Facebook Increases Privacy Requirements for Applications

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Facebook is rolling out a new security feature to help give users more security that their private information will not be misused. The new feature requires outside applications and websites to tell users exactly what parts of their profile they need to access in order to work.

In the past, applications had to ask for permission before accessing private profile information but there were no requirements about stating exactly why they needed such information. This information can include photos, friends’ birthdays or e-mail addresses.

The rollout of the new security feature is being done in cooperation with Canada’s privacy commissioner, who was among the first and most vocal critics of Facebook’s recent privacy policy changes. The decision to change the privacy policy for applications was first announced in April.

Email CTR Improved by Social Media Links

Marketing Charts reports that according to a new study released by GetResponse, social media links in promotional emails improves their click-through rate (CTR).

The new study — which analyzed nearly 500 million emails sent by 19,149 GetResponse customers — reveals that promotional emails by small-to-mid-sized business marketers that include links to at least one social network have a 9.4 percent CTR. However, promotional emails without links have a 7.2 percent CTR.

The study also revealed that messages with three or more social sharing links produced an 11.2 percent CTR, accounting for 20 percent higher than messages with two links, 28 percent higher than messages with one link and 55 percent more than messages without links.

Regardless of these figures, the report indicates that only a small portion of small-to-mid-sized business marketers take advantage of this marketing approach. Only 18.7 percent of small-to-mid-sized business marketers linked promotional emails to messages on their Twitter accounts and only 13.5 percent featured clickable sharing links to other social media networks.

Twitter Gets Light Punishment from FTC for Hacks

Twitter is out of hot water with the Federal Trade Commission after fixing holes in its security which let users impersonate President Barack Obama and the official Twitter feed of Fox News.

“A company that allows consumers to designate their information as private must use reasonable security to uphold such designations,” David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement today. “Consumers who use social networking sites may choose to share some information with others, but they still have a right to expect that their personal information will be kept private and secure.”

The FTC became involved after a hacker was able to break into a Twitter employee’s personal email account and use passwords stored inside to guess their Twitter administrative log-in information. The FTC said this gave the hacker the potential to “access private user information and tweets for any Twitter users.”

The terms of the settlement amounts to probation, prohibiting Twitter from misleading users about privacy protections for 20 years and establish an information security program which will be subject to yearly third-party oversight for the next 10 years.

Updated Bing App Goes Social

Microsoft Bing yesterday announced an updated version of the Bing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Among its many new features, the new version of the app allows users to connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts and view combined status updates from within the app.

In addition, the updated Bing app will include relevant social network results along with traditional web results. When searching for a movie, for example, the results will feature official movie show times along with comments from social networking sites that friends may have said about the movie. The updated Bing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch also features visual scanning, the ability to scan barcodes and cover art to view descriptions, reviews, prices and links to merchant websites.

People can download the update today using iTunes.

Salesforce.com Debuts New Social Media-Derived Business Collaboration Tool

CNET News reports that Salesforce.com has released its new social media-based collaboration product, which has been in beta testing since February. The new Chatter product is described as a “sort of Facebook for business” by Salesforce.com and is meant to compete with business collaboration offering such as IBM’s Lotus Notes and Microsoft’s SharePoint.

Chatter lets people follow the update of co-workers along with tracking individual business documents and pieces of data. For example, a sales rep could follow the details of a pending new client contract or a customer support manager could track a bug report until a solution is found. Information shared on Chatter will remain safe because it runs behind a firewall, protecting it from people outside of the company.

“We feel very excited that we have a killer app on our hands with Chatter,” said Salesforce.com Senior Vice President Kraig Swensrud. “Facebook has really trained the entire Internet on how to collaborate. No one has to go to a training class to figure out how to use Chatter.”

Facebook Fans Valuable Consumers

Facebook consumers who are fans of a brand are more valuable to organizations than regular Facebook users, according to a new study from Syncapse Corp. The study revealed that on average fans spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans. In addition, the study found that fans are 28 percent more likely than non-fans to continue using the band, and 41 percent more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their Facebook friends.

According to Syncapse, the information suggests the importance of the audience on short-term and long-term marketing efforts of an organization.

“Facebook fans represent a significant opportunity to drive revenue enhancement, brand, and loyalty without incurring the considerable cost-per-person of conventional marketing. More importantly, such Facebook strategies allow for a discernable ROI that is not allowed by most other approaches,” Syncapse said.

Utah Attorney General Under Fire for Tweeting about Execution

Utah’s governor is facing controversy for using Twitter to make comments about the pending execution of a prisoner. Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed by a firing squad — his preferred choice versus the now-common practice of death by lethal injection. However, the center of controversy after Gardner’s death is not the ethics of the death penalty but comments made on Twitter by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

During the day, Shurtleff posted several updates about the plans for Gardner’s execution, including that he “gave the go ahead to (sic) Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner’s execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims.”

Online reaction to Shurtleff’s Twitter postings has been swift, with opinions ranging that the postings were macabre to downright offensive. One Twitter user posted that Shurtleff’s posts “will probably go down in history as the dumbest most disgusting use of Twitter ever.”

Facebook Users Can Now “Like” Comments

Facebook has launched a new “Like” feature that allows users to express approval for comments on posts in the same way as they do on the post itself. According to the company blog post, the “Like” feature and the ability to comment on News Feed stories are the two most heavily-used features on the site. Facebook decided to combine these features.

“Whether it’s a witty remark, a great point in a discussion or a helpful answer to someone’s question, clicking the ‘Like’ button within comments now makes it simple to show your appreciation for all types of content on Facebook,” wrote Facebook’s Tom Whitnah.

Facebook will be rolling out the new feature gradually, reminding users that if they don’t see the button yet, they will soon.

Perez Hilton in Trouble for Miley Cyrus Twitter Picture

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton is in hot water over a Twitter post he made involving pictures of teen singer and actress Miley Cyrus. Fox News reports that Hilton posted a Twitter photo of the 17-year-old star exiting from a car at a recent event – apparently while not wearing underwear. While Hilton has been known to court controversy in the past, this post has caused many people to say that he’s gone too far.

There have been calls for Hilton to be brought up on child pornography charges, although law enforcement experts have said that the chances of that happening are slim. However, the post might cost Hilton financially — ABC has apparently pulled online advertising for its morning chat show “The View” which had been running on Perez Hilton’s site. One media expert said that Hilton deserves any repercussions he gets.

“There has to be a point where these companies that support Perez Hilton, acknowledge that they’re endorsing a scumbag,” said MRC’s Culture and Media Institute Director, Dan Gainor. “(The controversy with Miley) is just appalling. Perez Hilton is a cyber bully. Here we are in the Internet age trying to protect children, and he does disgusting things like this for a living — and businesses support it.”

What’s the Deal with Twitter?

Twitter has announced that over the next two weeks, the popular micro blogging site will be experiencing relatively short but planned maintenance in an effort to provide greater stability during record traffic. This means that the service will likely be taken down although, the company promises, not during World Cup games.

According to a Twitter blog post, the company tried to work through tweaks to the system last Friday, but instead uncovered unexpected deeper issues which have caused inadvertent downtime.

Twitter experienced a serious outage Monday night, and crashed again Tuesday morning. Recent issues include missing tweets and duplicate tweets in timelines.

Twitter promises to notify users ahead of time before closing down shop for maintenance.

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