Facebook was caught with their hand in the wrong cookie jar today, not literally speaking but close enough. They were actually busted in a secret campaign against their biggest rival Google, confirmed a company spokesman.
According to a report from “The Daily Beast”, Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller, a leading public relations firm to pitch anti Google stories, suggesting they investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy.
The idea was to release ghostwritten reports to popular online sites such as The Washington Post, Politico and The Huffington Post. However the plan backfired on FB when the firm hired to do the smear campaign was discovered by “The Daily Beast”. Short of embarrassing for Facebook is to say the least about this failed attempt.
For Facebook, this represents the latest in a history of errors for a company that has struggled to portray itself as trustworthy, noteworthy as founder Mark Zuckerberg and company struggle to deal with the evolving touchy subject of personal privacy.
When Facebook was confronted they did not deny the fact that they hired the firm to go after Google. In their defense they believe that their rival is doing many things to raise privacy concerns and that they have the right to investigate. Other skeptics believe the more important reason is resentment that Google is trying to use Facebook data in its own social networking service currently in the works.
Many believe that its part of a growing rivalry, and a very bitter one that is only getting fueling up. Much more may come once Google does announce its rumored plans to release its social networking site.
Today Facebook announced its latest feature, Deals. Facebook’s Deals will compete against Groupon, LivingSocial and Google Offers by offering discounts to local businesses and attractions.
Deals is currently available in:
§ Atlanta
§ Austin
§ Dallas
§ San Diego
§ San Francisco
Facebook is planning to expand across the US later this year. Facebook is hoping to redesign the way users find discounts by combining it with social interaction. Deals is primarily targeting coupons directed towards group activities as opposed to those intended for individuals which plays into the social networking aspect.
Facebook is looking to expand social networking beyond the World Wide Web and into reality such as when they introduced the check-in feature.
Facebook users will be able to access the coupons by clicking on the Deals tab from their homepage, signing up for emails as well as seeing what deals your friends are interested in. Privacy and safety are still concerns with Facebook users. However, you will have the option to not share every purchase with your friends. There is a privacy option allowing you to keep certain purchases private. By offering so many options to learn about deals users won’t be forced to seek out discounts.
Facebook Credits will allow users to take advantage of those coupons more easily. Credits is a virtual currency that can be purchased with a credit card, PayPal or mobile phone. Until now Credits has only been used to purchase virtual and digital goods.
By allowing users to plan group outings such as concerts, wine tastings, rafting, etc. online with a discount expands not only the reach of Facebook but our need regularly check out our Newsfeed updates.
Image used is from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fudyma/5224898383/
On Monday, Facebook launched their new messaging system. This all-in-one communication network simplifies and combines all of the tools we use to talk to one another. The new Messages combines messages, texts, chats and emails allowing you to receive all forms of communication to whatever electronic device you choose. The new system will also automatically organize your incoming messages. All of your conversations with each individual will be grouped allowing you to easily see your history.
You will have the choice to sign up for @facebook.com account although it is not mandatory. The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, feels e-mail is becoming outdated and their new Messages reflects what young people want. However, they do not expect Facebook users to abandon their Yahoo and Gmail accounts.
Many people are intrigued by how this system might change the way we communicate but are still hesitant as to what extent. This service is currently only being offered by invitation only, but will be available to all users within the next few months. This is just the latest update to Facebook in recent months, helping them to slowly become more than just a social networking site.
A healthy competition is continuing to brew between Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft for the future leader of the world wide web. Facebook and the new Messaging faces challenges in the next coming months to see how they will handle spam and how easy it is to use. The are battling spam by organizing your inbox by friends and those you are not Facebook friends with. You will have the ability to move people from folder to folder to make sure you receive your most important messages first. Facebook hopes to encourage businesses to incorporate the system into their interoffice communication. However, with a large number of companies banning the use of social media websites in the work place, how successful can it be.
Is this something you would consider introducing at work? Or would you simply use it for personal use?
Photo used is from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsevis/4785888323/sizes/l/in/photostream.
The world’s most used social media site Facebook, is now chasing down and punishing several application developers for passing certain information about their users to a data broker. This is the latest move by the social networking site to control growing concerns over privacy and its users. The developers were being paid by a data broker for user IDs, unique numerical identifiers assigned to the site’s users, which can appear in a URL when they use the site.
The user IDs do not contain personal information, but could lead to information that the person has chosen to display publicly. The latest revelation shows that some application developers were then passing those user IDs to a data broker (which remains unnamed). The brokers would then take this data and compile information to sell to advertising networks so users can be targeted with ads that are related to their personal interests.
This is only one of several privacy concerns surrounding Facebook lately; A lawsuit recently against Zynga (a social games developer) and Facebook alleges that 218 million user IDs just about half of the Facebook population, were shared with third party advertisers collecting personal details for ad targeting. Facebook’s terms of use specifically promise not to use the data allegedly shared in the lawsuit complaint.
So where are the user’s rights? Well… Facebook is working on a “technical solution” to prevent the wrongful passing of user IDs and will also work with browser vendors on this issue. The technical fix, to be released next week, will allow application developers to share a unique but anonymous identifier with permitted third parties such as content partners, advertisers or service providers.
The developers being exiled from Facebook are not being named and Facebook has reached an agreement with a data broker called Rapleaf, which was storing user IDs. Rapleaf was one of many companies that stored user IDs and they confirmed that they will not be using the information and deleting it from their databases immediately.
Facebook is in the process of rolling our two new features to its users; the ability to download (and backup) your entire profile, and new security enhancements that allow you to control who and what is logged into your account, new one time password (OTP) support, and finally ability to be notified when someone signs into your account.
Ability to Download Your Information
The “Download Your Information” ability is quite useful as you can download a single zip archive file containing all of your profile information, photos, wall posts, messages, videos, friend lists, and other related content, this download also includes a table of contents-like HTML page for you to quickly access your information when you unzip the archive file.
This feature provides Facebook users with a simple way to backup or retrieve all of their information within their account, thus making it easy to back-up your information, as well all know data loss is never a fun experience.
Once the feature rolls out to your account, all you need to do is head to Account > Account Settings > Download Your Information, you will find a “learn more” link, which will take you to the Download Your Account page, and from there you will the popup below, letting you chose to download all the information.
Enhanced Facebook Security
One Time Passwords – If you have your cell phone registered on your Facebook account, you may now utilize the new one time password option by sending a text message of “otp” to 32665, it will reply with a unique single use password, allowing you to login with the single use password during the next 20 minutes, once.
This one time password option is an excellent way to help keep your account secure when logging in from a computer, device or network that you do not trust or are uncertain of, such as public wifi at an airport, or a local coffee shop.
Facebook Session Control – You may now view what devices are actively logged into your Facebook account, and you have the ability to end their sessions immediately. This feature does not appear to reflect sessions on my android mobile phone, only web browser sessions, I hope to see Facebook expand to support all devices soon.
Facebook Login Notification – While checking out Facebook’s new session controls, I also came across another new feature of Facebook, which is the ability to have an email, or a text (SMS) message sent to you when someone logs into your account.
It is nice to see big social networks such as Facebook stepping up to the plate and keeping up with today’s security needs and also providing its user base with new enhanced features. Let me know your thoughts on Facebook’s new features!
The primary image used was taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/deneyterrio/2321206299/.
On Wednesday, the online social network Facebook unveiled their latest tool to connect you to your friends and family. The updated Groups feature allows you to share information with a select group of friends as opposed to all of your friends.
You will be able to create a group, add friends and share information, photos, etc more privately. Members of the group will also be able to add friends. Everyone added to the group will be posted as well as the name of the person who added them. The names of the groups and the member of each will be visible to everyone but the information shared is “closed” by default.
New features of Groups includes creating and editing group documents, e-mailing the entire group using a custom e-mail address, as well as the most requested item group chat. Facebook users were only allowed to chat one on one until now. When an individual posts an item within a group a notification will be sent to all members of the group ensuring everyone sees the post.
There are a number of reasons to create a “closed” group such as your baseball team, your closest friends and family, your various clubs, the possibilities are endless. What kind of groups would you find most appealing?
After reading about the latest update to Facebook, I created my own private Group of “out of town family members” who can now easily watch my children grow up through pictures, videos and stories while I can keep those memories private. The newest feature is user friendly and is a great addition to the world of social networking. The success of the updated Groups depends on you the users.
So, Facebook users will you be taking advantage of a “closed” group or will you continue sharing your information with all of your friends?
Over the past week every other headline seems to be about privacy online. Google and Facebook have both been making headlines about questionable security practices. Each of these online giants touches our lives on a daily basis and it is important to stay on top of their security practices.
Google has many countries across the world are in an up roar about “accidental collection” of personal information from the public Wi-Fi Networks. Many countries, including the US, have started an investigation to whether or not they breached data protection and computer hacking laws. Google is claiming they overlooked this problem and that they did not use the gathered information for any other purpose then to improve services. Look for more headlines regarding Google’s oversight and how they will be correcting their privacy issues.
Facebook has been topping the headlines with their privacy settings issues that affect all of their 400 million users. So, what is going on with Mark Zuckerberg and all of his friends at Facebook? They have been receiving a lot of heat for their lack of privacy and bulky privacy settings page. The current privacy settings are defaulted to public, and you have to navigate your way through about 170 different granular settings to make the switch to having a more private setting. Facebook users have been voicing their concerns for months about the default privacy settings and awkward granular privacy settings page. Finally, Facebook has listened to the users and will be making significant changes to their privacy. The changes will include;
- Sharing
- One page of privacy settings that will have a default privacy setting, along with separate levels of privacy.
- Granular controls are still available to use, but do not have to be used.
- Basic Directory Information
- Less publically available information.
- Only necessary information for people to find you on the site.
- Platforms
- Control over what applications (Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc) and sites have access to your information.
You can read more about the updated privacy settings on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg also posted a nice blog and video today reviewing the changes to the privacy settings. These new privacy controls will start taking effect gradually over the next few weeks, so you won’t see them right away. If you are interested in changing your privacy settings, you can log into your Facebook account, go to Account, and select privacy settings.
The purpose of Facebook (or any social networking site for that matter) is to connect people together. Ask your aunt, your cousin, your neighbor, your pharmacist why he or she has a Facebook account. Undoubtedly, the response will be, to keep in touch with people and learn what they are up to as well as what their likes and dislikes are. So what is the Facebook open social graph and what does it have to do with other websites?
Picture this: you’re on Facebook and you’re scrolling down the news feed. You see someone wished someone else a happy birthday. You see an announcement that someone is moving. You see that someone “likes” a certain website or a certain group of people. Well, before the open social graph came about, Facebook users had to push the “like” button for that website or group of people from within their Facebook account. The open social graph brings that “like” button to you – on many websites other than Facebook.
Here’s an example – the very popular IMDb.com website provides all sorts of data and information about movies. Let’s say you’re looking up the latest blockbuster to find out more about it. You glance to the right of the screen and you see that familiar “like” button from Facebook – although, you’re not on Facebook, you’re on IMDb.com. You click it and you’ve just notified Facebook and all other people who “liked” it that you like it too. Now when you go back to IMDb.com (or any other website that has this feature), you will notice a specific list of your friends from Facebook who have also said they “liked” it as well.
This could work for any website that chooses to have this feature whether it’s an online vitamin store or a national news website. So basically what it’s doing is connecting everyone together outside of the one-dimensional social networking website, Facebook. Basically, any website that chooses to can plug some simple code into their meta data and provide the “like” button on their own website. In essence, the Facebook open social graph brings the interactive qualities of Facebook to any websites that choose to join in with the networking fun.
This is a guest post by Eric Rea. Image taken from blog.joshbarr.com.
I was recently putting together a document for benchmarks involving Social Media, and to make sure I wasn’t missing anything I did a Google search to see if I was missing any benchmarks. What I found was interesting was most everything was for pay, which makes little sense. There isn’t much giving away of intellectual property with sharing how to set goals? So with that, here are 5 benchmarks that your social media presence can strive for. If you reach these goals you will see success:
Twitter- Number of followers. In order to effectively spread your message and engage successfully we suggest organically getting over 1000 followers, and over 100 Tweets.
Facebook Fanpage – Once you get to 50 posts with unique content (articles and blogs), and over 200 followers you will see some calls to actions occur.
LinkedIn Group – Same deal with 50 posts, but with Linked In usually 100 followers on LinkedIn does the trick. We have found most folks on LinkedIn are inclined to participate in business ventures then on Facebook. So less is more!
Youtube – Once you get 15 new video posted and shared in Social Bookmarking channels and embedded in your blog or social website, you will start seeing success. Remember unique content is key, so these videos need to be created by you and your organization.
Alexa – We have seen a direct correlation between traffic ranking under 800,000 and social media success. If you do your due diligence of sharing your unique content in DoFollow Social Media channels with the link pointing back to your blog or social website, you will start seeing success at achieving your business objectives once you get under 800,000 (lower the better- Facebook is ranked 4 in the world). Share the link to your unique content in as many Do follow Social Media channels! It is laborious, but incredibly important.
We have well over 200 benchmarks that we share with our clients. But these are 5 benchmarks that will help you be successful using Social Media if you do your due diligence (commitment to unique content) and track to these markers. Don’t hesitate to contact Authority Domains if you need additional help or guidance.
I’ve happened upon several posts lately talking about how little social media has helped this or that individual or company. Most of these posts tend to lay the blame of failure on the concept of Social Media, which is a huge misstep. More often than not, an SMM campaign fails because of the execution, exacerbated by these six factors:
Strategy is Integral to all Social Media Campaigns
