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There are numerous diverse apps and social networking apps and it’s tough to keep up with which ones are worth downloading and using. Meet Foursquare, it’s all about checking in at a certain location, whether that is a movie theater, restaurant or hospital. Here are a few reasons you should start checking in as soon as possible:

Fun for all:  For those who love games, there are ‘prizes’ to be earned: Mayorships, Badges and Points. This may not mean much, but once you start checking in, let the games begin.  Becoming a Foursquare mayor is the closest you will ever come to holding a political seat. The mayor is the user who has the most frequent check in’s at any given location. Don’t get too cocky just yet because you can lose that mayorship faster than you think! Badges are similar to Boy Scout badges; they are awarded for achieving check in milestones. Not only are receiving badges fun but the different badges are limitless and earn you bragging rights. Points are based on and granted for numerous reasons, example how often you check in or with whom you check in with.

I know what you’re doing:  You are able to keep an eye on your Foursquare friends 24/7 with push notifications. This makes it easier to meet up because you are able to see their location and then get the details of the location, like address and a map. You have the ability to write comments on your friends check ins and also leave a comment on your own check in.

Discounts:  Many different businesses offer some sort of coupon for their Foursquarer’s. You can earn these deals by being the Mayor or just simply showing up, either way this app really pays off.  For example check in at the nail salon and spend $10 then get $10 off your next purchase. Hungry? At some restaurants you can get a free appetizer when you become a Mayor. If that is not enough, search other deals that are nearby.

A few tips:  Not sure if the dry cleaners next door is good? Check out the Tips section to see what others have said. This is a great way to learn about what is good and what is not. Lots of people leave tips to give you an insider’s edge and you can also leave your tips on a location.

Fourqauare is the app that gives back, check in and score a deal or catch up with a friend. Foursquare is the app worth downloading, now start checking in!

Author Bio:

Kate Croston is a freelance writer, holds a bachelors degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She writes guest posts for different sites and loves contributing   internet service related topics. Questions or comments can be sent to:  katecroston.croston09 @ gmail.com.

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• foursquare on Facebook is now prettier! Check out the new look for foursquare check-ins, badges, and mayorships! (foursquare.com)

Google is rolling out a new feature called “Find My Face” to Google+ users allowing them to opt-in to a new facial recognition feature for photos shared on the service.  Of course this isn’t the first foray Google has made into the facial recognition arena, they have offered the feature on Picasa Web Albums for a little more than three years. The feature is not available to all Google+ users yet , but Google has decided to alert users to the presence of the new feature instead of just turning it on.

Facebook introduced a similar function last December, but required users to opt-out of the service causing much consternation in their user community.

Google’s take on this feature sounds sort of interesting. They call it “Find My Face” and when enabled will suggest to people in your circles or who have +1′d a post of yours to tag you in photos they post that appear to contain your face.

Matt Steiner from the Google+ teamannounced the feature including a description of how it works.

Find My Face will provide a prompt like “Is this Matt Steiner?” when it thinks you appear in a friend’s photo. You will be notified if you are tagged and have full control to remove the tag or turn off the feature if you find it creepy.

The comfort level Google+ users will have with Google associating their mug with their real name will likely reduce the adoption of this feature, but for users who use Google+ for photo sharing it might be a nice option.

Despite the fact that I am not comfortable with my information being gathered in this manner, providing people with a choice is never a bad thing.

It is up to every individual to make an *informed* choice about how their personal information is shared and asking their permission is the right approach.

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

Related articles

• Google+ rolling out facial recognition feature (economictimes.indiatimes.com)
• Google+ Adds New ‘Find My Face’ Facial Recognition Feature for Photos (techland.time.com)

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Facebook said Wednesday that it has stopped most of the spam that has flooded many users’ pages with pictures showing graphic sex and violence.

The social-networking company urged its 800 million-plus users to remain vigilant to keep their accounts from being hijacked.

Social-networking sites are popular targets for spammers because people are more likely to trust and share content that comes from their “friends.” This makes spam, scams and viruses easier to spread.

Although the way the latest spam messages spread isn’t new, their content – jarring violence and graphic pornography rather than links to get a free iPod shuffle – might have upset users more than usual. In recent days, they have complained on Twitter and their own Facebook pages.

Facebook said no user data or accounts were compromised during the attack.

The latest attack tricked users into pasting and malicious links into the address bars in their Web browsers. This exploited a browser vulnerability that caused them to unknowingly share the graphic content with their Facebook friends.

The content spreads further when the friends then click on these links, thinking that it was posted by the user on purpose.

The company said users should never cut and paste unknown code into a browser’s address bar. They should always use an up-to-date browser and report any suspicious content on the site.

Facebook did not immediately say which browsers were affected. Facebook said it built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious pages and accounts that attempt to exploit the vulnerability.

“Our team responded quickly and we have eliminated most of the spam caused by this attack,” Facebook said in a statement. “We are now working to improve our systems to better defend against similar attacks in the future.”

Facebook already scans links against security databases and blocks those known to lead to spam. But the company says spammers can get around those protections by tricking users into pasting harmful links directly into Web browsers.

The company says fewer than 5 percent of its users experience spam on a given day, and less than 4 percent of content shared on Facebook is spam.

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

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If an unauthorised party has logged into your Facebook account, then you’re far from alone.

New official statistics revealed by the social networking giant reveal that 0.06% of the more than billion logins that they have each day are compromised.

Put another way, that’s more than 600,000 per day – or, if you really like to make your mind melt, one every 140 milliseconds. (By comparison, a blink of the eye takes 300-400 milliseconds)

The statistic was revealed in an infographic published alongside an official Facebook blog post trumpeting new security features introduced by the firm.

The new security features include Trusted friends (called “Guardian angels” in the infographic).

Facebook says that you will be able to nominate three to five “trusted” friends who can help you if you have a problem accessing your account – if, for instance, someone else has changed its password and locked you out of your email account. The idea is that if you need to login to Facebook but can’t access your email account, Facebook will send codes to your friends that they can pass on to you.

(BTW, nice middle names you’re using there, Facebook)

None of your friends on their own has enough information to access your account, as they are only sent a single code. But, of course, if your “trusted” friends turned out to be untrustworthy and banded together they would – between them – be able to access your account. So you best be sure that you keep a close eye on who your trusted friends are (especially if you’re prone to falling out, or they think practical jokes are amusing), and be pretty confident that they are taking their own computer security seriously.

Oh, and it might be an idea to remind yourself what the word “friend” actually means, as history has shown that many Facebook users have a very different idea of what a “friend” is from the rest of the world.

Another thought occurs to me – if a bad guy has taken over your Facebook and email account, isn’t it likely that he will also change who your trusted friends are at the same time? Wouldn’t that make the whole security measure kinda pointless?

Another new announcement is App Passwords - meaning that you will no longer have to log into Facebook apps with the same credentials that you use for your Facebook account. It’s certainly a good idea not to use your Facebook password with anybody other than Facebook – so it’s good to hear that Facebook will be offering this new privacy option.

However, it’s not hard to predict that the only people who might use such a feature might be those who are already very aware of privacy issues, rather than the great unwashed majority on Facebook.

Facebook’s infographic is too long and thin to properly embed on the Naked Security site, so here’s a link to where you can download a version for yourself.

Make sure that you keep informed about the latest scams spreading fast across Facebook and other internet attacks.

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

Related articles

• Facebook Says 600,000 Accounts Compromised Per Day (mashable.com)
• 600,000 + Facebook Accounts Get Hacked Daily (escapistmagazine.com)

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Data monitoring and analysis firm Experian has released the results of a study examining the Facebook habits of users in eight countries across the globe.

Experian examined the users’ visits to the social network and determined how long the average Facebook session lasted in each country, as well as the percentage of each country’s internet traffic that was seen to visit social networking sites. While some of the countries studied also appear on lists of countries shown to have the most Facebook users, an Experian rep told the Huffington Post that this study analyzed Facebook usage only in countries where Experian’s online intelligence service, Hitwise, operates.

Based on Experian’s data, Facebook visits around the world range from 18 to 38 minutes long. The country whose citizens are the stingiest with their Facebook time (see slideshow), spend less than half as many minutes on the social networking site as the nation with the longest Facebook visits. Somewhat surprisingly, considering that it’s the birthplace of Facebook, Americans spend relatively little time social networking. Perhaps, after almost 8 years of commenting, poking, tagging, and de-tagging the novelty has worn off. According to Inside Facebook, six million U.S. users left the social network in May alone.

If Facebook’s growth is indeed bginning to slow in countries where it experienced strong growth in its early years, the same definitely cannot be said for countries that are new to the site. Facebook went global in 2006, opening up to anyone over 13, and now 75 percent of its users live outside of the United States. India has seen the most explosive Facebook growth and is expected to have the second largest Facebook user base in the world by 2012, according to Indian business blog Trak.in. And advertisers have taken notice. In recent years, advertisers in India have increased their Facebook ad spending by 40 percent.

In Experian’s press release accompanying the study, the company notes that the implications of their study could be especially interesting to advertisers. Knowing this information, a company may choose to spend more resources on Facebook marketing in countries where each visit is relatively long.

Here the List -

• Singapore - Average length of Facebook visit: 38 mins 46 sec. Percentage of internet visits that go to social networking sites: 16.4

• New Zealand - Average length of Facebook visit: 30 mins 31 sec . Percentage of Internet visits that go to social networking sites: 13.9

• Australia - Average length of Facebook visit: 26 mins 27 sec. Percentage of Internet visits that go to social networking sites: 13.1

• United Kingdom - Average length of Facebook visit: 25 mins 33 sec.Percentage of Internet visits that go to social networking sites: 12.2

• France - Average length of Facebook visit: 21 mins 53 sec. Percentage of Internet visits that go to social networking sites: 15.1

• United States - Average length of Facebook visit: 20 mins 46 sec. Percentage of Internet visits that go to social networking sites: 15.4

• India - Average length of Facebook visit: 20 mins 21 sec. Percentage of Internet visits that go to social networking sites: 14.0

• Brazil - Average length of Facebook visit: 18 mins 19 sec. Percentage of Internet visits that go to social networking sites: 18.9

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Rebtel, a mobile VoIP company, commissioned a study from research firm Harris Interactive on the social networking habits of men and women. The researchers, who looked at the communication habits of 2,361 adults aged 18 and over, found that women are significantly more likely to use online social networks, like Facebook or twitter, to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers. A whopping 68 percent of womenuse social media to stay in touch with friends, as opposed to 54 percent of men.

“Our findings show that men tend to lag behind women when it comes to communicating with others through social media, which debunks other recent studies that suggest that men are more savvy networkers between the sexes,” Rebtel‘s CEO Andreas Bernstrom said in a statement.

When the participants were asked which method of communication they would use if they were only allowed one, 18 percent of women chose social media as opposed to 12 percent of men. The rest still preferred to communicate via call, text, email, and even face to face.

The data showed that men like talking on the phone and texting more than women, but the difference was small: 73 percent of women use the phone to stay in touch with friends whereas 75 percent of men do. Not surprisingly, considering how deeply integrated Facebook is becoming with our lives, one in five participants said they expected to increase their use of social media in the future. Men especially expected their social media use to increase in the coming years, probably partly because, compared with women, relatively few of them use it now.

He may have been talking about LinkedIn’s June study which found men to be the “Savviest Networkers.” However, that study only looked at professional connections on LinkedIn, and didn’t take into account other social networking sites or non work related connections.

On the other hand, according to a study by the Social Technology Review, women have an average of 55% more wall posts than men, but the same amount of friends.

Take a look at Rebtel’s visualization of how much more likely women are to use social networking than men.

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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

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The Web has a winner: Facebook.

According to new research from Nielsen’s “The Social Media Report,” American Internet users now devote more time to Facebook than any other website, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world’s largest social networking site.

This is far ahead of sites like Blogger, to which Americans cumulatively devote 723 million minutes a month, Twitter, which receives 565 million minutes of users’ time per month and LinkedIn, on which claims 325 million minutes per month. Yahoo, the second most popular web brand overall, receives just half as much time of users’ time as Facebook (Americans spent 17.2 billion minutes on the site), followed by Google (12.5 billion minutes, which does not include the 9.1 billion minutes people spent on YouTube).

Facebook announced earlier this year that it had surpassed 750 million users and Google’s DoubleClick ad planner reported that Facebook had reached 1 trillion monthly page views, a disputed number that one analytics company pegged closer to 467 billion.

Yet Nielsen gave the blog platform Tumblr the equivalent of a nod for “most likely to succeed,” noting that the “emerging social network” increased grew its audience three-fold in a year. Tumblr also recently celebrated its 10 billionth post, just a year after reaching its 1 billionth.

Nielsen’s report tracked both the popularity of social networking sites, as well as usage patterns among Americans online.

Users devote more time to social media and blogs than to online games, email and search combined, Nielsen found: 22.5 percent of the time people spend online is given over to sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Blogger; 9.8 percent is spent playing games online; 7.6 is spent on email; and 4 percent on search.

Though social networking apps are the third most popular mobile application category, behind games and weather-related apps, 37 percent of users said they consume social media via their phones–by comparison, a full 97 percent use their PCs.

The research also found some notable differences in the ways varying demographics use social media sites. Women, who Nielsen said “make up the majority of visitors to social networks and blogs,” and users between 18 and 34 years-old were highlighted as the “most active social networkers.”

Women account for 62 percent of Facebook’s page views, Nielsen wrote, adding that men are “more likely to visit LinkedIn and Wikia.” Female Internet users also watch more online videos than men, but men spend more time (247 million minutes per month) watching video online than women (226 million minutes per month).

Social networking users make up a lion’s share of all adults online. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s August 2011 report, for the first time, more than half of all adult Internet users (65 percent) now use social networks.

Read Nielsen’s full report–which includes more on mobile usage, how active social networkers behave online, and much more–here.

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

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Image by Sean MacEntee via Flickr

A German data protection authority is “unliking” Facebook‘s “Like” button.

The state of Schleswig-Holstein‘s data protection commissioner, Thilo Weichert, on Friday ordered state institutions to shut down the fan pages on the social networking site and remove the “Like” button from their websites, saying it leads to profiling that violates German and European law.

Facebook insisted Friday that is in full compliance with European data protection laws.

On Friday, Weichert issued a statement saying technical analysis by his office shows Facebook violated German and European data protection laws by passing content data to the social network’s servers in the U.S.

“Whoever visits facebook.com or uses a plug-in must expect that he or she will be tracked by the company for two years,” Weichert said. “Facebook builds a broad individual and for members even a personalized profile.”

A Facebook spokesman conceded that the company can see “information such as the IP address” of users who visit a site with a “Like” button.

“We delete this technical data within 90 days,” said the spokesman, who did not give his name in keeping with company policy. “That is in keeping with normal industry standards.”

Weichert’s office ordered website owners in Schleswig-Holstein to “immediately stop the passing on of user data to Facebook in the USA by deactivating the respective services” and threatened to take legal action if they fail to comply.

He also urged Internet users in general to “keep their fingers from clicking on social plug-ins” and “not set up a Facebook account” to avoid being profiled.

The keepers of Germany‘s strict privacy laws have repeatedly clashed on issues of privacy with international Internet giants, such as Facebook and Google – often with success.

Last year Google allowed Germans who opposed its Street View mapping system to blur images of their homes, while Facebook in January granted members more control over their email address books, after a dispute over its “Friend Finder” service.

Germany’s latest spat with the Palo Alto, California-based Facebook also comes a week after a leading member of Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s conservative party in Schleswig-Holstein stepped down after admitting to having an affair with a 16-year-old he met over the social networking site.

Christian von Boetticher’s resignation sparked a debate about the role of social media in politicians’ lives, with German newspapers carrying reports from party members, angry that the state legislator spent more time posting personal information to Facebook than focusing on his job. He has since deleted his Facebook profile.

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

Related articles

• German privacy watchdog dislikes Facebook’s “Like” (sfgate.com)
• German privacy watchdog dislikes Facebook’s “Like” (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Germany vs. Facebook: Like Button Declared Illegal, Sites Threatened With Fine (siliconfilter.com)
• Facebook’s ‘Like’ Button Declared Illegal In Germany (searchengineland.com)
• Disliking “Like” in Germany (buzzmachine.com)
• In Germany, a data-protection official says that organizations need to remove Facebook “Like Buttons” from their Web sites … or face a fine. (shortformblog.tumblr.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook users can now let their friends know when they are expecting a child, complete with due date and chosen baby name, the social networking blog Inside Facebook discovered Wednesday.

Users have been able to add family members with Facebook accounts to their profiles since December 2010, when Facebook last gave profile designs a major facelift. In February 2011 Facebook made further changes by inserting an option for a “civil union” and “domestic partnership,” and now they have added an “Expected: child” field as well.

Here is what your new option to announce an expected child on Facebook looks like:

To add this information to your profile, click on your profile, then “Edit Settings,” followed by “Friends and Family.” From the drop-down menu listing different relations, you can choose “Expected: Child” from other options such as “Daughter,” “Father,” or “Cousin: Female.”

Though Inside Facebook reported that Facebook had been allowing them to tag friends as their expected children, that glitch appears to have disappeared. A user can, however, still enter her friend’s names as her “Expected: Child,” though that person’s profile information will not be synced.

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