If your Twitter feed starts blowing up with effusive praise for Virgin America, it may be because the airline has influenced those sets of 140 characters with free flights. [More]
social networking
How To Use Facebook's New Privacy Controls
By 5.26.10
Lifehacker has a handy guide to and analysis of the new, streamlined privacy controls just announced by Facebook. There’s also the full version posted on Facebook. The new controls are simpler, but fall short in some respects. [More]
Appleseed: A Privacy-Centric Facebook Slayer With Working Code
By 5.14.10
While Diaspora has gotten a lot of attention, and money, as an open-source privacy-centric alternative to Facebook, those four scrappy NYU kids weren’t the first to think of a node-based social networking platform where every user owns their own data: It’s called Appleseed, and it already has working source code. [More]
Would You Like To Buy A Facebook Account?
By 5.4.10
If you’ve got $45 burning a hole in your special black market fund and have a hankering for a bundle of 1,000 stolen or fake Facebook accounts, you might want to talk to your friendly neighborhood social networking pirate. [More]
Loads More Data In A Tweet Than Just 140 Characters, & More To Come
By 4.23.10
A tweet. A seemingly innocuous 140-character piece of data shared over Twitter. That’s what you see as a user, but inside, there’s much more. Raffi Krikorian has cracked open a tweet to show you all the data that can be inside, like your geolocation, bio, name, etc. And last week, along with their advertising initiatives, Twitter announced that they’re adding “annotations,” which will allow developers to add just about any kind of data inside a tweet. This could spark a lot of fun innovations, but anytime you’re opening up more data, there’s always the potential for abuse. In any event, it’s cool to check out a tweet under the hood: [More]
Facebook Used To Make Partners Delete Your Data After 24 Hrs. No Longer.
By 4.21.10
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that Facebook will toss a policy that made developers and partners with access your data to delete it after 24 hours. Now they can just keep it. Turns out the privacy policy hindered growth:
Zuckerberg told Inside Facebook: [More]
Delete Your Facebook Account Forever
By 4.20.10
Whether you’re trying to get a job and worried about snoopy new bosses, sick of maintaining a virtual profile constantly bombarded with increasingly useless updates and pings from people that you decreasingly actually know, fed up with Facebook’s attitude towards their users, disgusted with your addiction to it, or just want you, your personal details and habits, and photos, out, deleting your Facebook profile can be done in a few easy steps: [More]
If You're Looking For A Job, That Facebook Profile Can Only Hurt You
By 4.6.10
CNN manufactured a trend story about young professionals hiding their Facebook statuses so snooping prospective employees can’t find anything to eliminate them from job consideration. The story is based on a Microsoft survey that finds hiring managers use the site to dig for dirt on applicants. [More]
1983 PleaseRobMe, 1977 Foursquare
By 2.23.10
Technology is scary! People will use all these status and twitter and facebook updates to find out when you’re not home and come and steal all your DVDs! At least that was the ballyhoo last week when the site PleaseRobMe launched. Turns out, they were just reinventing the fear wheel. Andy Baio found an article from 1983 that warned consumers that burglars would know by your answering machine picking up that you weren’t home, and one from 1977 that advised against posting funeral notices in the paper, lest robbers make off with the silver while you’re burying grandpa. The more things change, the less they do. [More]
Even Tom Doesn't Use MySpace Anymore
By 2.15.10
Tom Anderson, cofounder of MySpace who has served as the networking site’s mascot throughout the ages, apparently is on the outs, TechCrunch reports. MySpace no longer assigns you Tom as your first friend when you sign up, and the man hasn’t logged into the site in weeks. [More]
Shed What's Left Of Your Financial Privacy On Blippy
By 1.22.10
Spotted by this CNN story, social networking site Blippy lets you broadcast your purchases to interested parties, while letting you keep track of others’ buys as well. Think of it as a financial Twitter. [More]
3 Essential Twitter-Enhancing Sites
By 1.22.10
This week I’ve stumbled upon three sites that made Twitter a heck of a lot more usable. These add-ons, which require you to log in with your Twitter username and password, have boosted my virtual self-esteem with compliments on my Twitter style. They’ve allowed me to vengefully un-follow dozens of Twits who had either given up on the ADHD social networking service. And they’ve liberated me from tricky oppressors I’d been following only out of mistaken loyalty, assuming they were following me. [More]
Classmates Says It Will Prostitute Your Info To Other Sites
By 1.18.10
Pete forwarded us an email from the social networking site Classmates, which apparently is attempting to stay relevant by spreading your information around the internet to sites people actually visit. At least users can opt out. [More]
Facebook Founder Says People Don't Even Want Privacy
By 1.11.10
Mark Zuckerberg thinks you don’t even really care about your privacy anymore because the “social norm” has changed. This makes it OK for his company to change the privacy settings of 350 million users. [More]
FTC Online Mall Teaches Tweens About Online Privacy, Scammers
By 12.14.09
This month, the Federal Trade Commission unveiled You Are Here, a virtual mall where kids can learn to avoid online scams, spot misleading ads, and learn good habits to be smart consumers. [More]
Planet Hollywood Responds To Negative Facebook Comment With Free Wine And Chocolates
By 12.13.09
Frustrated with a room mix-up and subsequent bad customer service at Planet Hollywood’s hotel/casino in Las Vegas, Brad expressed his frustration in a note on their Facebook fan page. [More]
How Your Online Life Can Mess With Your Credit
Blogging at SF Gate, personal finance expert and author Erica Sandberg writes about how things you do online — including your choice of friends in social networking sites and even comments you leave on blogs — can influence creditors. [More]