Image via CrunchBase

Do you use your Facebook account to log onto places like LinkedIn and Yelp from your phone?

If so, get ready to start seeing ads in your mobile device’s Facebook News Feed that will be targeted based on your mobile app usage.

Here’s how it will work, according to the Wall Street Journal: if you like to play Zynga Inc.’s “Words with Friends,” your mobile News Feed will soon target you with ads for yet more Zynga games.

If the WSJ’s sources are correct about all this, the new ads will represent a boundary-breaking move for an ad-delivery company, given that none has thusfar tracked consumers on the basis of mobile app usage.

The ads will be enabled by the Facebook Connect feature, which lets users easily log in to third-party sites, applications, mobile devices and gaming systems with their Facebook identities.

Sources familiar with Facebook’s plans told the WSJ that the company is launching a new type of mobile advertising that will target consumers based on what apps they use, “pushing the limits of how companies track what people do on their phones.”

But wait, there’s more.

The unnamed sources told the WSJ that beyond tracking consumers’ use of mobile apps, Facebook is also pondering whether to track what people doon those apps.

That move would be an even bigger game-changer. As it now stands, mobile-ad networks only target consumers based on what ads a person clicks on from his or her mobile browser.

Both Apple and Google track their users’ mobile apps, but neither company tracks what people do in those apps.

One of the WSJ’s sources said that Facebook will charge advertisers every time an app is installed on a user’s smartphone.

That’s a highly profitable prospect, the WSJ noted, for obvious reasons – i.e., a heck of a lot more consumers download apps than click on ads:

Facebook can charge significantly more for an app installation than it can for the traditional cost of every one thousand people who have viewed an ad. 

Privacy advocates would far prefer that Facebook let users log in with Facebook Connect and then have a way to opt out of the new mobile ad targeting.

The WSJ quoted Justin Brookman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s project on consumer privacy, who noted that consumers just aren’t used to having ad companies peering over their shoulders every time they use a mobile app:

"Once you're signed in, are you really expecting that Facebook is going to be watching you while you're on there?" 

Of course, with the post-IPO Facebook now under the gun to monetize features such as Facebook Connect, it’s hard to imagine that the company won’t track what people do in their mobile apps.

What would that look like? The possibilities are limited only by our activities while using mobile apps.

Searching for experts in a given field – say, infosec! – in LinkedIn, for example, would open up whole new worlds of targeted advertising.

One of the WSJ’s sources said the new ads might be announced on July 16, unless privacy concerns convince the company to hold off on mentioning it until Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg conducts the company’s first earnings call with analysts on July 26.

The new ads would then launch on July 30, the source said.

Source:- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Image via Wikipedia

After the launching of “SUBSCRIBE” in Facebook, Some Journalist & Blogger finds a way to communicate with a larger audience of readers by enabling Subscribe option in their Facebook profile.

Facebook also very mush excited with this tremendous features  as Naomi Gleit, Facebook’s director of product, told the Huffington Post. “Our mission is to connect people and help them share. The goal of this new feature really is to give people more control over how they do that,”

So here are Some Must Subscribe Facebook Profiles of Journalists & Bloggers.

To turn on Subscribe, go to https://www.facebook.com/about/subscribe or check this step by step guide to enables Facebook Subscribe https://blogoholic.in/2011/11/15/set-facebook-subscribe/.

• Ann Curry, TODAY Show/NBC News

• Brian Stelter, reporter at The New York Times

• Ayman Mohyeldin, NBC News, Egypt Correspondent

• Elizabeth Spiers, editor of The New York Observer

• Brian Storm, executive producer at MediaStorm

• Craig Kanalley, Huffington Post, senior traffic and trends editor

• Esther Vargas, editor at Peru21

• Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of Mashable, CNN columnist

• Anthony De Rosa, Social Media Editor at Reuters

• Frank Bruni, The New York Times.

• Liz Gannes, AllThingsD reporter

• Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist

• Robert Scoble, Scobleizer

• Nick Bilton, The New York Times reporter and lead technology writer

• Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media

• Jenna Wortham, New York Times reporter

• Franz Strasser, video journalist at BBC News

• Om Malik, founder of GigaOmniMedia

• Jessica Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal repoter

• Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times South Asia Correspondent

• Mathew Ingram, GigaOm writer

• MG Siegler, writer at TechCrunch

• Ben Parr, Editor at Large at Mashable

• Bilal Randere, Online Producer at Al Jazeera

• Laurie Segall, CNN Money producer

• Daniela Capistrano, Online Producer at “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”

• Mark Milian, reporter at CNN.com

• Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch

• Brian Ries, The Daily Beast social media editor

• Jenn Van Grove, senior reporter at Mashable

• Liz Heron, The New York Times, social media editor

• Jason DeRusha, WCCO reporter/anchor

• Walt Mossberg, AllThingsd columnist

• Amanda Zamora, Washington Post, social media & engagement editor

• Gregory Korte, reporter at USA Today

• Jen Lee Reeves, Interactive Director at KOMU

• Martin Beck, Los Angeles Times engagement editor

• P. Kim Bui, KPCC Social Media Editor

• Alexander B. Howard, Gov. 2.0 Washington Correspondent at O’Reilly Media

• Doug Crets, tech blogger at RWW

• Jeff Sonderman, Poynter writer

• Patrick Witty, international picture editor at TIME

• Tyson Evans, assistant editor of interactive news at The New York Times

• Mark W. Smith, web editor and columnist at Detroit Free Press

• Irina Slutsky, reporter at Age Age

• Dan Ackerman, senior editor at CNET

• Paul Takahashi, multimedia journalist at the Las Vegas Sun

• Rosa Golijan, contributing writer at MSNBC

• Jim MacMillan, journalist in residence for War News Radio at Swarthmore College

• Dan Petty, social media editor at The Denver Post

Related articles

• Facebook Adds Subscribe Button to Comments Box Plugin to Increase Civility, Subscribers (insidefacebook.com)
• 7 Top Journalists to Subscribe to on Facebook (mashable.com)

Image by dannysullivan via Flickr

Article From HuffingtonPost Written By Mandy Jenkins 

When Facebook launched its Subscribe feature in mid-September, quite a few journalists sighed in relief. This, we thought, is what we needed: A way to communicate with a larger audience of readers while maintaining a somewhat private personal life behind a friend wall. I’m sure it’s a great option to other professionals, celebrities and wannabe celebrities as well.

I enabled subscriptions the day they launched, mostly to test it out. After all, who would be interested in reading the occasionally inane updates of a non-famous non-reporter? More than 9,000 subscribers later, I found out.

In the six weeks since, I’ve found some things I like and dislike about the feature. This ongoing experiment has helped me to formulate a few tips that may help anyone who wants to use this feature.

Getting It Set Up

• Customize your profile information.

Your profile will be open to the public when you turn on Subscribe, so this is the place to lure people in (and possibly turn others away). Click on “Edit Profile” on the top right of your profile page. Use the ‘about me’ space to describe who you and and what you do.

This is also a good space to lay out what subscribers can expect from you. Do you frequently share links or start discussions on sports or politics? Say so. Will you talk about your personal life? What is your policy on friending?

I also use this area to put down a couple of ground rules, particularly “Don’t be a creep.”

• Adjust the privacy settings on all aspects of your profile.

If you adjust nothing here, it could very well be visible to the entire Internet. You can adjust whether areas such as your location, connections, contact info and interests should be publicly visible or shown only to friends (or certain groups of friends).

Keep in mind, while you might consider your life to be an open book, your friends and family may not be as comfortable. Think about their privacy when adjusting the ‘Friends and Family’ settings and remember whoever finds you will be able to find them.

• Decide what to do about those past posts.

In your privacy settings, there is an option to limit the visibility of past posts. If you have any doubt about the updates, photos and other stuff you’ve shared on Facebook in the past (including those crazy college photos), you might want to check this so new subscribers can’t dig back through your possibly sordid history.

You may also want to look at your photos page and set individually which past albums and images can be seen by the public.

• Set how people can find and contact you.

If you want to be easily found on Facebook (and why would you turn on Subscribe if you didn’t?), you need to be sure you’ll come up in searches. In your privacy settings, select ‘How You Connect’. Here is where you can set how strangers will find and contact you. If you’re actively looking to reduce friend requests, you should limit those who can send them to at least ‘Friends of Friends’.

• Turn on Subscribe.

Do this with the button on the top right of your profile page. This is also where you want to decide if those who subscribe to you can post comments on your posts. Your comment numbers will go up – and they will require work (see below), but consider this: Why would you read something you can’t comment on? Weigh this option carefully.

• Take a look at how the public sees your page.

At the top right of your page, click “View As”. Click “public” to see what subscribers will see or check how certain friends see your page by entering their name.

Follow Mandy Jenkins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjenkins

Related articles

• Facebook Privacy: 6 Key Moments (informationweek.com)
• The secret to using Facebook at work (guardian.co.uk)

Image via Wikipedia

 

The revamped Gmail for desktop is slowly rolling out to users, and like its Google Reader and Gmail app for iOS cousins,

it has a few problems.

Aside from aesthetic complaints about the fields of empty white space, the new Gmail has some functional problems, too: Some things are distracting; some are annoying; and some just don’t make sense.

Below are complaints about the new Gmail. 

• Icons Without Labels - In the old Gmail, there were five basic options above each email message: “Archive,” “Spam,” “Delete,” “Move To” or “Label.” Messages in the new Gmail have the same options, except they’ve been replaced by icons. Unless you have memorized the order and function of the buttons above Gmail messages, you have to mouse over each icon to find out what each one of them does. Each time I see those buttons, I think: “There’s no words on it!”

• Advertisement Between Message And Mystery Buttons- In between the “No Words On It” buttons and your email message, you can now expect to see an advertisement every time you open a piece of mail. Google has squeezed in a little ad bar between message and function buttons for maximum commercial exposure, and while this may help their bottom line, the pesky little thing is always distracting and seemingly out-of-place.This advertising bar also lives above your inbox. It’s a worthless gray cloud raining down skin cream discounts on your each and every message. Annoying.

• New Reply Field, Cursor-Less - The reply field on Gmail messages used to be super intuitive, with a text cursor appearing where you could click to enter text. Now, it stays as a pointer when you mouse over. It’s a small but annoying change that always leaves me concerned I’ve pushed an incorrect button whenever I’m replying, replying all or forwarding any message. Bring back the text cursor, Gmail!

• No Chat And Labels At The Same Time- When setting your Gmail into the new “Comfortable” mode, you’ve got to make an unfortunate compromise between chat and labels: You can either see your chat list, or you can see your labels. Wanna see both? Too bad.Now, you can move your chat list over to the right sidebar (which always made me uncomfortable) or you can change the spacing setting in your Gmail to “Compact” or “Cozy” (both of which give me a crick in my neck just thinking about). But if you want a view of your email labels and your online G-buddies, you’re out of luck for the time being. Why? Well…

• Disappearing Chat Bar- Pop quiz: Can you name the seven primary email folders in Gmail without looking?(Time’s up: Those would be Inbox, Buzz (R.I.P.), Important, Chats, Sent Mail, Drafts, All Mail, and Spam. How’d you do?)
  Anywho, whenever you put your cursor over any of those seven primary email folders in the new Gmail, the chat list disappears whether you want it to or not. If there’s an easy way to lock the chat sidebar so that it’s always visible, I’m not seeing it.

Related articles

• A New Look for Gmail (googlesystem.blogspot.com)
• Gmail’s New Look, Now Available (mt-soft.com.ar)

Will Facebook start charging due to the new profile changes?

No.

But don’t let the truth get in the way of a good old-fashioned chain letter, spreading like billy-o across the social network.

IT IS OFFICIAL. IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON, IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY

It’s poppycock of course. Facebook doesn’t need to charge you to use Facebook, it’s making plenty of money already by allowing advertisers to reach its 800 million users.

It’s far from the first time that Facebook users have been duped by hoaxes and chain letters. For example, earlier this year, messages were spreadingthat because the social network had become too slow the site was considering deleting inactive accounts. Again, totally bogus.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Related articles

• Facebook to start charging? It’s poppycock! (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
• ‘Facebook Charging’ Chain Letter Spreads (huffingtonpost.com)
• Facebook To Start Charging This Summer (femaleimagination.wordpress.com)
• Facebook price grid? $9.99 for gold membership? The charging hoax continues to spread (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
• Facebook rumor false . (caribnewsnow.wordpress.com)
• No, Facebook Will Not Make You Pay to Get the New Profiles (mashable.com)

Facebook is dramatically redesigning its users’ profile pages to create what CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is a “new way to express who you are.”

Zuckerberg introduced the Facebook “timeline” Thursday in San Francisco at the company’s f8 conference for some 2,000 entrepreneurs, developers and journalists. The event is also being broadcast to more than 100,000 online viewers.

The timeline is reminiscent of an online scrapbook, with the most important photos and text that users have shared on Facebook over the years. It’s Facebook’s attempt at growing from an online hangout to a homestead, where people express their real selves and merge their online and offline lives. The timeline can go back to include years before Facebook even existed, so users can add photos and events from, say 1995 when they got married or 1970 when they were born.

Zuckerberg took the stage after a humorous skit, in which Saturday Night Live actor Andy Samberg impersonated him. The real Mark Zuckerberg looked considerably more playful and at ease than he has in past events, suggesting he is growing into his role as the public face of Facebook.

But he quickly got down to business as he introduced the timeline as “the story of your life – all your stories, all your apps and a new way to express who you are.”

Expanding on its ubiquitous “like” buttons, Zuckerberg said Facebook will now let users connect to things even if they don’t want to “like” them.

“We are making it so you can connect to anything you want. Now you don’t have to like a book, you can just read a book,” he said. “You don’t have to like a movie; you can just watch a movie.”

Check out our live blog from f8 to read about the biggest announcements as they happened.

• New ‘Cover’ Photo - While past iterations of the Facebook profile have featured a customizable photo that sat near the upper left of the page, users can now top their profile with a large “Cover” photo that stretches across the user’s Timeline. This will be in addition to the Profile Picture, which will act as an avatar of sorts for News Feed updates and posting on others’ walls.

• New Layout For Updates Posted - The Timeline is wider than the old profile and displays content in two columns. Posts appear in a continuous stream in chronological order, from top (most recent) to bottom (oldest). The layout is very visual and emphasizes large pictures and important events.

• Yearly, Monthly Navigation - The Timeline will feature a navigation panel along the right side of the page. This list of years, which can expand to display months, allows users to quickly jump to a spot in their timeline and view their posts from that moment in time. You can also manually scroll up and down through the timeline to search activity by month and year.

• Mobile Interface - The new mobile interface on the Facebook app will also feature the Timeline re-design.

• Private Log - The private log stores all your facebook activity so you can choose what to share in your timeline and with whom.

• Apps In Your TImeline - Apps–including what you’re listening to, reading, cooking, watching, etc.–will showcase your interests and activities in digest form so that friends can quickly catch up on what you’re into and share with you simultaneously. For example, if you’re listening to a song on a Rdio that’s synched with Facebook, that activity will appear as an update in your friends’ Ticker widget. That friend can then click your update, start listening to the same song, and even chat with you while doing so.

• Release In “A Few Weeks” - Timeline won’t be available to users for “a few weeks,” so savor that old profile while you still can (or start to get excited for the new one!). Read more about the new Facebook at their official blog here.

Related articles

• Bits: Facebook Unveils Timeline View and Media Partnerships (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg unveils revamped profile: Timeline (zdnet.com)
• Facebook Timeline Redefines User Profiles (mashable.com)
• Facebook Announces Timelines and Improvements to Open Graph (hubspot.com)
• Facebook redesigns profiles, adds ‘timeline’ (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Facebook debuts Timeline, a dramatically new kind of profile (gigaom.com)

Image via CrunchBase

In a blog post published Wednesday, Facebook announced that it would begin rolling out the “subscribe button,” a tool that offers users a new way to interact with one another, as well as more of a say over the information that appears in their News Feeds.

“Our mission is to connect people and help them share. The goal of this new feature really is to give people more control over how they do that,” Naomi Gleit, Facebook’s director of product, told the Huffington Post.

As Huffington Post wrote here, the just-announced setting, which lets Facebook operate more like Twitter by enabling people to “follow” public figures, could have important effects on etiquette, sharing, and the way people connect on Facebook.

Facebook will begin rolling out the “subscribe” button to all users starting September 14. 

• ‘Friending‘ vs. ‘Subscribing‘ - Facebook’s latest feature has introduced an important new term, “subscribing,” that describes a novel way to connect on the social networking site. Now, you must choose between “friending” someone and “subscribing” to them.So what’s the difference? Here’s how Facebook explains it:
  

  You should only add someone as a friend when you know them personally. If you don’t know someone personally but want to hear what they have to say, subscribing is a good option. When you subscribe to someone, you’ll only be able to see their public updates.

  When you request to add a person as your “friend,” she must review and approve the request. On the other hand, if someone has opted to include the “subscribe” button on her profile, you can subscribe to see her public updates without her having to review the request, or without being friends with her (Note that she’ll be able to see that you subscribed to her). Facebook “friends” can see any profile information a user has made available to that particular group–it might include tagged photos and videos, comments, status updates, wall posts, and contact information, among other details–whereas subscribers can only view public updates.

• Let Others ‘Subscribe‘ To You - Like the idea of having people who are not your Facebook friends see your public updates in their News Feeds? Then sign up to put a “subscribe” button on your Profile page. Any user on Facebook will be able to add a “subscribe” button by visiting Facebook’s subscription page, then clicking “Allow subscriptions” (Perhaps as a sign of how it anticipates its users employing the new tool, Facebook specifically called out ”journalists, artists and political figures” as potential users of the “subscribe” button)Once you’ve approved “subscriptions,” the “subscribe” button will appear on your profile to the left of the “Message” button.

• Adjust Which Updates You See In Your News Feed- A “subscribed” button will now appear on all your friends’ profiles. This tool lets you give Facebook feedback on the number and kind of posts you’d like to see from a friend in your News Feed.Clicking “subscribed” on a friend’s profile page presents a drop-down menu where you can specify what kind of information you’d like to see: selecting “All Updates” tells News Feed you’d like to see more information from that person, “Most Updates” tells News Feed you’re satisfied with what you’re seeing now, and “Only Important” tells News Feed you’d just like the “highlights, like a new job or move,” Facebook explains. Clicking “all” won’t show all of your friend’s messages in your News Feed, and clicking “Only Important” won’t eliminate the person from your feed–these are just cues for News Feed to help it deliver more relevant information.

  Facebook allows users to further specify what kind of posts you’d like to see for a given individual. Love your uncle’s photos, but don’t want to see updates from his games? Now you can better note these preferences.

• Stay Friends–But Unsubscribe- The “subscribe” button will also allow you to unsubscribe from friends’ posts, so you can stay Facebook friends with someone, but keep their updates out of your News Feed.You can make this tweak by clicking the “subscribed” button on his or her profile page, or mousing over his or her name when it appears in your News Feed.

• Control What Your Subscribers Can Do - Once you’ve opted in to add a “subscribe” button to your profile, you won’t be able to vet your subscribers–anyone will be able to choose to follow and see your public updates, and you won’t be asked to approve them one by one. That is, as Facebook explains, “when you hide or decline a friend request, that person can still subscribe to your public updates if you have allowed subscribers.”
  However, you can choose whether or not to let others comment on your updates (see the first option under “Edit Subscriber Settings,” which appears when you first sign up for the button) and you can choose whether or not to be notified when new people “subscribe” to your updates.According to Facebook’s Help Center, here’s how you can tweak your subscriber settings at a later point:

  1. From your profile, click the Subscribers link on the left menu
  2. Click the Edit Settings button in the top right

Related articles

• Facebook launches “Subscribe Button”: read what you like, what matters to you (nextlevelofnews.com)
• Facebook Launches New Subscribe Button for Feeds (shoutmeloud.com)
• Facebook Launches Subscribe Button for Following Anyone’s Public Updates (mashable.com)
• Facebook announces the Subscribe button (digitaltrends.com)
• Facebook launches Subscribe button to control your News Feed (cbsnews.com)
• Facebook goes after Twitter with ‘Subscribe’ feature (techradar.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook wall posts, photos, messages, events pages and more can be helpful tools for authorities tracking a suspect, serving as key evidence in criminal cases. Recently, it’s become more and more common for police to turn to the social network during investigations.

Check out 13 posts that got people arrested:

• Photos Of Strangle Victim – In December 2010, a former New York EMT, Mark Musarella, pleaded guilty to charges of misconduct and disorderly conduct, according to the AP. “Prosecutors say Musarella responded to a March 30, 2009, emergency call in Staten Island, where he snapped a picture of a woman who had been strangled. He then posted the image on [Facebook], the AP also writes.

• Risqué Photo Swap – In July 2011, Joseph Bernard Campbell said he would plead guilty to charges of cyberstalking and unauthorized access to a computer. “At least 19 women were victimized by a computer hacker who broke into their email accounts, captured risqué photographs of the women and then swapped them for the women’s Facebook profile pictures, authorities say,” reports Tampa Bay Online.

• ‘Attack A Teacher Day’ Event – In Carson City, Nevada a group of six girls (ages 12 to 13) were arrested in January 2011 for allegedly posting threatening comments on the wall of a Facebook event titled “Attack A Teacher Day.” According to the Nevada Appeal, posts apparently written by the girls containted the word “attack.”
  “All of the girls said it was just a joke,” Carson City Sheriff’s Deputy Jessica Rivera told the Appeal.

• Preteen Cyberstalking – In April 2011, two preteen girls from a Seattle suburb were charged with cyberstalking and first-degree computer trespassing. Reuters reports that the girls “allegedly post[ed] sexually explicit photos and comments on the Facebook page of a 12-year-old classmate” and were “accused of using the third girl’s computer address to send out instant message solicitations for sex using her name.”

• Murder Plot – London Eley of Philadelphia allegedly used Facebook to find and hire someone to kill Corey White, the father of her child. “I will pay somebody a stack to kill my baby father,” Eley wrote, according 6ABC.com. A man named Timothy Bynum allegedly accepted Eley’s offer, writing, “say no more,” “what he look like?” and “need dat stack 1st,” reports 6ABC.com. White alerted the authorities to the alleged correspondence between Eley and Bynum, both of whom were taken into custody in June 2011.
  White was shot in August while Eley and Bynum remained in jail.

• Riot Inception – After days of riots and looting rocked U.K. cities earlier in August, the BBC reported that authorities had arrested several people for allegedly inciting violence via Facebook posts. According to ZDNET, Scotland Yard had said it would seek out individuals believed to have written “really inflammatory, inaccurate” Facebook messages. By the end of August, nearly 2,000 had been arrested in connection with the riots, reports the Guardian.

• Bank Robbery – In April 2011, Houston police apprehended four suspects in a bank robbery case. Police said that suspicious Facebook posts led them to connect the group, including two bank tellers, to the heist. The following are among the alleged Facebook posts, according to the Houston Chronicle: “”Get $$$” and “‘WIPE MY TEETH WITH HUNDEREDS [sic].”

• List Ranking Girls – An Illinois teenager was arrested in May 2011 for allegedly distributing (via Facebook) a provocative list that ranked the physical appearance of 50 girls from his high school. According to the Chicago Sun Times, the list in question “described the girls by explicit, derogatory nicknames and assessed their physical appearance, sexual desirability, sexual activity and other characteristics”. The Associated Press lists nicknames like “Fallen Angel,” “Blond Bombshell” and “The Hangover.”
  “He obviously offended people but he also has a right to free speech,” criminal defense attorney Mark Gottesman told The Huffington Post.

• Unlawful Relationship – In September 2010, Robert Nickson Jr, a 27 year-old Pennsylvania man was arrested for an alleged relationship with a 14-year-old girl. Writes ABC News:
  

  A Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division’s special task force, nicknamed Operation Triad, which investigates child pornography and predators, was tipped off by the county’s child welfare agency after Nickson posted photos of himself and the girl online.

• Threats On Officials – Former U.S. Congress candidate Cheryl Allen was arrested and charged in January 2011 for reportedly threatening several civil servants. According to the Associated Press, “The alleged threats mentioned four Morgan County judges, and other public officials [...] were mentioned by first name. Media reports said Allen had previously filed a discrimination lawsuit that was dismissed by a judge.”

• Death Threats – In late January 2011, a group of four Florida teens, ages 13 through 14, were arrested at their school for allegedly directing threats towards another classmate via Facebook. “Mistakenly believing that a middle school classmate had caused the arrest of a friend, a quartet of Florida teenagers exchanged Facebook messages discussing the killing of the suspected ‘snitch,’” reports The Smoking Gun.
  The Smoking Gun also published some of the purported threats, detailed in the police report:
  - “He ruined my bestfriend’s life! And ima end his!!”
  - “Oh that little bitch is dead. Just u have to show me who he is first then he is dead.”
  - “IMA HELP KILL HIM!! THAT PUNK RUINED OUR LIVES!! HES SOO DEAD!!”

• Bar Fight – In May 2011 Chicago resident Ruth Ramirez, 26, turned herself in to police over an alleged bar brawl in April, during which Ramirez was said to have broken a glass in another woman’s face. According to a statement by police, reported by Chicago Breaking News, a friend of the victim was on Facebook the day after the fight and noticed a post describing the incident in detail. “She showed the post to the victim, who identified her attacker by the photograph posted on the profile. [...] The victim called police and gave them the information, and an investigative alert was issued,” wrote CBN.

• Relationship Status Change – In February 2011, Eric James Wilson, 21, was arrested in Palm Bay, Florida for allegedly assaulting his then-wife. According to ZDNET, police charged Wilson with “battery domestic violence and a misdemeanor.” The fight reportedly started after Wilson changed his Facebook relationship status from “married” to “single.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Target in Facebook murder-for-hire case shot to death (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• ‘Kill My Baby Father’: Man Killed After Ex Posts Chilling Facebook Note (abcnews.go.com)
• Target in Facebook murder-for-hire case shot to death in Philadelphia (calgaryherald.com)
• Target in Facebook murder-for-hire case shot to death in Philadelphia (theprovince.com)
• Target in Facebook murder-for-hire case shot dead (philly.com)
• Police: Target of Facebook hit fatally shot (msnbc.msn.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook has announced a new feature for the News Feed.

Now, when multiple friends post about the same topic, Facebook will group those posts together in the News Feed. It’s a small change, but it’s one that may organize the feed, which some complain has become too cluttered.

Facebook announced the update in a post on the company’s official page.

“You may notice some of your News Feed stories are now grouped together by topic,” Facebook wrote in the brief announcement. “We want to show you the most relevant and interesting information, and this test is designed to show you trends among what your friends are saying.”

Inside Facebook notes that posts are grouped automatically, even if users forgo Facebook’s tagging option, which lets the author of a post hyperlink to another Facebook page when adding an @ before the page name. Now, users have only to mention the topic of interest in a sentence, and Facebook will link back to that topic’s official page.

“The ‘Posted About’ news feed story shows that Facebook is using natural language processing on status updates to perform named entity recognition,” Inside Facebook writes. “It will help users determine topics that are trending amongst their friends, and help the Pages representing these topics gain more fans.”

Read Write Web sees advantages for brands: “If brands are active in how they use their pages, there is a good chance they could ensnare a couple of users’ posts within the topic grouping, which should increase Likes, time spent on page and interactivity.

Take a look at the News Feed update (below).

LOOK: [via Facebook]

The Wall Street Journal recently predicted that Facebook would introduce some changes to the News Feed, but its forecast indicates that larger changes may still be on the way. Writes WSJ:

[...]Facebook engineers are working to create an unfiltered News Feed that would open the floodgates of information about users and the games they win, the companies they “Like” and the actions their friends take, said people familiar with the matter. [...] Facebook is also working on expanding its “Like” button to include other gestures that marketers and third-party developers can create, said these people. Consumers could share information about the products they want to buy or the places they want to go, for instance.

Whatever else Facebook has in store, the company may table the announcement until its F8 developers conference (to be announced), according to the Journal.

CNET speculates that users may finally get a “Dislike” option to complement the social network’s ubiquitous “Like” button.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Facebook Tweaks News Feed, Groups Posts By Topic (PICTURE) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Facebook Now Grouping News Feed Stories By Topic (searchengineland.com)
• Facebook Updates Your News Feed: Introducing Topic Groups (mashable.com)
• Facebook Updates Your News Feed: Introducing Topic Groups (junaidghory.wordpress.com)
• Facebook Groups News Feed Updates by Subject, Links to Pages (readwriteweb.com)
• Facebook Clusters Topics In News Feed, Opens Can Of Worms (techcrunch.com)

Naked Security readers have asked us once again to warn of a rapidly-spreading photo-tagging scam on Facebook, this time with the grammatically curious title This Girls Must Be Watch Out Of Her mind After Making This Video.

Here’s one wise Facebook user’s advice:

We first wrote about this sort of scam back in April. Just look at the Request for Permission dialog from a typical rogue application:

Let’s look at those permissions:

* Access my basic information. That seems OK, since you’re agreeing to share information which you’ve shared already.

* Post to my Wall. This lets an application act as if it were you. Think about this: it can post anything, about anyone, linking to anywhere, in your name. You are giving the application the right to offer statements and opinions on your behalf, without asking you. That’s an awful lot of power.

* Access my data any time. Combined with the previous permission – to speak on your behalf – this is very close to giving the application a power of attorney over your Facebook account. Do you ever really want to do that?

* Access my photos and videos. This effectively removes any privacy controls you enjoy over images of your personal life.

Now that Facebook has universally enabled its facial recognition service, whereby your friends can tag you in photos in which Facebook suggests you appear, photo-tagging has really taken off.

And a new way of abusing the abovementioned power of attorney is open to rogue Facebook applications: deliberately tagging you in images in which you don’t appear.

In this latest scam, which borrows a long-running prurient Facebook meme about “Girl must be out of her mind,” you appear to be tagged in a pornographic, or at least semi-pornographic, movie, which is then recommended to your friends.

Of course, this raises two questions about Facebook’s facial recognition. Firstly, now it’s universally enabled, why does it allow you to be tagged in photos in which you obviously don’t appear? (The April scam I linked to above tagged you in photos of food which contained nothing even vaguely resembling a human face.)

Secondly, is it really acceptable to allow tagging without the permission of the taggee? Back in March, we wrote about a judgment in the Kentucky courts which decided that the law does not require the taggee to be asked. But is that a good enough standard for Facebook to follow?

Facebook will notify you when a friend tags you, but I’d love to see that changed to a stricter default. You should be notified and be asked to approve the tag before it is accepted by the system.

Lastly – and this shouldn’t really need saying, but I shall say it anyway- DON’T APPROVE FACEBOOK APPS, TAKE SURVEYS, OR PROACTIVELY LIKE ANYTHING in return for access to a video.

If you really must see for yourself whether This Girls Must Be Watch Out Of Her mind After Making This Video, why don’t you just search for it on YouTube, thus sidestepping the Facebook scammers entirely?

Or learn a touch of restraint, because it goes a long way towards improving your security online. In short, THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Related articles

• Facebook ‘Girls Must Be Watch Out Of Her mind’ photo-tagging scam – the lessons to learn (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
• Why are you tagged in this video? It’s a viral Facebook scam , Please Avoid (blogoholic.in)
• Hottest & Funniest Golf Course Video scam spreads virally on Facebook – beware! (blogoholic.in)
• You Can Now Tag Pages in Facebook Photos (blogoholic.in)