Companies desperate to raise their social media profiles and lonely shut-ins looking to have more connections online can now pay just $18 to get 1,000 fake accounts to follow their musings on Twitter. Network World reports on a new study from Barracuda Labs showing that the average Twitter “dealer” has around 150,000 individual fake accounts at their disposal that they can use to quickly boost a person or company’s social media status. Obviously, Twitter doesn’t want to see its social network overrun with bots and is always vigilant about trying to take fake accounts down. But given that fake accounts are incredibly easy to set up and automate, Twitter may have a difficult time keeping bots off its platform for the foreseeable future. More →
Facebook (FB) won’t be paying a massive $22.5 million fine like Google (GOOG) did as part of its settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, but it will have to submit to regular third-party audits to ensure it’s not inappropriately handling its users’ data. The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook will now need to gain express permission from users before sharing their data with third parties and to “maintain a privacy program to protect consumers’ information.” Facebook agreed last November to settle FTC accusations that it was being deceptive in its data collection practices when CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the company’s mistakes and pledged to make Facebook “the leader in transparency and control around privacy.” More →
While some reports claim that Google’s social network site is a “ghost town,” a new study suggest that users are more satisfied with Google+ than any other social service, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report. Facebook was the lowest-scoring e-business company and suffered the largest decline in customer satisfaction. The social networking giant plunged 8% to a score of 61 out of 100 possible points, in comparison to Google+’s 78 points. Facebook’s score set a new record-low in the Social Media category and was among the five lowest-scoring companies out of more than 230 measured. More →
Google+ was apparently designed by guys who have never lived with a woman. Or, at least that’s the impression that five female technologists gave during a panel at Google I/O last week, Wired reports. During a panel focused on designing web pages that appeal to women, the designers were asked by an audience member why men outnumber women on Google+ by a ratio of around 2 to 1. The following are some choice responses as reported by Wired. More →
Facebook royally ticked off many of its users last week when it made their @facebook.com email addresses the primary ones displayed on profile pages without even asking permission. But now, Facebook is claiming that it never meant to switch its users' default email settings and is pledging to investigate just how this happened. Per PC Magazine, a Facebook spokesman said that the company is “having the engineers look into it and will get back to you as soon as we can with more details.” Facebook's statement on its email syncing policies comes after Adobe employee Rachel Luxemburg reported on her personal blog this past weekend that Facebook had pushed its own email account onto others' contacts lists, meaning her friends, family and coworkers saw her @facebook.com address as her primary one on most devices.
Facebook’s repeated privacy snafus always make the news and cause a stir among users, but a surprising number of Facebook members throw caution to the wind when it comes to online privacy. As noted by Digital Trends, a new website dubbed “We Know What You’re Doing” uses Facebook’s Graph API to collect public status updates that likely shouldn’t be made public, and then displays them for all the world to see. Under headings like “Who wants to get fired?” and “Who’s taking drugs?” the site shows us just how careless people can be on Facebook. A few gems: “Totally hungover don’t like it HELP.” -Claire D. “God is peace and love# God smoke cannabis!!! 
.” -Rahim L. ”Im getting so mad right now I hate my boss Jay I hope he dies better yet I feel like killin him if you in a bad mood don’t take it out on everyone at the job like wtf its way to hot to take your s**t-_-.” -Anastasia R. More →
Facebook has pulled a new application designed to help users make friends in their areas. The new Find Friends Nearby application that uses a device’s GPS capabilities to find others who are logged into Facebook and are living or working nearby. The company hasn’t yet given any reason that it took the app down. Before it was removed, users could go to the URL http://fb.com/ffn to see a list of people nearby who currently had the page open. As TechCrunch noted in its story on the new app, “the service comes a little under two months after Facebook announced the acquisition of Glancee, a mobile app that helps users discover people near them with similar interests, whose three founders have now joined Facebook and closed down their app.” More →
How many people out there use Facebook as their primary email service? Although the answer is “not many,” Facebook is trying to change that by making its users’ Facebook email addresses the primary ones displayed on their profile pages. Yes, that means people looking at users’ accounts won’t see their Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo accounts anymore and will only see the seldom-used Facebook account. Thankfully, as LifeHacker demonstrates, there is a way to change this: More →
The rumors were true: Microsoft is indeed buying business-centric social networking site Yammer for $1.2 billion, or $200 million more than early rumors indicated. A presumably pleased Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a prepared statement that “the acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love” and that “Yammer adds a best-in-class enterprise social networking service to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services.” Buying Yammer gives Microsoft a strong social networking component to its ubiquitous Office suite since Microsoft now inherits more than 5 million Yammer users across more than 200,000 different companies. In fact, Microsoft is strongly touting Yammer’s ability to mesh with its other services, noting that it “plans to accelerate Yammer’s adoption alongside complementary offerings from Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Skype.” Hit the jump for the full press release. More →
Even though Facebook is a social networking juggernaut, it may be reaching the limits of its growth in the United States. Reuters notes that comScore’s latest numbers show that Facebook notched 158.01 million unique U.S. visitors this past month, down from 158.69 million in April and 158.93 million in March. While this obviously doesn’t mean that Facebook is about to come crashing back to Earth anytime soon, it does suggest that the social networking site may have reached the peak of its appeal for now. Not that that’s a bad thing, since comScore also found last month that Facebook users are spending ever-more time on the site, logging an average of 380.8 minutes in May, up from an average of 378.9 minutes in April. Not bad for a site deemed “useless and boring” by a third of its users. More →
Facebook is a fantastic tool for keeping in touch with friends and family, and Twitter lets users share all kinds of information with their followers. These giant social networks are also packed full of information that advertisers trip over themselves to take advantage of, but another group is looking to make use of the social sites and others. The U.S. Department of State issued a procurement request earlier this month seeking tools that can provide “deep analysis of topics, conversations, networks, and influencers of the global social web,” New Scientist reported. The government agency will accept bids from interested companies that can build such tools, and they will be used to monitor conversations in at least seven different languages in an effort to identify potential security threats. New Scientist notes that the military can already monitor sites like Facebook and Twitter with a Lockheed Martin-built tool called the Web Information Spread Data Operations Module, or WISDOM. More →
When Spinal Tap’s manager was asked whether the band was less popular because it wasn’t selling out large venues any more, he replied that the band was just as popular but that its appeal had simply “become more selective.” Google is apparently angling for something similar with its spin on Google+ engagement, as Google vice president of product Bradley Horowitz told The Guardian on Wednesday that Google actually wants there to be more friction that slows down users’ sharing over the social network.
