For anyone who either saw a wall post or received a message suggesting that Facebook may have changed  their advertising policies to allow third-party advertisers use your posted pictures, please note that it is completely false!

The Social Media Behemoth says it never made any such policy changes, categorically stating how it handles, and has handled privacy-related issues, not to mention security- Facebook Prohibits ads that cause a bad user experience, are misleading, or otherwise “violate our policies”.

Apparently the “rumours” were started due to advertisements placed by third-party applications. According to Facebook;

…. Those ads violated our policies by misusing profile photos, and we already required the removal of those deceptive ads from third-party applications before this rumor began spreading.

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So how Exactly does Facebook use your Photos?

In a bid to further clarify issues, Facebook’s Barry Schnitt tells us;

We’ve run advertisements from our own advertising system for more than a year that let your friends know if you have a direct connection with a product or service, in the same way that your friends learn through your News Feed if you’re connected with another friend or an organization’s Facebook Page. For example, if one of your friends becomes a fan of a Page, you may see an ad, like the one below, with your friend’s profile photo that indicates the action that friend has taken.

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I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next fellow, but one must always stick to the facts.
If you ever see the following message, or anything remotely close, I would suggest you ignore it.

FACEBOOK has agreed to let 3rd party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission. Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the Log out link. Select PRIVACY. Then select NEWSFEEDS and WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACEBOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes. REPOST to let your friends know!

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Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

I remember reading the above update on Facebook last week. My immediate thoughts at the time were “it’s about time“. I mean what’s so “social” about a social networking site if you can’t easily identify people by their names- the very same thing by which we are all distinguished from other people or things.

I mean creating a profile on any Social Network, be it Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 or whatever, basically amounts to having your “personal” space, and of course people should and by all means must be able to identify you by that.

Anyway, someone at Facebook apparently started thinking along those lines, so we can now have our very own “personal destination, or home, on the Web” (at least as far as Fb is concerned that is).

UPDATE on Saturday, June 13: Username selection is now live at http://www.facebook.com/username/. Remember, choosing a username is optional and will give you a distinct Web address for your profile. It will not change the name that appears on your profile, in search or elsewhere on the site.

I’ve just picked up mine at facebook.com/rollinsorlu. The idea of having a custom (vanity) URL really helps the entire social networking agenda, as it allows for the creation of a URL that is much easier to remember and share with others. I mean imagine trying to tell  someone “oh, you can find my profile at facebook.com/profile.php?id=xxxxxx”

The feature is also available for page administrators, the down side of course being that “Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must be live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have a minimum 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009.” Facebook however says that the 1,000 fan restriction will be lifted on June 28, which of course is welcome news for companies, brands, and admins with far fewer fans.

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Copyright Infringements

The gold rush which has resulted from Facebook’s new feature has left many scrambling to register their preferred usernames, but of course anyone can (literally) register anything they liked, meaning there could be copyright infringement issues. Facebook has however provided a solution to this though, by making available a “Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement (Non-Copyright Claim)” to assist anyone who wishes to report that someone’s username infringes their rights.

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More in the pipes »»

Facebook have begun testing a new version of their search system. According to the Facebook blog, users will be able to see up-to-the-minute results from friends and the Facebook Pages of which they are fans, and also people who have “chosen to make their profile and content available to everyone”.

The new Facebook Search will also enable you discover what blogs and news sources your friends are following, and see what they are saying about issues related to your search. Testing is however limited to a “small group”— just a fraction of a percent of the people on Facebook.

According to a post on the Facebook blog yesterday;

… Those of you in the test group will see new layouts for search results that will continue to include people’s profiles, Facebook Pages, groups and applications, and some entirely new Search features. With the test, you will be able to search your News Feed for the most recent status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. You will also be able to search for status updates, posted links and notes in Search from people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to everyoneI’m interested in the latest updates on the aftermath of the Iranian election. By entering the term “Iran” in the “Search” field in the upper-right corner of any page on Facebook, I will see up-to-the-minute results from my friends and the Facebook Pages of which I’m a fan, not to mention people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to everyone. I’m able to discover what blogs and news sources my friends are following, what my friends are saying about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and how people in general are reacting to the election results.

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Social networking has changed the face of the web (and indeed everything else) in recent times, with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter spearheading the cause- redefining and giving new meaning to “socialization”.

Social media provide an interactive platform to connect and share with your friends and loved ones, likewise a perfect opportunity to grow your business, and now:
a source for spiritual revival.

The vatican has launched a website at www.pope2you.net, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook,” which allows the faithful to see the Pope’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

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The “Pope2You” Facebook app, lets you receive the messages of Pope Benedict XVI through the most important social network of the world. Essentially you can meet the Pope on Facebook, listen to his words, see his pictures, receive his messages of congratulations through “virtual postcards”.

Though you won’t get an email saying Pope Benedict added you as a friend and you can’t “poke” him or write on his wall, but the Vatican is still keen to use the networking site Facebook to woo young people back to church.

Pope2You allows you to share the most wonderful pictures of Benedict XVI with your friends on Facebook, along with his words of hope and peace. You can;

• Send the virtual postcards from the Pope to your friends.

• Download and read the Pope’s Message for the 43th World Communications Day.

• Spread friendship with the Pope and become a witness of Christ in the world through the web.

• Send now your virtual postcards

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At the beginning of the year I did a review on Global IT trends for 2009, and in that review I highlighted the growth of social media in 2008, drawing support from Chris Crum’s article on “the year in social media: 2008“. I also echoed the Baseline Mag’s prediction on the expected growth of Social Networking in 2009:

…. Social Networking will continue to expand in customer relationships with brands and corporate team building efforts as ways to help the bottom line. Organizations are increasingly looking to next-generation social networking tools to conduct sophisticated business intelligence and analytics. In many cases, they are mining data and looking for trends and patterns, such as which salesperson has the relationships to pull off a deal or which customers seem to have the biggest influence with others online

It’s only been 4 months since my review, and already it’s pretty clear that social networking is on the rise. Sites like Twitter, Linked In, StumbleUpon, PerfSpot, and of course Facebook have grown even more popular, making major headlines around the globe (sometimes for all the wrong reasons)- not to mention newer social networking tools which have been popping up all over the web.

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Social Media as a brand building tool

Most people still see Social media as just a place to hang out and see what your friends are doing. They just don’t realize what a powerful marketing tool the world of social media offers their businesses.

Social media offer more than just an opportunity to stay in touch with friends and colleagues, they also provide a cost effective platform for product marketing and brand building, and indeed the popular social networking sites, in terms of marketing, offer an extremely large target-audience, often running into hundreds of millions.

Facebook for instance, has seen its membership rise from 175 million in March, to a little over 200 million in May, and it allows you “create a public profile that enables you share your business and products with these 200 million plus users.

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Legacy social media such as blogs, and newsletters also serve as handy marketing tools. Blogs have literally been in existence for over a decade, and still play a huge role in market development. They give you an opportunity to build relationships with customers, and those relationships, of course, can amount to much better sales.

Similarly, online forums- the original social networks- are still extremely relevant. They provide you a perfect opportunity to know exactly what your customers and prospects are thinking. The levels of interaction they provide can assist you in creating a proper direction for your online campaigns, and should be worth considering.

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Making Social Media Work For You

An integrated social media marketing strategy can help your business increase brand visibility, improve customer loyalty, and gain important insights about the markets you serve.

Social media marketing is the possibly the most effective way of generating traffic, and as such the importance of social media as a marketing channel should never be underestimated. It effectively compliments your other marketing strategies, and is highly sustainable.

How so?

“Social communities can be a great source of web traffic on top of any traffic you are already receiving from search engines. While you can’t easily increase your search engine traffic, social media traffic can be very easily controlled through strategic marketing.”

Social Media news sites let users post links to news articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other web content. Then other site users can vote for that content, potentially sending it to the front page of the news site where millions of web goers are likely to see it and click through.

This is particular true for sites like Twitter, where users can access public timelines of other users, without neccessarily having to be friends with them (or follow them in case). Practically all the major news and web content providers are on twitter, including; Google, CNN, and BBC.

Social media channels will help your business grow by creating a community of supporters who (if nothing else) would recommend your products/services. It is common knowledge that word-of-mouth has and always will be crucial to marketing success.

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Are you using social media as a marketing strategy?

Leave a comment and let us know how effective is has been for your business. And hey, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter- http://www.twitter.com/dtechblog

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Some Facebook users have lost access to their fb accounts, due to a phishing scam which has been making the rounds. The scam, which spoofs Facebook, “lures users to enter their information at a site FBAction.net which displays a false Facebook login page”.

Within a short amount of time, users that enter their email and password find that their password has been switched and all of their friends have been emailed from the account.

According to reports- yesterday afternoon, Facebook users began receiving emails appearing to be from Facebook carrying an invitation from a friend. Clicking on the link takes you to the pseudo Facebook site, where you are asked to enter your account credentials.

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Pseudo Facebook login page at fbaction.net

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Millions of accouts have since been compromised, and according to Webpronews reports;

“Facebook says it has blocked the domain from being shared on the site, removing referring content, and resetting passwords of senders so attackers can no longer access Facebook accounts. In addition the company says they’ve asked Markmonitor to blacklist the domain and they’ve reached out to ISPs for information to file a civil suit or criminal case. ”

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In what is probably the “biggest” news in the month of April, Facebook has officially opened up its activity stream to developers through the launch of the new
Facebook Open Stream API.

So what’s the big deal?

Apparently, the new API would allow developers build applications which would enable users “read and interact with their stream”. According to Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform marketing, “the entire feed will be available through a single API call”- meaning a developer could recreate the entire Facebook home page if he wanted to or take parts of the feed and remix it to make something more interesting.

The move is in line with Facebook’s  “steps toward greater openness” as it looks to bolster its efforts in this regards. In a post on the Facebook developers blog, it said- “we believe users must have full control and choice and that’s exactly how we’ve designed Facebook Platform and the Open Stream API”.

One can only imagine the numerous possibilities this platform provides- quite endless really. But of course, there are certain limitations. According to Erick Schonfeld, Facebook still only allows developers to cache data for 24 hours, so an application such as a search engine for instance would only be able to return search results for a day.

I however felt uncomfortable with one particular statement in the post covering this new development on the Facebook blog;

“…With these new methods, you can access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience.”

Maybe I don’t get the full import of this statement, but shouldn’t this raise some security (not to mention privacy) concerns. Whatever be the case, this surely provides the network a perfect opportunity to provide a richer user experience for its 200 million users.

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Facebook’s redesign has come under intense fire from a large section of its 175 million users. The new design has been described as being complicated, less practical, hard to use, etc. Some have even referred to the new design as “a cheap replica of twitter”, with others going as far as calling it ”completely stupid”.

What is more, several New Facebook haters’ groups have emerged, such as “1,000 000 + to bring back old facebook” , “10,000,000 AGAINST THE NEW FACEBOOK, CHANGE IT BACK!“, and “MILLIONS AGAINST FACEBOOK’s NEW LAYOUT & TERMS OF SERVICE”, having memberships of 436,635, 493,545, and 2,680,309 respectively.

Additionally, results from a Facebook app which allows users to vote on the new design show an increasing number of people opposed to the new design. According to Jason Lee Miller, 94% of almost a million votes turned out to be against the design.

Facebook had earlier reverted its terms of service due to opposition from its users, we’d just have to wait and see if this repeats itself. It’s also worth noting that a couple of people have reportedly deactivated their Facebook accounts because of the new design;

“I deactivated my account when they first redesigned Facebook, not only because I didn’t like the new layout but also because users hadn’t been asked their opinion before they made that layout which was definitely not user-friendly… It’s a shame, Facebook was rather cool.”

“I deactivated my facebook account, giving myself a well-needed break. Hopefully, when I activate it again in a month or so, they will have gotten their act together. Somehow, I doubt this will happen.”

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If you logged in to your Facebook account this morning, you would no doubt have noticed the glaring “Terms of Use Update” which read;

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Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new
terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have
decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the
issues that people have raised..... 

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Facebook creator, Mark Zuckerberg, in a post on the Facebook blog, said;

This move comes 2 days after (not implying any connection whatsoever) Independent filmmaker Luis Moro and his wife, producer and actress Bobbi Miller-Moro accused Facebook of Censorship. The couple initially accused the 175 million strong Social Network of deleting Luis’s account for “political reasons”, a claim which Facebook said was absurd.

According to the couple;

“All he was doing was posting about ‘The Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act’ in Cuba-related groups, and to friends with the same interest,”.

“When I posted on my status ‘My husband’s account was deleted by Facebook’ it was erased 3 times from the main wall! I could not believe it.” Mrs Moro added. She went on to say that her husband’s account was deleted Monday evening after Luis sent out word about the proposed Cuban travel bill.

In Facebook’s defence, Barry Schnitt, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook categorically stated;

“That system is designed to keep spammers and potential harassers from abusing Facebook.  It is triggered by a user sending too many messages or friending too many people who ignore their requests.  In this case, the user ignored at least one of the warnings when he was spamming people with messages and friend requests to promote his cause and was automatically disabled.  The suggestion that our automated system has been programmed with a certain political agenda is absurd.”

“In the press release the user acknowledges receiving warnings from our automated system,” he further added.

Though Luis’s account was restored and an E-mail apology issued, Mrs Moro wasn’t “so sure her husband wasn’t targeted”, citing Facebook’s alleged history of censorship involving words and phrases like “anti-war,” “Gaza,” and “Palestine,” as well as the much publicized row with breastfeeding mothers.

Anyway, returning to the changes, Facebook says “we’ve changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.”

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