Facebook to Settle with the Federal Trade Commission Regarding Broken Privacy Promises
November 29, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
In a press release, today, the Federal Trade Commission gave news that it had reached a settlement with Facebook regarding charges of consumer deception and broken privacy promises. Although the document noted that the charges fell under the umbrella category of “administrative complaint,” and did not constitute a ruling with respect to the violation of the law, the commission believes that Facebook transgressed federal law when it told users that their information would remain private and unavailable to third parties like advertisers or the general public, which was not the case. The FTC called Facebook’s claims “unfair and deceptive.”
With the settlement, which is open to public comments until December 30th of this year, Facebook will agree to henceforth give “clear and prominent notice and obtai[n] consumers’ express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.” Another part of the deal is that for the coming twenty years, Facebook will undergo regular audits, about every two years, to assess its privacy practices.
Jon Leibowits, the FTC’s chairman, said that “Facebook is obligated to keep the promises about privacy that it makes to its hundreds of millions of users,” and that “Facebook’s innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy.” Adding, “The FTC action will ensure it will not.”
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http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/11/privacysettlement.shtm
Kansas Teen’s Tweet of Dissent Goes Viral
November 28, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Most people know that one’s social media presence must be well managed, lest potential employers, college admissions officers, or would-be beaux got the wrong idea. But what if your state governor was the one who got the wrong idea about you? That’s just the question Emma Sullivan, an eighteen-year-old high school senior from Kansas, had to grapple with last week.
Shortly before Thanksgiving break, Sullivan went to the Kansas state Capitol for a Youth in Government program. While there, she tweeted “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.” The “he” in the tweet’s hashtag refers to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, who’s a conservative Republican.
The governor’s sharp-eyed social media sleuths spotted the tweet and, rather quickly, the administrators at Emma Sullivan’s high school, Shawnee Mission East, issued a request that Sullivan address a letter of apology to the governor. The plucky teenager refused and her plight garnered mass media attention. A big spectacle was created and today the governor himself released a letter of apology to Sullivan, declaring: “My staff overreacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms.”
Sullivan currently has 12,436 Twitter followers. For anyone who’s wondering, the governor has 3,285 followers.
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IBM Uses Social Media to Look at the Future of High Heels
November 25, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
It seems that every news cycle brings with it a trend piece about women’s fashion and what its latest manifestations portend, or reveal, about the current state of the broader economic climate. This cycle’s trend piece is here, and it comes courtesy of IBM — yes, that IBM.
IBM may not be the first brand that springs to mind when one thinks of fashion, but the famous technology firm took it upon itself to analyze, with the help of its analytics software, naturally, four years’ worth of social media content to gauge the winds of change in the height of women’s shoes, a pop economic indicator that sits right alongside red lipstick sales in econ books.
An IBM press release about the investigation stated that the social media posts analyzed numbered in the billions. Because their analysis suggests that heel height is declining, IBM’s cultural forecasters are also positing that people may be preparing for long-term austerity. The latter is on account of the observed heel height increase during economic downturns and flattening out during boom times.
But IBM had another aim in mind with its experiment: the promotion of its analytics tools. According to the same press release, the point of the investigation was to “highligh[t] the predictive capabilities of social media analysis as a source of valuable insight that can help drive business strategies and results.” IBM believes it has the tools marketers need to incorporate quantitative social media data into their business decisions.
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http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/35985.wss
Britney Spears Beats Larry Page as Google+’s Most Followed Person
November 23, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Tonight, Katy Perry may be “giving thanks” in grand style with a free concert in L.A.’s Staples Center, but this Thanksgiving Eve, Britney Spears received an unexpectedly special gesture of thanks from her own fans. As of today, they’ve managed to propel her to the very top of Google+ popularity, which means she’s wrested the top spot from Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and CEO. And, that’s not to pile on faint praise on the often controversial singer. Larry Page himself had to contend with taking the top spot from Mark Zuckerberg, his social networking nemesis, a few months ago.
Although this remains good news for Britney, it’s spelling out even better news for Google’s honchos, including Page. As industry writers have been diligently pointing out, riding the high popularity crests of Google+ had been limited to consummate tech-ists like Page and Zuckerberg for a while. Sure, these folks are celebrities, but they’re mostly extolled by the extant and proudly persnickety gaggles of technophiles out there. That these divergent groups are growing at astounding speed no one doubts, but it must be pretty reaffirming for Google that its social network is finally becoming, as some put it, “normal,” thanks to the stronger showing of mainstream celebrity following. Snoop Dog currently occupies third place on Google+.
Read More:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/11/britney-spears-best-thing-happen-google/45374/
Facebook Researchers Say It’s 4.74 Degrees of Separation, Not Six
November 22, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Facebook teamed up with the Università degli Studi di Milano to revisit Stanley Milgram’s 1967 experiment concerning the number of social connections separating any two people. The results from the new investigation point to there being a separation of 4.74 degrees between individuals instead of six. The Italian and American team’s conclusions were published Monday on Facebook. The two research papers can be read at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4503 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4570.
During the original Milgram experiment, data obtained from a mere 296 volunteers was used. By comparison, Facebook and U. degli Studi di Milano looked at data from all 721 million of Facebook’s users. As everyone is mentioning, that number is more than one-tenth of the entire world’s population.
The notion of “six degrees of separation,” has had a long history. It first appeared in 1929 in the Hungarian short story “Chains,” by Frigyes Karinthy. More recently, the idea was popularized in United States by the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which players attempt to connect anyone within the movie industry to the Footloose actor. The premise is that anyone can be connected to Bacon within six degrees.
Via Twitter, Bacon himself agreed with those opining that the new figure lacks the sonorous ring of the old one.
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On Facebook, Rihanna’s Entire New Album is Streaming for Free
November 21, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Shakira and Barack Obama may currently be besting Rihanna in Twitter rankings, but the Barbadian songstress is doing her part on the social media scene to change the status quo. Last week, RiRi, as she’s known to her fans, let pop music lovers everywhere get a compete earful of her newest album, “Talk That Talk,” through her Facebook page. The free Facebook streaming came four days before the official November 21st release date.
Today, you can head over to the most impossibly retro-cool record shop around to get your hands on the disc, download it from iTunes, or continue streaming it for free to save some money for Thursday’s feast. The pre-release Facebook streaming of Rihanna’s sixth album was part of “Unlocked,” a big publicity campaign that so far has proved successful.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that since “Unlocked” began, Rihanna has gained a million new Twitter followers and over 700,000 Facebook fans. The campaign, which got underway in September, involved delegating “missions” to fans; upon their completion, information about Rihanna’s new studio material was revealed.
As of this writing, the first single off “Talk That Talk,” “We Found Love,” is at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100. On the left is the cover of the album’s deluxe edition.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/11/rihanna-streams-talk-that-talk-on-facebook.html
Demi Moore Makes Public Her Intention to Divorce Ashton Kutcher; He Confirms News Via Twitter
November 18, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Ashton Kutcher, who last week handed over the management of his Twitter account to an editorial team, reacted via that same account to the public statements made by Demi Moore, his wife, concerning her decision to file for divorce. On Ashton’s Twitter feed appeared the following message:
I will forever cherish the time I spent with Demi. Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world and unfortunately sometimes they fail. Love and Light, AK
As it’s been extensively reported here and elsewhere, Kutcher, a TV and film actor, has been a very visible proponent of social media; he was the first person to reach a million followers on Twitter. The couple’s individual Twitter feeds were enormously popular. Kutcher and Moore said their marriage vows in September 2005. Demi Moore, who was previously married to Bruce Willis for almost 13 years, made her statements through the Associated Press.
“It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton. As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life. This is a trying time for me and my family, and so I would ask for the same compassion and privacy that you would give to anyone going through a similar situation,” were Demi’s words.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/17/national/a132757S69.DTL#ixzz1e6pwYEfC
How to Remove Negative Reviews on Ripoffreport.com and Yelp
November 17, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
It happens to the best of businesses: an unhappy customer posts a negative review on the Internet about your product or service and it spreads faster than wildfire. Whether it is posted on a consumer complaint site such as Ripoffreport.com or a local review site such as Yelp, negative reviews on the web can damage your online reputation and destroy your business. For many business owners, this is a horrible nightmare come true.
While businesses have had to deal with unhappy customers long before the advent of the Internet, the web adds insult to injury by keeping a permanent record of negative or unflattering content. Unfortunately, negative reviews on sites such as Ripoffreport.com and Yelp are especially damaging because they appear prominently in search results.
So how does one remove negative reviews on sites like Ripoffreport.com and Yelp? Is there such a service as Ripoff Report Removal Service? Or are businesses forever doomed with unflattering information on the web? The answer is not that simple. Unfortunately, there is no sure fire way to remove negative reviews or content from the web. But there is hope.
The solution to combating negative reviews on the Internet is through effective online reputation management. You cannot actually remove negative listings from these sites or from the search engines, but through a combination of SEO techniques and social media marketing strategies, you can suppress the negative information about your business.
Many of the strategies, including link building, social media marketing, and reputation monitoring, are designed to burry negative content by lifting positive content higher in search engine rankings. Submit Express, our parent company, offers businesses a variety of reputation management services, including the Ripoff Report Removal Service and Yelp Negative Review Repair service.
In addition, from our social media marketing services site iClimber, we offer social media profile creation service. Social media profiles have proven to be real powerfull in the search engines and often most company social profiles rank highly for their company names. The goal for you should be to own the Top 10 or even Top 20 results in the search enines for your company name. You should have control of all the sites listed in the Top 10, that way nobody can write anything negative about you and have it appear in the top 10. This is not an easy taks and it is best if you let professionals help you.
Questlove Goes on a “Midnight Ride,” Tweets First Warning of Police Raid on Zuccotti Park’s OWS Encampment
November 16, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Today, Questlove from The Roots is being hailed as the Occupy Wall Street movement’s Paul Revere. Approximately twenty minutes before midnight, Questlove, who’s also known as Ahmir Khalib Thompson, wrote in his Twitter feed that he saw a thousand police officers, geared up and ready for action, near the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park. In shortened verse that even Longfellow would approve of, Questlove tweeted: “Omg, drivin down south st near #ows. Somethin bout to go down yo, swear I counted 1000 riot gear cops bout to pull sneak attack #carefulyall.” The timestamp on that first tweet read 11:39 p.m. EST.
The “Midnight Ride” he took was pure chance, but his resolve to warn the protestors via Twitter was not. Nevertheless, OWS leadership was not sure what to make of the warning, and there was a prolonged online debate about whether the excess police was due to a “shift change” or Christian Bale filming his “The Dark Knight Rises” scenes with many extras in tow. Less than ninety minutes later — throughout which Questlove continued to confirm his eyewitness account to Twitter readers — the police force arrived and began clearing out the park. OWS is regrouping and the episode confirms Twitter’s privileged status among popular, democratic movements around the world.
Read More:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/uestlove-warned-of-occupy-wall-street-police-raid-20111115
Salman Rushdie Overturns Facebook’s Decision to Call Him “Ahmed Rushdie”
November 15, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Like many people, Salman Rushdie goes by his middle name, even on Facebook, which prefers, apparently, that folks go by their first. This Monday saw the two sides come to a head-to-head public battle. After unceremoniously deactivating Salman Rushdie’s account until he complied with a passport copy request to verify his identity, Facebook reinstated his active status but changed the name on his profile: “Salman Rushdie,” as it appears on the cover of the gazillions of books he’s sold, to “Ahmed Rushdie,” as an airport customs official might greet him. Yikes! would be an understatement.
Rushdie did not waste time in seeking a rectification. After getting nowhere with Facebook’s tech support, he decided to change his medium and put his appeal out on Twitter.
Maybe @MarkZuckerbergF is a phony. Is the real#Zuckerberg on Twitter? Where are you hiding, Mark? Come out here and give me back my name!
That worked. Just two hours into his plucky online campaign Rushdie, informed his followers that Facebook had relented:
Facebook has buckled! I’m Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun.
Along the way, Mr. Rushdie managed to get the #MiddleNameUsers hashtag going and to bring to the world’s attention the fact that both James “Paul” McCartney and William Bradley “Brad” Pitt go by their middle names. That’s Rushdie at the far right, standing next to Voltaire and Christopher Hitchens.
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