U.K. soldiers have been told that terrorists can use social networking sites to identify and target military personnel. As a result, they should avoid posting their connections to the armed forces in their profiles. The U.S. Army network on Facebook lists 57,234 members; the Marine Corps has 6,207; the Air Force has 11,563; and the Navy has 13,880 sailors in its network. [The Register]
Who says Facebook is the province of the young? Increasingly, the 30something bosses of naive recent college grads are proving adept at turning the social network against its earliest adopters. Kevin Colvin, an intern at Anglo Irish Bank's North American arm, was busted when he told his manager, Paul Davis, that he'd miss work due to what colleagues took to be a "family emergency". Davis turned up the photo above, freshly posted to Facebook from the Halloween party Colvin apparently missed work to attend, and attached it to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it. The email thread is now spreading around the net. After the jump, the entire exchange, and the incriminating photo.
WhatsOpen, the stealth startup behind the first known Googlephone app, is quietly admitting to people in the industry that it is using Google's Android OS for cell phones for its mobile app which tells users which nearby stores are open. As the wags at Gizmodo noted, the killer app for Android is figuring out where to get a beer at 3 a.m. Other than that, WhatsOpen's secretive founders are anxious to downplay their ties to Google. After Google billionaire Sergey Brin was spotted asking a WhatsOpen executive to keep his company under wraps, people widely expected a noiseless Google takeover.
Facebook calls its developer platform an ecosystem, but at this evolutionary stage it's more like primordial ooze. Full of shoddy apps and spammy monetization schemes, it's murky where advertisers can place their dollars without getting knee-deep in something nasty. A couple of weeks ago, we reported on Ad Chap, a new ad network devoted the platform. Well, over the weekend, Ad Chap had a few "issues," according to the company's blog.
AllFacebook reports that the Facebook-run group for the third-party application Total Sports Fan was hacked over the weekend. An Ohio State college football fan broke into the forum to post a taunting message repeatedly under different usernames. No word yet on whether the hacker penetrated further than the discussion group.
When law professor William McGovern questioned the legality of Facebook ads last week, Facebook insisted its news Social Ads aren't endorsements, they're a "representation" of user activity. Semantics matter here, because New York law requires permission before people's names and images are used to endorse products. McGovern contends Facebook's ads are endorsements. He may have a point — look no further than Facebook's own sample ad from Blockbuster:
In the fantasy world of the blogosphere, reporters for big national newspapers are slow-thinking, backdated rubes flummoxed by the Net, which they mistakenly call teh Intarwebs. In real life, 58-year-old New York Times reporter John Markoff is spending Sunday afternoon cranking through Facebook, installing apps like a champ and taking friend requests from slacker freelance writers i.e. me. This is the same John Markoff thanked in the credits for the original Mac OS two decades ago. Sure, we mocked his Times piece announcing Web 3.0. But at the rate Scoop-'em Markoff is flooding my news feed, he's going to know more about Facebook than the entire Valleywag staff by Monday morning. Sigh, back to work.
Well, these Facebook pages for celebrities and products are really going to work out well, now, aren't they? You can now become a fan of "God," a move which is going to thoroughly delight Campus Crusaders everywhere. But get ready for some holy wars. There are, as of this post, three different gods to choose from. This is a violation of the First Commandment. But even worse? It's a violation of Facebook's terms of service.
Each Friday, NYT.com General Manager Vivian Schiller and 'Times' deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman write an in-house email on the subject of The Future and The Internet and The Newsroom.As of 4 a.m. today, when this week's email was sent, more than 1000 folks had declared themselves "Fans" of the New York Times on the paper's new Facebook page. Here are some of the Facebook comments:"'NYTimes ... Freakonomics, Ethicist, Chess, Pogue, and all the news. Best!'
'Hi NYT. I try to never miss your daily e-output. ...'
'NYT, the nation's newspaper.'
'NYT rules!'
'Oh NYT how I love you. ...'
'Yes! The NYT is my religion.'
And this, from one Max Schindler of Mountain Lakes High School (Ah, the
elusive young reader): 'I love the nyt, more than anything else.'"
Snooping on user profiles isn't the only special privilege Facebook employees have. They also get to test the site's latest features. Like news feed voting. Above is a mockup of my news feed as a Facebooker would see it, based on real screenshots from an inside source. (Showing a screenshot of his actual news feed would out my source to Facebook management, I fear.) Notice the "plus" and "minus" buttons? Those are new. Not yet available to the public, those will allow users of the social network to vote on items that appear in their news feeds. The news feed is a stream of friends' activities on the site, filtered by Facebook's algorithms which try to predict what you'll find interesting. Voting means users will have active input into those algorithms. If you're thinking "cute feature," think again. Here's why Facebook's voting-rights move is worth watching.
Facebook's new ads come in two forms. Social Ads are based on your profile. Beacon ads come from other sites when your friends do something there. Enterprising JavaScript nerds have already reverse-engineered a way to keep them out of your face.
The new Facebook ads that track your actions on third-party sites and then use your name to endorse these brands to your friends may be illegal. According to the New York Times, there's a 100-year-old New York State statute which says that "any person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained" can sue for damages. Facebook would also be committing a misdemeanor. 1.7 million of them, by the latest count of New Yorkers in Facebook's ad-targeting system.
Apple and Ticketmaster have hooked up for a new promotion. Buyers of concert tickets can get the matching artist's album from the iTunes store for $1 off. Ticketmaster had already offered iTunes affiliate links on its site, which passes a kickback to Ticketmaster for any resulting sales. Additionally, a gift-card pack will be sold with a pair of $25 cards, one for Ticketmaster and one for iTunes. Last month, Ticketmaster gave away 5 free iTunes song credits to anyone who joined its Facebook group. No word on if you can be a "fan" of Ticketmaster on Facebook yet — or if anyone would "fan" the much-hated ticketing conglomerate without bribery.
Oh noes: Fortune executive editor Josh Quittner's wife Michelle Slatalla is still writing her column about 'computers: who knew!' for the Times. Today, she revisits well-worn territory: How much her daughters hate her for cramping their style on Facebook. But she's upped the ante considerably now that she's discovered something called "apps." "The discovery of the existence of Naughty Gifts proved I was, once again, out of touch," Michelle writes. How to remedy? Adding as many apps as possible, starting "poo fights" with her husband, and sending her teenage daughters virtual rubber blow-up dolls. "Oh, my God, you are so creepy," one of them told her, before hanging up the phone on her. Heartwarming!
"The two platforms are very different in the user experience ... MySpace pages become a home on the Internet, it's where they discover people, content and culture ... Facebook, on the other hand, tends to be a Web utility, similar to a phone." — News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch on the differences between his MySpace and competitor Facebook. [Sydney Morning Herald]
Are you a fan of Valleywag? I am. (Do sign up. It feels a bit lonely by myself.) After Facebook launched its new ad offerings, I had three thoughts:
(1) Well, this means more spam!
(2) Scoble's going to be all over this.
(3) How do I get in on the action?
Facebook doesn't provide a do-it-yourself guide to the new offering, but it turns out anyone can sign up, easily. Valleywag now has a page on Facebook. After the jump, step-by-step instructions on how to get your own.
