FIFA Cracking Down on Twitter Users

FIFA has sent takedown notices to Twitter in relation to Twitter users “abusing” the FIFA trademarks.

More details here

Attention Seekers On Twitter

The original VayniacGary Vaynerchuk posted this deck yesterday.

It’s well worth reviewing and sharing, as it highlights one of the worst things that people and businesses do on Twitter:

I’ve seen a LOT of businesses abusing Twitter this way. Sure, if someone pays you or your business a compliment you might want to share it. But if the bulk of your tweets and retweets are just this kind of junk then it’s really quite pathetic

Social Is All About Permission

If you’re going to use “social” as part of your online strategy you need to remember a key concept.

Permission.

Earlier this morning I got an email “invite” from a contact to join a site that likes to see itself as being “social”.

I ignored the invite but the wording of the email really touched a nerve:

Skillpages unsubscribe email footer

Skillpages unsubscribe email footer

Why on earth would I “unsubscribe” from something I’d never subscribed to in the first place?

Who gave them permission to “subscribe” me in the first place?

It is possible that this is just bad wording on their part and that what they actually mean is that clicking on the link will “block” my email address from being used ..

Now why don’t they actually say that?

It’s also worth noting that Facebook’s notifications include equally misleading wording, so Skillpages aren’t alone in this.

 

LinkedIn’s April Fool’s

Today being April 1st the web is awash with April Fool’s jokes and pranks.

Some of them are pretty clever, while some of them are downright silly.

One that caught my eye was LinkedIn’s

If you go into the “people you may know” section you’re in for a surprise:

LinkedIn April Fool Joke 2011

 

Facebook Getting Serious With Places

It looks like Facebook is getting set to make a serious play in location based services in Europe.

According to an article in today’s Guardian the social networking behemoth is about to launch of “Deals” which would give users benefits and discounts at local retailers.

The company has announced partnership deals with several “heavy hitters” including Starbucks and Debenhams:

Through deals with partners announced today, the first 30,000 Facebook users to check in at Starbucks stores in the UK can claim a free coffee, the first 1,000 to check in at Debenhams will receive a free mascara and makeover and the first four to upgrade their contracts and check in at O2 stores will win a free Xbox or Playstation.

Facebook Goes Down – Millions Scream

Last night Facebook suffered an outage.

It wasn’t a particularly long outage, but due to the site’s sheer size the impact of the outage was felt globally.

Millions of people were forced to talk to their spouses, girlfriends, co-workers and neighbours face to face (in real life).

Oh no!

Zuckerberg Redefines Pretentious

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been getting a lot of flak in recent weeks about Facebook’s attitude and handling of privacy for its users.

During a recent interview Zuckerberg was asked several times about privacy. He failed to give a convincing answer.

Watch the entire interview to see how Zuckerberg, yet again, redefines “pretentious” once again.

At the same conference Apple’s Steve Jobs also fielded a question on privacy. Jobs’ reply is so different to the attitude of Zuckerberg that it’s worth quoting:

Silicon Valley is not monolithic….We take privacy very seriously….We do a lot of things to ensure that people understand how their data is being used. That’s why we curate the App Store….Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for–in plain English

Should We Trust Facebook?

In the last few weeks and months Facebook has been receiving a LOT of media attention. While the social networking site would have attracted plenty of media attention related to its growth, the more recent spate of interest has centred around privacy. Or more accurately, the lack of it.

Back in January of this year Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, told the world that the social norms and views on privacy had changed:

“When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

“And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

“We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

“A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they’ve built, doing a privacy change – doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner’s mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.

Of course a LOT of people didn’t agree with Zuckerberg’s views – and why would they?

Now, however, he’s claiming that it was all a “mistake”.

Really?

Why do I find that claim so hard to believe?

What’s more likely is that the negative publicity is hurting the social networking site and also it’s coming under a lot of scrutiny from governments.

Bebo Shutdown or Sale Iminent – So Where Does All the Content Go?

AOL bought Bebo a couple of years ago. At the time they probably thought they’d got themselves a bargain. Bebo was doing really well in the UK and Ireland. It wasn’t doing so well in the US, but that could have changed..

Of course it didn’t change. Bebo’s traffic shrank and upstart Facebook came along and stole their thunder..

But what of the content?

If you’ve uploaded photos and other content onto Bebo you could easily end up losing access to it all completely.

Tip: Back it up now. Or simply move on.