Facebook Announces Skype Video Chat Feature

Facebook Announces Skype Video Chat Feature... This is the world's easiest one-click way to chat over video, Facebook engineer Philip Su said at the news conference here. The Seattle programmer was Facebook's only full-time engineer working on its development along with Skype, a Facebook spokeswoman said

Facebook is encouraging its members to talk face to face -- over the computer.

The social networking giant introduced a video-calling feature on Wednesday in partnership with Skype, the popular Internet video-chat provider.

The product comes a week after Google launched a competing social network, called Google+, which also includes a video-chatting program.

Facebook's version will show up on the site as a "call" button at the top of users' profile pages. By clicking that or finding someone in a new "buddy list" bar on the right-hand side, Facebook users can talk to each other as long as they have webcams. The company began turning that service on for millions of users on Wednesday and will add it to more accounts over time, spokespeople said.

This is "the world's easiest one-click way" to chat over video, Facebook engineer Philip Su said at the news conference here. The Seattle programmer was Facebook's only full-time engineer working on its development along with Skype, a Facebook spokeswoman said.

Facebook on Wednesday also introduced a change to its instant-messaging service, which now allows people to create on-the-fly group conversations.

"This is their response to Google+ right now," said Ray Valdes, an Internet analyst at Gartner Research. "I think it's a little bit of catchup in terms of features."

Google bills its new network as a better way to communicate certain messages to subsections of friends. Google+ also has drawn praise for its ability, with a service called Hangouts, to let users video chat with several friends at a time.

Facebook's new video feature does not allow for group chats. However, Skype CEO Tony Bates noted that the union with Facebook leaves an opening to add new features later, such as group calling or paid features like calling to landlines.

What Facebook does have, however, is 750 million people actively using its service, said Mark Zuckerberg, the company's CEO. Google+ is nary a week old and only available to people who managed to procure an invite from a member of the media or a tech-savvy friend.

Zuckerberg took subtle jabs Wednesday at the new Google network, saying Facebook provides the best way for people to organize their friends into groups -- with minimal effort.

"If you think about it, it makes it so that your networking community can do the work of organizing your communities for you," Zuckerberg said of Facebook's grouping features. "You don't have to curate."

Facebook Announces Skype Video Chat Feature

Google+ Social Network

Google+ Social Network.

Google has finally launched its long-awaited social network, the Google+ project.

The Google+ network is designed around users' social circles (called +Circles) and lets users selectively share with specific groups within their personal network, rather than sharing with all their social connections at once.

The search giant emphasizes Google+'s privacy customizations and hopes that users will choose to use the new service over more established networks like Facebook and Twitter.

"In real life, we have walls and windows and I can speak to you knowing who's in the room, but in the online world, you get to a ‘Share' box and you share with the whole world," Bradley Horowitz, a VP of product management at Google, told the New York Times. By granting the user more control over what is shared, how and with whom, Google+ attempts to make the online sharing experience more secure and more personal. 

In addition to +Circles, Google's network will also let users add interests, video chat in groups, share content via mobile and many more features that should be familiar to social network users.

The search giant will integrate its new network directly into its massive web presence to allow users to socialize as they use various Google proucts. Mashable explains how Google will accomplish this:

 

The search giant's new social project will be omnipresent on every Google product, thanks to a complete redesign of the Google navigation bar. The familiar gray bar at the top of every Google page will turn black, and come with several new options for accessing your Google+ profile, viewing notifications and instantly sharing content at any time. The notification system is similar to how Facebook handles notifications, complete with a red number that increases with each additional notice.

 

Google is completing its field trial of the network, which is currently open only to a select few. However, you can visit Google+ to sign up, and Google will send you a notification when the service is ready. You can also explore the social network's landing page and to see what new features are in store.

Google+ Social Network

Is Email Killing the Post Office?

Is Email Killing the Post Office?  The rise of mobile, and smartphones in particular, must also play a role, as it caters to increased use in email and social media, not to mention text messaging, and even….the phone call!

Is email killing the post office? It’s not a new question. In fact, it’s been around nearly as long as the mainstream use of email itself, but it’s also not gone away, and the USPS has seen better days. I’m not normally one to buy too much into the typical x is killing y kind of hype, but the Postal Service is clearly severely injured.

BusinessWeek.com has put out a lengthy report looking at the decline of the USPS and its contributing factors. While the seven-page pice just briefly touches upon the subject of email, comparing the performance of the USPS to that of FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as counterparts in other countries, there’s no question that email and online communication in general have done their fair share of damage. 

People have been using email for years now, and despite some predicting the death of email (at the hands of social media), it’s clear that it’s hear to stay for quite some time. Even if email were to die, it wouldn’t do much to help the postal service. 

As we’ve seen just in the past week alone, email is an incredibly important part of business for companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter. Even Facebook has its own email now, and social networks all still rely on email to keep users engaged – that goes for the professionals too (ie: the newly public LinkedIn). 

In a recent study, 45% said that their use of email at work will most likely increase in the next five years. 51% said that it would likely stay the same. Only 4% thought it would decrease. At home, 36% of those surveyed thought their email use will increase, 55% said it will stand pat and 6% said it will likely decrease.

The majority of important online communication still takes place through email, whether that be B2B or B2C. C2C online communication may be trending more toward social media, but again, email still plays a role here, in terms of notifications, and there is still plenty of C2C communication through email. Even from heavy users of social media. Not everyone is on the same social network. That even goes for Facebook. Email is universal. You pretty much need an email address to have any kind of account online. 

The rise of mobile, and smartphones in particular, must also play a role, as it caters to increased use in email and social media, not to mention text messaging, and even….the phone call! The point is, communication is always as close as your pocket. It’s a lot easier and cheaper (at least on an individual interaction basis) than writing letters. And it’s in real time. 

“With the rise of e-mail and the decline of letters, mail volume is falling at a staggering rate, and the postal service’s survival plan isn’t reassuring,” Devin Leonard says in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek report, noting that the USPS is the country’s second-largest civilian employer after Walmart (with more post offices than the retail outlets of Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s combined). Last year its revenues were $67 billion, with even greater expenses, he says. 

According to the report, first-class mail, which the USPS gets the majority of its money from, has been steadily declining, and in 2005 fell below junk mail for the first time. Total mail volume has decreased 20% just from 2006 to 2010. The USPS hasn’t been able to cover its annual budget in three years. 

Well, there’s still packages right? Sure, but there’s also stiff competition from companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL, along with an increase in digital goods replacing physical goods. Think movies, music, and books. Amazon, the largest retailer on the web, announced last week that Kindle books are outselling print books. Never mind that there are a bunch of free ones too. 

Plus, everybody’s going paperless these days. The Director of Physical Infrastructure at the U.S. Government Accountability Office is quoted as saying, “What happens when Bank of America or Citigroup says you are going to have to pay to get your statement on paper? That’s going to change a lot of behavior. It’s going to affect the postal service. That’s how they make most of their money.”

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek report includes some interesting ideas on how the Postal Service could get back on track, at least to some extent, but the outlook is looking pretty bleak. You have to wonder what this will mean for the future of digital communication like email.

Is Email Killing the Post Office?

Facebook Places and Check-In Deals

Facebook Places and Check-In Deals Come to Pages. Facebook is certainly not new to business pages, but the increased functionality, stacked up to new and forthcoming features for Google’s Place Pages, means more direct competition as the go-to place for consumers

Facebook is making changes that make it easier for businesses to manage their Facebook presence and get customers to engage. 

InsideFacebook reports that Facebook has confirmed with them that it has started bringing Facebook Places functionality (including Check-In Deals) to Facebook Pages that have street addresses. Local businesses, pay attention. 

Josh Constine says: “Facebook tells us this automatic merge of Pages and Places ‘makes things easier for Page administrators’. We agree that it is a better solution than the now removed option to manually merge Places with Pages. By expanding the number of Pages that can run Checkin Deals, Facebook may be looking to drive user awareness and engagement with the product and earn money off of it through ads promoting the incentives.”

Local is an increasingly competitive space right now, and businesses have more and more ways to reach consumers online and through mobile devices than ever before. What will be particularly interesting to me is to see how this plays out with regards to competition with Google, which has essentially taken the place of yellow pages for many consumers. 

Facebook is certainly not new to business pages, but the increased functionality, stacked up to new and forthcoming features for Google’s Place Pages, means more direct competition as the go-to place for consumers to look up local business info, find deals, and even check in. Add to that, the fact that Bing continues to expand on its own Facebook integration and has made some big deals to greatly expand its mobile presence (via Microsoft partnerships with Nokia and RIM), and Google may end up feeling the heat from that angle as well. 

Facebook also recently rolled out Page tagging in Photos. Google is actually sending photographers out to businesses to take professional shots of interiors for inclusion on Place Pages. 

Facebook Places and Check-In Deals Come to Pages

Bing Teams Up With Facebook for Personalized Results

Bing Teams Up With Facebook for Personalized Results. Will you log into Facebook and use Bing’s new social search? Here is a detailed description of what the Facebook integration will look like on Bing, courtesy of the official Bing blog

Today, Microsoft’s search engine has announced that its “decision engine” will now be influenced by what they are calling the “friend effect,” basically what is popular with one’s Facebook friends. If you log into Facebook through Bing, you will now receive information on what your friends “like” when viewing search results. 

 

Not only will the new Bing with Facebook simply show you that your friends like a certain result, but the search engine will use the information is gleans from Facebook to actually modify your search results. 

Here is a detailed description of what the Facebook integration will look like on Bing, courtesy of the official Bing blog:

• “Liked” Results, Answers & Sites

Instantly see which stories, content and sites your Facebook friends have “liked,” from news stories, celebrities, movies, bands, brands and more. With the “thumbs up” from your friends you can jump right to the stuff that matters the most to you. Bing shows the faces of up to three of your friends that like a search result, offering a visual and virtual seal of approval from your trusted social network. 

• Personalized Results

Bing delivers a more personalized search experience by using the interests shown by your friends. Now you won’t miss potentially interesting information that may have been buried deep within the search results. Bing will surface results, which may typically have been on page three or four, higher in its results based on stuff your friends have liked. And, how often do you go beyond page one of the results?

• Popular Sites

Bing shows well-liked content, including trending topics, articles and Facebook fan pages, from sites across the web, to help you dig in and quickly find exactly what you’re looking for. Looking for a great recipe? Now when you search for a recipe site, you’ll see what recipes people have liked on that site, allowing you to cut through the clutter and find the perfect recipe for dinner. 

• Integration of Social Messages

Bing not only shows you what your friends like and share online, but also what major brands and companies are saying. For example, when you search for Avis, the answer on Bing will integrate any recent Facebook posts alerting you to a new deal. 

Bing is also integrating Facebook profile search into the engine, so that when you search for a person, Bing will provide a detailed “bio snapshot” of the person based one their Facebook profile. 

Bing is basing this partnership on the idea that recommendations from friends and family are what people want when making decisions. This shift towards social search might even be a bigger deal than it initially looks like on the surface. Bing says that “search remains largely driven by facts and links” and that this Facebook integration means that “it’s time to change that.” This may in fact be the first step in search becoming a truly social experience. 

As they say above, they are surfacing results, possibly from page three or four, to page one based on their popularity with friends. Is this indeed an algorithm change?

Will you log into Facebook and use Bing’s new social search? 

Bing Teams Up With Facebook for Personalized Results

Good Status For Facebook Updates

 

Good Status For Facebook Updates... If you really want to impress your friends your facebook status must be more than good, it should be a new one.wich means if you can get a new good status update then just be sure that your friends will like it...

You want to keep your facebook status a live, then you need good status for facebook, and here you will find 10 Good status for facebook, But first what is facebook status updates? they are small messages that facebook users share with their friends, when you share a facebook status, you may talk about anything you want, wether it's a a funny status update or a clever one what matters is to keep your status amusing for your friends to get good responses from them. If you really want to impress your friends your facebook status must be more than good, it should be a new one.wich means if you can get a new good status update then just be sure that your friends will like it.

Here is my list of 10 good status for facebook updates:

1. ┣▇f͟͞a͟͞c͟͞e͟͞b͟͞o͟͞o͟͞k͟͞▇▇═─™ This drug is very efficient for cases of chronic boredom. Extra doses can lead to addiction.
2. if only life came with a ◄◄ REW ► PLAY ▌▌PAUSE █▌STOP ►► FF
3. U have 10 fish, 5 drown, 3 come back to life. How many fish do you have? Stop counting smart one. Fish cant Drown
4. if u need a friend (text me) need a laugh (call me) need a hug (stop by) need money (this number is no longer in service)
5. Nobody wished me a happy birthday today, which isn't surprising really, since it isn't my birthday.
6. I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.
7. Some people say “If you can’t beat them, join them”. I say “If you can’t beat them, beat them”, because they will be expecting you to join them, so you will have the element of surprise.
8. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
9. A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don’t need it.
10. Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.

Good Status For Facebook Updates

StumbleUpon - Your Website Traffic

 

StumbleUpon allows you to add up to 200 friends to your contact list. For you this could mean 200 potential sales, not only initially, but also in the future. But make sure you don’t spam your contacts. Instead, think of them as associates. StumbleUpon offers an easy way for quick traffic-building. Just keep in mind that in order to make the most out of the site....

StumbleUpon - Your Website Traffic. Getting traffic for a new website can be difficult if you’re relying solely on search engines. This is because proper SEO requires a great deal of time and skill. And even then you still may not make it into the top 10 listings. So, what other alternatives are available? One of the best involves using StumbleUpon to generate traffic. Through this site webmasters can get their own following of visitors while boosting their Alexa rating. 

So, what exactly is StumbleUpon and why is it so useful for generating traffic? Basically, StumbleUpon is a social networking site where members bookmark or ‘stumble’ sites that are interesting to them. Other members see what sites got ‘stumbled’ by using StumbleUpon’s special toolbar. As they are surfing through the stumbled sites, they can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. 

To get your site in the StumbleUpon network, you will have to become a member and download their toolbar. From there, you will need to rate your sites. Make sure that index your sites in the appropriate category. Otherwise, your site might be seen as spam, and receive a ‘thumbs down’ by StumbleUpon visitors. Granted, you may get a few thumbs down even when you do things properly, but as long as your site is useful this shouldn’t happen too often. 

Once your site is submitted, you should start receiving traffic. However, be aware that this type of traffic may not covert in a lot of sales, since the users are passive visitors. They are not actively looking for information, like they would be on a search engine. So, you will have to include an extra incentive to drive interest to your offer. Most Internet marketers do this through opt-in pages. Through these pages visitors provide their email address, (or other information), in return for a freebie. This freebie could be an e-book or even a physical product. For example, if you’re operating an e-commerce store, you could give away one of your cheaper products. 

Anyway, with the information you obtain from the opt-in page, you could initiate email marketing or direct mail marketing. Through these forms of advertising, you establish more personal communication with your visitors. With this communication you increase the chances that you can acquire future sales. 

Speaking of personal communication, you can use this same train-of-thought with StumbleUpon’s social aspect. How is this so? Well, StumbleUpon allows you to add up to 200 friends to your contact list. For you this could mean 200 potential sales, not only initially, but also in the future. But make sure you don’t spam your contacts. Instead, think of them as associates. Approach them in a friendly manner, like you would someone at work or school. Once a relationship has been established, you can let them know about your site.

In conclusion, StumbleUpon offers an easy way for quick traffic-building. Just keep in mind that in order to make the most out of the site, you should make use of opt-in pages, rather than directly pointing visitors to your offer. Also, don’t forget to make friends while you’re stumbling. 

The 12 part E-course walks you through step by step on how to get the traffic coming to your site. This is traffic that you just put your time into, you don’t have to spend any money for it. 

 

StumbleUpon - Your Website Traffic

 

The Next Ranking Signal +1 Button From Google

+1 Button From Google The Next Ranking Signal

Introducing the +1 Button :

 

Google's Detour Around Facebook Data

The video above shows what Google +1 is all about. It’s about putting a little “+1″ button all over the web, in search results, and in ads. It’s not quite as catchy or as call-to-action-y as “like”, which makes me think that right out of the box, this will not get clicked nearly as much as Facebook’s iconic button. Maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?

+1 Button From Google The Next Ranking Signal

 

Facebook Custom Friends Selector

Facebook Custom Friends Selector > The user can choose which friends he wants to select and then the friends list is submitted to a given URL using AJAX to avoid reloading the whole page. you can free download Facebook Custom Friends Selector 1.0 now

This script can be used to select friends on Facebook. 

This class can be used generate an application that can be used to select friends on Facebook.
It generates the necessary HTML, CSS and JavaScript to display a list of friends of the current Facebook user.

The user can choose which friends he wants to select and then the friends list is submitted to a given URL using AJAX to avoid reloading the whole page. you can free download Facebook Custom Friends Selector 1.0 now

License: Freeware Free OS: Windows ,Linux,Mac OS,BSD,Solaris Requirements: No special requirements Publisher: Md. Mahmud Ahsan Homepage: http://thinkdiff.net/ File size: 16KB

Download here : http://www.brothersoft.com/facebook-custom-friends-selector-download-392951.html  

Facebook Custom Friends Selector

Facebook Allowed to Trademark The Word Face

So long as Facebook pays the necessary fees, the application is likely to go through without objection, officials said. The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office has already allowed a period for objections and none were raised. Facebook has refused to comment.

Facebook has launched an audacious bid to trademark the word ‘face’. The social networking site put in the application because it wants to stop other companies using the term in a way which damages its own brand.

The first stage of the bid has been approved and, provided they complete all the paperwork, the full trademark will be rubber stamped by the U.S. Patent Office in six months time.

Patent lawyers had been doubted that Facebook would be granted the trademark to such a generic term as ‘face’. The move is also likely to raise further questions over the company’s motives and raise more suspicion over its long-term goals.

With more than 500 million users worldwide, Facebook is by far the world’s largest social networking site. But it has been dogged by criticism of its privacy policy and attacked for its slow response to claims that it encourages abuse.

The application was lodged with the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office which awarded it a Notice of Allowance, the first step to full approval. Over the next six months Facebook will have to demonstrate it is using the trademark and file a Statement of Use, the next phase, a head of final approval.

Facebook’s application does however limit the terms of its trademark to specific situations related to its business, so the general public will still be able to use ‘face’ without fear of breaking the law.

In Facebook’s case, it only applies to: ‘Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter.’

So long as Facebook pays the necessary fees, the application is likely to go through without objection, officials said. The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office has already allowed a period for objections and none were raised. Facebook has refused to comment.

But in a curious twist, an application was lodged by former Harvard student Aaron Greenspan, who sued Facebook claiming founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for the website from him, to extend the amount of time during which objections to the patent could be raised. Mr Greenspan did not eventually raise any objections, but his intervention shows that ill feeling between him and the company remains undiminished.

Source : The Daily Mail

MySpace Announces Mashup With Facebook

You Can Now Log in to MySpace with Facebook. The latest Facebook integration may help keep existing members happy with a more personalized experience, but MySpace still has work to do to regain that mind share and recapture traffic, said Augie Ray, social media analyst with Forrester Research Inc

MySpace Inc. announced it is doing a Mashup with Facebook, integrating the basic functions of its former rival in a move to make the one-time king of social networking a more relevant "social entertainment" destination.

The mashup essentially reconnects MySpace to the type of massive social networking activity it once had before it was surpassed by Palo Alto's Facebook Inc.

Starting today, MySpace members will be seeing a "Mashup with Facebook" button on their homepage to access the opt-in feature. Clicking on it will pull in their "likes" and other interests already stored on their Facebook profiles.

That, in turn, will signal MySpace's algorithms to start feeding relevant topic pages, profiles, video programing, music, celebrity news and other information into their MySpace streams.

It isn't the first collaboration between the two companies. More than one million members have synced their MySpace status updates with their Facebook profile in the month since the introduction of "Sync with Facebook."

MySpace, which is based in Beverly Hills and owned by media conglomerate News Corp., will soon be installing a Facebook "Like" button across its site.

In a Web conference with reporters, MySpace CEO Mike Jones said Mashup will build on that relationship, although he wouldn't speculate on how much new traffic it will bring.

MySpace has already acknowledged Facebook as the winner in the battle for social networking supremacy and has been redesigning itself as a social entertainment destination targeted at a younger Gen Y audience.

Dan Rose, Facebook's vice president of partnerships and platform marketing, said the partnership is a good mashup of Facebook's strategy to build a social networking platform and MySpace's new social entertainment strategy.

The partnership does not include any financial components, suchas ad revenue sharing.

Facebook has more than 500 million active members, while MySpace still has a fairly large user base of about 130 million. But Facebook's rise has also diminished awareness of MySpace among Internet users.

The latest Facebook integration may help keep existing members happy with a more personalized experience, but MySpace still has work to do to regain that mind share and recapture traffic, said Augie Ray, social media analyst with Forrester Research Inc.

"It will get people to come back and encourage people to share with their friends," Ray said. "It makes MySpace instantly a more rich experience."

MySpace Announces Mashup With Facebook

Facebook Notifications for New Facebook

Facebook Notifications for New Facebook 1.1

 

Notification Detector for the new facebook as of 27th Feb 2010.

Most Facebook notifications extensions seemed to break with the update to the new facebook so I've written a version to work with the new facebook as of 27th of Feb, 2010. will update this every time facebook is updated to keep it working.

 

• License: Freeware Free
• OS: Windows 7, Vista, XP
• Requirements: For Google Chrome
• Publisher: owencmoore
• Homepage: http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/giedcbaeeefiachhdidknblkoekeoldb

Download here : http://www.brothersoft.com/facebook-notifications-for-new-facebook-download-361679.html

Facebook gets movie treatments as social media hits high

"You've got to protect yourself," said Schulman. "Everyone has different intentions."
Ironically for an actor portraying the man now in charge of Facebook in "Social Network," Eisenberg himself is not a Facebook user, nor does he ever plan to be.

Facebook hits the silver screen this fall with two movies coming out within weeks of each other at a time when social media is at an all-time high.

Independent documentary "Catfish" and glitzy Hollywood feature "The Social Network" couldn't be more different. But both could very well be two sides of the same coin.

"We've gotten to a point where it's time to reflect on it," said "Catfish" filmmaker Ariel Schulman.
"'The Social Network' shows us how we got here. 'Catfish' shows us where we're at."

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world with over 500 million active users. Sites like MySpace, microblogging site Twitter, and Tumblr are also thriving, creating an intricate online world where everything from dating websites to video game communities have users who put their personal lives out on public display.

As "Catfish" illustrates, not everyone on these sites is who they say they are.

"Catfish", which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, follows Nev Schulman, a photographer who falls in love with a girl on Facebook. Over time, their romance blossoms and they begin to text and talk on the phone.
When Nev, his brother Ariel and their friend Henry discover some startling revelations, they set off on a road trip to meet the girl in person.

"The Social Network," arrives on October 1, with a pedigree that includes Oscar-nominated David Fincher directing from a screenplay by the four-time Emmy Award winning Aaron Sorkin.

The film is based on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal." Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, now 26, is played by Jesse Eisenberg.

"It's interesting that these two movies are coming out at the same time," said Schulman, who directed "Catfish" with Henry Joost.

"We are however many years in to the social networking phenomenon and I think it has hit a tipping point," he said.

Schulman, along with Joost, shot his brother Nev's 2008 real-life romance and road trip to visit the girl of his dreams. He felt there is now a sort of "collective subconscious" around Facebook.
Schulman likens social networks to a "collection of avatars" where users put up "ideal versions of themselves" for others to see.

"We each play the role of our own personal publicist that way," he noted, cautioning that because of that, "you can't go online naively."

"You've got to protect yourself," said Schulman. "Everyone has different intentions."
Ironically for an actor portraying the man now in charge of Facebook in "Social Network," Eisenberg himself is not a Facebook user, nor does he ever plan to be.

"If you're in a public setting like (actors) are, you come to really value your privacy," he said.
However, Eisenberg is quick to point out that it's not "the medium that's the danger, it's the people using the medium" and that's why he's chosen to stay off it.

Though Nev Schulman says he doesn't feel completely protected from his "Catfish" situation happening again, he says he has no regrets about his Facebook romance.

"I ended up going on a great life experience with my brother and my dear friend Henry," said Nev Schulman.
What was real, were the life lessons that came with all that.

"I now have a better understanding of what I thought I wanted, what I really want and what's important insofar as my relationships with friends and family," he said. "This experience has allowed me to grow and change for the better."

Facebook Team Up for Charity & Stand Up to Cancer 2010 (SU2C)

According to Natalie Lent, the director of Digital Strategy at ID, the partnership came about while brainstorming ways the telethon could create a “digital roadblock” online to mirror the TV roadblock. After figuring out tie-in deals with Hulu (live-streaming) and Twitter (free promoted trending topic of the day at #standup2cancer), the marketing team turned their attention to Facebook, which was looking to promote their Credits program beyond gaming. And so the partnership was born.

The social networking site Facebook is working with Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) for the cancer research charity’s one-hour fundraising event tonight. But in addition to live-streaming the show on SU2C’s Facebook page, they’ve also arranged for site visitors to donate to the charity with Facebook Credits, the virtual currency program they launched earlier this year. They’ve also agreed to waive their fees for the partnership, which marks the first time the company is launching such a large-scale charity effort.

The Facebook link will be mentioned online and during the live, one-hour fundraising event, which will be broadcast commercial free on CBS, FOX, NBC, E!, G4, HBO, Showtime, VH1, and other cable networks tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PST. Celebrity guests for the show, which was designed as a follow-up to 2008’s telethon, will include George Clooney, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Elizabeth Edwards, and cancer survivors Christina Applegate, Maura Tierney, and Lance Armstrong. (During the program, viewers can phone in, text, or go online to make their donation.)

According to Natalie Lent, the director of Digital Strategy at ID, the partnership came about while brainstorming ways the telethon could create a “digital roadblock” online to mirror the TV roadblock. After figuring out tie-in deals with Hulu (live-streaming) and Twitter (free promoted trending topic of the day at #standup2cancer), the marketing team turned their attention to Facebook, which was looking to promote their Credits program beyond gaming. And so the partnership was born.

Lent says the deal with Facebook came together last week with the goal of enticing younger users to make donations. “As most people know, young people aren’t watching as much television as they did in the past,” she said. “In conjunction with our partnerships with Hulu, YouTube, all our broadcast networks and others to stream the show for internet viewers, Facebook offered us the ability to capture their attentions online and make the donation process very seamless.”

Disable Facebook Place to Hide Your Location

Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500 million active users in July 2010. Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. 

Facebook Places is a geolocation feature that allows Facebook users to share their current location or place with other Facebook friends. We have already seen quick and easy procedure to use Facebook Places feature to share your location. Few users may want to turn off this feature due to privacy concerns and stay private.

Turn Off ‘Friends can check me in to places’

1. Login into Facebook account and goto Account > Privacy Settings at top right.

2. Then click ‘Customize Settings’ link under “Sharing on Facebook” option.

3. On the next screen and scroll down to check “Things I share”.

4. Select ‘Customize’ option by clicking drop down button next to “Places I check in”. Then select ‘Only Me’ option or select specific friends.

5. Then click to uncheck (no tick) for enable option next to ‘Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in’.

6. Then select ‘disabled’ option next to “Friends can check me in to places” under “Things others share”.

Top Ten Facebook Games

Facebook Games

Facebook is most popular social network available on the internet right now! Millions of users worldwide uses this service to connect their family, friends or other peoples you know! But actually, Facebook is more than “just” meeting with your old friends or family members! In database it have many available applications and games which you can play and use completely for free! Enjoy!

Note: To use and play below games you need to create free Facebook account (if you don’t have one yet).

Top Ten Best Facebook Games

• Tower Bloxx – Very addictive and fun flash based game on Facebook!

• Crazy Taxi – Drive your taxi as fast as possible while jumping over the traffic!

• Word Challenge – Word Challenge by Playfish is the addictive new word game featuring vivid animations, 40,000+ words, 20 vocabulary types.

• Bowling Buddies – Go bowling with your friends! Featuring stylish 3D graphics, easy controls, tons of achievements, customised characters and more!

• Who has the Bigger Brain – Think you are smart? Play this highly addictive brain training game to prove it!

• Mob Wars – An epic game of Mafia warfare, played on Facebook.Very popular and addictive game!

• Pet Society – In the world of Pet Society you and your pet can have a great time! You can play games, decorate your house and even bring gifts for your friends when you visit them.

• YoVille – YoVille is a world where you can buy new clothes for your player, purchase items for your apartment, go to work, and meet new friends.

• Kickmania – Kickmania! is an animated game. Low level violence – high level fun! Kick anyone’s butt and watch them fly… into a wall of bricks!

• Texas Hold’em Poker – On of the most popular overall Facebook games. Allows you to play Texas Hold’em poker with your Facebook friends and other real humans! Virtual money – not real one supported!

Source : http://www.bashbosh.com

How To Create a Facebook Group

Facebook is a social networking site (SNS) that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. These types of social networking sites are designed to build upon interactions to create communities of people online. The social networking site provides the required software to do this.

Facebook, in particular, offers a way for individuals to create a profile of themselves, then share that profile with other members of Facebook. It also provides a variety of ways for users to communicate with others using instant messaging and chat rooms, Facebook site mail, notes and blogs, file sharing, forums, discussion groups, videos, and so on. 

What is a Facebook Group?

Facebook Groups are pages that you create within the Facebook social networking site that are based around a real-life interest or group or to declare an affiliation or association with people and things. With a Facebook Group, you are creating a community of people and friends to promote, share and discuss relevant topics. The types of groups people can join on Facebook are seemingly endless. Here's how you can create your own group on Facebook.

How to Create a New Facebook Group

In creating a Facebook Group you need to first decide on a topic or idea to center the group around. This could be a geographical location, a business, a favorite product, an artist  or anything that you want to create a group for. You can use the Facebook search box to see if a group with the same name or similar idea already exists.

Once you have decided on the topic, you can then create the Group page on Facebook by following steps:

1.  Log in to your own Facebook account and clicking the Profile tab at the top of the page
2.  Select the Info tab from within your Profile.

3.  Scroll down to the Groups section and select See All.

4. When you click See All a new My Groups window will load that shows all the groups you have subscribed to, as well as any group news and invitations you have. Under the My Groups heading click the link to Create a New Group.

The Create a Group form is made up of three different steps:

1. Group Info: Here you will need to provide specific information about your Facebook Group including a Group Name, the Network (choose your own network location or Global which is available to all Facebook users), a description of the group, and a category. Optional Group Info details you can include are: recent news, office, e-mail and address details. Once you have filled out this form, click on Create Group. This will load the second screen, Customize.

2. Customize: This is where you will specify member options and settings for the group you have just created. If you have a picture you want to use to represent the Group you can upload it from this screen, and you can also specify an associated Web site URL. The options that appear on this page are common Facebook options. By selecting (or deselecting) the check boxes you can choose to show or not show the following on your own Group page: related groups, a discussion board, the Wall, Photos and Videos (with permission for Group members being allowed to upload to the Group page), and posted items. You also will need to choose a Group Access level (open lets anyone join, closed requires Group admins to approve requests to join, and secret, which will hide the group in searches and members can join by your invitation). Once you have set all the Group Options, you can only select Save at the bottom, which will open a window prompting you to publish the New Group news to your own profile. After you publish the Group news, the Member screen will load.

3. Members: The members page is where you can invite your Facebook friends to join your group, choose Group Officers, and see who is currently subscribed to your Facebook group. You can also invite people who are not on Facebook from this page by entering in their e-mail addresses in the form box, separated by commas.

 

Facebook Group Admin Options

After you have created your new Group, from the Group page, you'll find options that you can access to maintain your Group page.

• 
  
  
  
  Message All Members lets you send a Facebook message to everyone subscribed to your Group
• 
  
  
  
  Edit Group lets you change the information you entered when creating your Group
• 
  
  
  
  Edit members lets you maintain your group members (same as screen above in step 3)
• 
  
  
  
  Edit Group Officers lets you select Group members to be Officers
• 
  
  
  
  Create Related Event lets you create an event associated for the group (for example if your Group was about a famous actor you could create an event for the time when a new movie he was in would be released).

Deleting Your Facebook Group

Facebook will automatically delete groups when they are empty, so if you decide that you do not want to keep the Group, you will need to remove all members from the group and then remove yourself. 

 

How to import RSS feed / Blog to Facebook?

Facebook has done an excellent job in adding this feature to it’s website. Very simple to do also. Follow the directions provided below in order to add your favorite RSS feeds to our Facebook profile:

1. Login to Facebook.com.

2. Click Notes on the side navigation menu.

3. On the Right side under Note Settings you will see Import a blog. Click it.

4. You will see a form, this is where you will enter the url for the RSS feed you wish to start importing.

5. When done click Start Importing and your favorite RSS feed will now start being imported.

Privacy Group Voices Concerns About Facebook Places

Earlier this evening, Facebook formally announced its geolocation component, Facebook Places, and it has already sparked concerns from a major privacy advocate.

The ACLU of Northern California has issued its preliminary response to the features and is taking issue with the granularity and visibility of some of the new location-based user controls.

Tagging, a feature that has made Facebook Photos such a success, is a key part of Facebook Places. Just as you can tag friends in photos you find or upload, you will also be able to tag individuals when you check in at a new location.

But while Facebook makes it easy for users to allow their friends to check them in, the ACLU says that opting out of that feature is more difficult. For example, the feature lets users select a “not now” option when friends attempt to check them in, but not a “never” option to prevent friends from attempting to do so in the future. Further, if you’re already a Places user, friends can just check you in automatically.

The ACLU also takes issue with the “Here Now” feature, which displays users that have recently checked in at a given Place. The problem, according to the ACLU, is that this list is accessible to anyone else who is checked-in to the same place. The ACLU has already put together a resource page dedicated to helping users lock down more of their information.

It will likely take a few days of real world Facebook Places use to digest all of the privacy implications, but initially it seems that the biggest problem may not be with controlling what information an individual shares but what information others can share about them. Further, as the service becomes available and third-party apps start to work with the APIs, we’ll get a better idea of what this all really means.

Right now, the only thing that seems really clear is that no matter how much Facebook may want to skirt the privacy issues it faced this spring, the company likely to face some serious questions from its users with this new product. After all, the potential for a location-based social graph is enormous, but so too are the real-world opportunities for privacy breaches.

What are you early thoughts on Facebook Places and privacy? Do you feel like your personal information will be under your control? Let us know!

source: http://mashable.com/

How To Make a Facebook Profile is Not Indexed by Search Engines?

You can easily keep your online privacy by avoid having your public search listing crawled by search engines. Just follow these steps in order to do so:

When someone searches for your Facebook profile on search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Altavista etc.) they’ll hit your public search instance (that includes a thumbnail, your name as recorded on Facebook database, your regional network etc)

 

* Login to your Facebook account
* Hit Privacy
* Hit Search
* Now deselect the following statement: “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing.”
* Hit Save

You have just made sure that your facebook profile won’t be showing up on search engines. Allow a month or so to have it removed from the search engine result pages.

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• Privacy Group Voices Concerns About Facebook Places