Have you been paying attention lately to the little things Facebook is doing on your behalf? Have you noticed the helpful suggestions on the right side of the page, reminding you that you haven’t talked to so-and-so in ages and you really should send them a message? Have you noticed the plaintive little messages that [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Farewell to Geocities
That clunky but lovable monument to beginning-level Web design, Geocities, is going by the wayside. That’s a name that hasn’t been heard often in the last several years, but anyone who was doing anything on the Web in its early years knows about this service and has probably created something on it. Back before the [...]
Urgent distress call sent to Facebook friends. Phone broken? No, they used the phone to send it
Two Aussie girls got lost in a storm drain. Solution? Post an update on Facebook via mobile phone. The thought of using the phone to call Australia’s version of 911 apparently never occurred to them.
Fortunately, it worked — this time. But what if none of their friends had been logged in at that time? What [...]
Quote from NYT: ‘It’s not your Facebook profile. It’s Facebook’s profile about you’
The New York Times has an article that expresses much of the sentiment I’ve been forming about Facebook over the last several months. It says there is a small but growing group of people who are leaving the site after putting some thought into its implications. To summarize this sentiment in one sentence: commercializing the [...]
Latest Facebook lawsuit alleges site exists only to snoop on you and sell the information
Five users of Facebook recently filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that the true purpose of the site is to collect information about consumers “in the most innocuous way possible” and sell it to third parties. While it’s doubtful that the suit will gain much traction, the litigants’ analysis of the Facebook business model is [...]
Are recommendations on Linked In worth anything?
There’s a lot to like about Linked In. For one thing, it’s a social networking site with a specific purpose beyond time wasting: finding a better job. For another, it has so far avoided the clutter and chaos of MySpace and Facebook (though I’m not sure how long that will last.)
But there’s one feature on [...]
Makers of role-playing games on Facebook accused of stealing copyrighted artwork
Hmmm. A whole week has passed and there have been no controversies involving Facebook! Excellent.
Wait…
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/08/04/another-facebook-rpg-controversy/
How to keep Facebook from using your profile photo in its ads
Earlier I posted about how Facebook is using our profile photos in its ads in distressing ways. It turns out there is a way to disable this. Unsurprisingly, Facebook does not broadcast this fact. But all you have to do is change a setting.
Just go to Settings in the upper right corner, and choose Privacy Settings. On [...]
This ad on Facebook is a lie
We’ve all seen those I.Q. test banner ads all over the place, saying Britney Spears has an IQ of 115 and challenging you to see how you compare. Or was it 125? Or 150? The number seems to change every time somehow.
My wife asked me the other day if I had ever taken an I.Q. [...]
A victory for Facebook users, but will it last?
Facebook’s reversal of its attempt to assert complete ownership of all content uploaded by its users was an important victory for those users. As I discussed in the inaugural rant of this blog, users of social networking sites are already exploited — they’re unpaid content creators. But for now, users have rolled back Facebook’s claim [...]