doesn't involve hiring a private investigator and having someone follow you to make sure you don't leave the house.

All they have to do is log on to Facebook. Now, this particular story may turn out to be urban legend, as the alleged e-mail exchange is denied by boss and culprit... but the story goes like this:

Kyle Doyle chucked a sickie, as they say in Australia, and on his Facebook status update were the immortal words,

Kyle Doyle is not going to work, fuck it i'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!


When Kyle refused to give his boss a medical certificate, saying it was unnecessary, his boss then pasted the status update into an email as 'proof' of the deception.




True or not, the email illustrates rule number one: your current boss should never be your friend on Facebook. That's what LinkedIn is for. Rule number two you can work out for yourself...

Source: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=651937

Does anyone remember Beacon Ads?

We aren't saying Facebook is bad. We use it. We're all about helping individuals make the most of it while still being aware of the level of personal information they, and their friends, are giving out.

Facebook exploded in mid-2007. It absolutely exploded. The company had to be seen as a commercial entity; one that could make money. Targeted advertising is the key!

In November 2007, there was a massive brouhaha about Facebook privacy –and rightly so. Project Beacon launched, and it broadcast certain user habits (primarily buying items) to other friends via the news feed without asking for permission. This ruined several people's Christmas shopping surprises. The Beacon feature tracked what you were doing on Facebook partner sites while still logged on to Facebook.

Initially, the Beacon feature was touted as being opt-in. That is, you would be asked if you wanted a certain action to be published to the news feed. But when Beacon launched, it was distinctly opt-out. People found their actions being broadcast to practically all and sundry – the equivalent of a camera behind your shoulder, recording your every move!

Around 44 partner sites, including ticket vendor Fandango and Coca-Cola, initially signed up to Beacon. Within days, there was a huge outcry. Without going into all the details, you can read the apology from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The company backtracked and made Beacon opt-in again, and also gave people the option to turn it off altogether.

However, the young company would not have backtracked were it not from the tens of thousands of people who caused a massive outcry –ironcically by joining a protest group on Facebook.

So, how to make sure your actions aren't being dispensed to everyone? For more of the dirt on Beacon, check out the FAQ and the Wikipedia entry ... make sure you have turned Beacon off by going to Privacy > Applications > Settings within Facebook.

Still avoiding Facebook? Our top 5 initiation tips

We all know them. People who refuse to go on Facebook. I've got about four or five who just refuse to use it. I don't blame them, really, it's not like they're missing out on anything by not going on there. Some are concerned about how much information they'll have to give away by joining it, but they are still keen to check out what's going on.

One friend I had joined a group whose aim was to get some poor soul on to Facebook. Not only had they amassed about 20-odd people, but they'd also posted some rather embarrassing photos of the person who would never know their images were plastered all over the site...

If you haven't joined but feel your social life is suffering and only want to dip your toes in the water, then here are our top five tips. One of them does contravene Facebook policy, but in the great scheme of things, it's nothing much!

1. Don't use your real surname. This is our tip, but it violates Facebook's terms of service so prepare for your account to be deleted any time. However, we see plenty of people on there with bizarre names, and Facebook has tens of millions of users. It's not going to check to see whether your name is real or not. It has better things do to. So, just make your name believable and you should be fine. Not using your real name means that your full name needn't be revealed to the site, and besides, your friends will know it anyway.

2. Make your search listing and friends list private. There are several options to avoid people finding you on Facebook, and these are found in your privacy settings. You can do all or just one or two of the following:
  • Make it so your search result listing is not listed by search engines.
  • Make it so your profile picture is not viewable by people not on your friends list.
  • Let only friends of friends, find you on Facebook search, if you want to remain under the radar, or make it so no one can find you
  • Make it so non-friends can't view your friends list.
3. Never list personal information. This means your gender, address, mobile, workplace, interests, marital status and website. You can choose to have your e-mail address visible only to yourself, which is good. But filling in all the other information means it's open for use by third-party application, Facebook, and Facebook advertisers.

4. Don't use your regular e-mail address. If someone looking for you types your regular e-mail address into Facebook, they will automatically initiate a friend request for you if you are registered under that address. By all means, avoid the request if you wish, but you can avoid them in the first place by creating a free account from Hotmail or Gmail.

5. Make a limited profile. You can adjust your profile so that selected acquaintances don't need to see pictures of your big night out.

Has anyone got any other suggestions?

It's not just Facebook... applications know you, too!

This blog, and others, focuses on Facebook settings and how to make them work for you. But there are thousands of third-party Facebook applications out there (games, quizzes, photo sharing, review sites, maps... the list goes on) that make money from you.

They'll do so mainly either via affiliate links or straight ad revenue. What does this mean? Here are some real-life examples.

Affiliate revenue: Say you've installed an application that allows you to list the books you've read. If a visitor clicks on the book title, they'll be taken to an online bookstore where they can buy a copy. If the visitor goes through with the sale, the application developer, who has set up a deal with the bookstore, will get a cut.

Ad revenue: You might see Google ads at the end of a game. Click on an ad and the app maker will get a cut. Many websites, including this one, display similar ads.

Sometimes an application has no ad links and is a brand awareness exercise. The agency will want to convince their clients that the application is helping the brand name get across.

To measure the effectiveness of these campaigns, application developers need to be able to see demographic information about the people who use their tools. They can use analysis tools from companies like Refresh Analytics, who allow developers to get stats about people who add their programs. Refresh Analytics' tool is described thusly:
The tool can be easily integrated into any Facebook app. It tracks users across 13 demographic and six interest categories: geography, gender, age, marital status, music, books, etc. The info is collected in aggregate to protect user privacy and respect Facebook rules. A daily snapshot of 1,000 users is provided, and historical reports can be generated for the past month, six months or two years.

So, although personal information about you is never revealed, if you have included information about where you're from, your age, marital status and interests, all this information can, and does, get pulled out and it's able to be broken down by app makers so they know, say, the average age of the person who plays their games.

That's why I've not listed any interests or even my gender in my profile. I don't need the advertisers to know all this information if I don't have to reveal it.

They're still out there: Facebook Applications

The new-look Facebook does away with having to endure the tedious applications that plagued traditional profile layouts. In the past, you would see, quite literally in some cases, more than a hundred icons and boxes representing various apps that your friend may have added to their profile page. Now, all this crap is hidden behind a tab called Boxes, and under this tab you can choose to display chosen Applications or just access them via the Applications menu.

In 2007, the most popular apps included Scrabulous (the unofficial online version of Scrabble), and the ability to be bitten by a vampire. Flixster, Super Walls and slideshows were also the rage.

Although you may think your Applications are now gone for good, they've just been shoved under a mat and they do pop out from time to time. You will still need to make sure Applications like games don't harangue your friends every minute to try and beat your high score, or post updates to your profile every time you play. To do so:

Click Applications, located at the bar to the bottom of your screen, then Edit, to see a list of all your applications.

Next to the Application settings you want to view, click Edit.

For Geo Challenge, I see these options:


Then there are the e-mail notifications. To adjust these, click Settings at the top of every Facebook page. Click Notifications, and right at the bottom, under Other Applications, you'll be able to select whether or not you want to be alerted on e-mail whenever something happens (whatever something is).

Facebook photo privacy settings

Strangers are just friends you haven't met (but who've met you).

Facebook photos are all the rage. Practically every day, I see someone who's posted a photo of themselves or their friends. And when I go out with my camera, my friends are always scared I'll post a picture of them on Facebook. This does happen, but I'll always honor takedown requests.

What happens when you post a photo on Facebook is that you can choose to have the photo visible by either:

  • Friends (say you have 100 friends, then all 100 friends can see your album)
  • Friends of friends (if your 100 friends have 90 friends each, then 9,000 people could potentially see your album)
  • Everyone on Facebook (if your profile is public to your network, say, then anyone in that network can click through to your profile and your albums)
Click 'Customize' and you will also be able to specify further restrictions including:
  • Some Friends (if you only have a couple of people you want to see your photos)
  • Except these people (if you want everyone except your boss to see your photos)
Example: If you tag your friend Jim in a photograph and you've allowed Friends of Friends to see it, then when Jim's friend Pete gets a notification that Jim's been tagged in a photo, Pete can click through to the photo Jim's been tagged in.

But that's not all! Pete can now browse through your entire album even if Jim isn't in any more photos. In the past week I've seen plenty of albums belonging to people I don't know. Random babies, honeymoons to Uluru in Australia, Singaporean weddings, decadent parties with 19 year old girls posing seductively to the camera... and so on. And I have no idea who these people are.

So when you create your album you need to think of the parameters you're applying to the entire album, not the individual photos. Flickr allows you to edit privacy settings for each photo, but for Facebook you need to do it for each album.