Archive for: facebook
Matt Mckeon prepared a very interesting report about the evolution of Facebook’s privacy regarding the contents on each profile. The cool thing about it is that we can analyze with pretty straight forward images.
(The site contains an animated image showing the report, which does not work with IE)
Should not surprise us that the largest social network site ever gets a lot of attention when there are some changes in their usability and how the information or content is displayed in the Internet; after all Facebook represents the identity of millions today, not only people but companies as well.
The report basically takes the changes introduced over the years in the default privacy settings for Facebook user’s personal information and Facebook Terms of Service. The type of “personal data” analyzed here are: likes, name, picture, gender, birthday, friends, networks, wall posts, photos and extended information (like school, college, family members, etc).
Facebook has changed the basic principle of being a fan of site to now being based around the “like” concept. Likebutton.me offers us a new way of keeping track of all those “likes” around us.
Likebutton.me provides us the “like traffic” from our friends in Facebook, and monitor what does people like. The site also uses some default columns like CNN, YouTube, TechCrunch, WallStreen Journal, NY Times, MTV, Hulu, Engadget, etc.; and showing us which of our friends recently liked it some content about it.
The system reminds you of something? Digg maybe?
What if Facebook’s “Like” feature replaces Digg and other similar sites? What do you think?
Cisco completed a very interesting report regarding social networking sites and companies. Taking several countries as reference, around 52% of organizations block social networking applications and collaboration tools; with the main differential in India, where the 96% IT administrators and decision makers block this content.
The complete study took 10 different countries around the globe, and the main reason for organization to block any of these applications or tools reside in security matters or in the “lack of education with these tools”.
But that’s not all, the study also shows that around 50% of the users actually ignore company policy and 27% of those admit that they usually get a workaround by changing some settings to get access to those sites and applications (I’m pretty sure that the 27% is a lot bigger).
Around 2023 users and 1021 IT administrators and decision makers completed this research.
What about your company? Do they block some content or applications to end-users?
This is another great infographic from Mashable, which outlines Facebook’s numbers and growth compared to the USA.
A study made by health experts indicates that Facebook is linked to the raise and resurgence of sexually-transmitted diseases in a large area in the UK.
“Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex.” says Professor Peter Kelly, director of public health in Teesside. The study remarks that one of the diseases that increased lately in this area (Sunderland, Durham and Teesside) is syphilis. Professor Kelly said “Syphilis is a devastating disease. Anyone who has unprotected sex with casual partners is at high risk. There has been a fourfold increase in the number of syphilis cases detected with more young women being affected.”
The particularity of this area is that, shown in the report, people that live there are 25% more likely to use social networking sites that the rest in Britain.
Ok, I can see some kind of link between social networking sites and having “casual sex”, but still the decision for people to meet strangers and not having the necessary sexual precautions, still is a matter of the people involved and not the actual site.
There’s no news to you if I say that having a lot of Facebook shares for your articles can bring you a lot of traffic; and also you should know that the time schedule for publishing articles it is an important factor to get a lot of hits. So, when is the best time to publish an article and get a lot of shares on Facebook? Weekends says this report.
Dan Zarrella always brings some interesting reports about social networks, the name of social media scientist fits perfectly on him; and this special report could make a huge difference among bloggers and writers. Here’s the graph:
Besides the massive Facebook sharing over the weekend, notice the following:
- The weekend is the time where fewer articles are posted but most of the sharing is happening there.
- The data is considering and remarking an average sharing line.
- One of the considerations of this increase over the weekend could be, as Dan says, that the most of the companies in the US blocks Facebook.
And you? When do you share the most?
Hi5 have just acquired the gaming company ‘Big Six’ in order to flesh out the gaming sector of their website, a popular social network. Hi5 has been up an running for quite a few years now. Although it has never really taken off in Europe it is big in the US and is following the lead of others such as Facebook in terms of integrating gaming into their network.
As of now, 15% of their revenue comes from gaming by its users so I guess it makes sense to buy up a popular games developer in order to give the feature a shot of adrenaline. But they’ll have some stiff competition as the likes of FarmVille on Facebook have millions of active players.
An emphasis will also be put on developing the social network’s currency further to encourage people to spend their money there rather than on other networks.
“We are excited to be joining a company that shares our philosophy and vision for how social gaming will evolve,” said Kevin Gliner, co-founder and CEO, Big Six. “This deal is a perfect match because it enables us to accelerate our go-to-market plans by leveraging hi5’s huge global audience.”
Facebook, undoubtedly the biggest social network at the minute, has been promoting and ramping up its ‘credits’ system over the past year or so. These ‘credits’ afford users the opportunity to use real world money to purchase gifts, apps and songs which can either be used by themselves or given as presents to other Facebook users.
Now, they are allowing users to pay with PayPal, which has in excess of 80 million users. Previous to this one could only purchase Facebook credits via credit card or by using their mobile phone. By intergrading with PayPal, Facebook will undoubtedly allow more people to use the service, particularly young people who may not have access to a credit card themselves but do have a PayPal account.
Recent speculation as to whether Facebook would be opening their own payment service to compete with PayPal have pretty much been put to bed with this recent update. Many people said that you would soon be able to “pay with Facebook” on eCommerce sites. However, it seems unlikely that Facebook and PayPal would be cooperating on such a big revenue-making deal whilst one party was plotting the downfall of the other.
Google Chrome extensions continue in showing us some interesting ways to interact everything in our world with Google’s browser. That’s why now we can easily check friend’s status in Facebook and even update our own with the Facebook’s Google Chrome Extension.
The usability is really simple since integrates directly with your Gmail account, placing the Facebook logo right under the Google Buzz icon. The interaction with Facebook is the same as any other API, using Facebook connect; you just need to log in and you’ll instantly get access to the updates.
Here’s an important note made by the creator, if you want to update your status you must click on the image.
Some of the previous versions of this extension seemed that had a lot of problems, now the latest build 0.0.2.1 is more stable but according to some users still is a little buggy.
One of the biggest games on Facebook is Zynga’s Farmville. A game so highly interacted with, it’s now touting over 81 millions fans. Zynga minces no words when it states that it’s now bigger than Twitter, which it is, and is sure that people know that. The game is just one of many Zynga properties, but considering the number o players on Facebook, it’s the biggest.
What is Farmville? Well if you’d like to have a virtual garden, perhaps raise a virtual chicken, or just be a virtual farmer all together, then this game is for you. It’s a game of passion for some and annoyance for others. Those not playing have repeatedly complained and gone so far as block Farmville updates from their Facebook streams. It’s a love and hate relationship, with very little room for gray areas.
Recently at the DICE Summit, Farmville was announced as the winner during the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in Las Vegas. The game was up against some other heavy hitters like Bejeweled Blitz, Restaurant City, and Farm Town. Rising above them all, it was awarded the Social Networking Game of the Year, on top of an already successful venture capitalist funding round.
I’m not a fan of Farmville, I don’t play games on Facebook, but perhaps some of you do. What’s your take on the game?
