Jul 162012
 

Facebook has added sleuthing to its array of data-mining capabilities, scanning your posts and chats for criminal activity. If the social-networking giant detects suspicious behavior, it flags the content and determines if further steps, such as informing the police, are required.

The new tidbit about the company’s monitoring system comes from a Reuters interview with Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan. Here’s the lead-in to the Reuters story:

A man in his early 30s was chatting about sex with a 13-year-old South Florida girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day. Facebook’s extensive but little-discussed technology for scanning postings and chats for criminal activity automatically flagged the conversation for employees, who read it and quickly called police. Officers took control of the teenager’s computer and arrested the man the next day.

Facebook’s software focuses on conversations between members who have a loose relationship on the social network. For example, if two users aren’t friends, only recently became friends, have no mutual friends, interact with each other very little, have a significant age difference, and/or are located far from each other, the tool pays particular attention.

via Facebook scans chats and posts for criminal activity

 


Jul 152012
 

Mafia Wars, Farmville, Poker, we all get those endless notifications from friends asking us to join games they’re playing. Some people don’t care that they are spamming you, some just don’t know. Many apps are sneaky abut sending requests to all your friends. So what do you do?

Facebook has several help posts involving privacy and app settings. The easiest way we’ve found is shown below, with some helpful links after that.

1. View your notifications. When you see an annoying invite you wish to block, click ‘see all notifications’ at the bottom of the list.

2. When you click ‘see all notifications’ you should get a page that looks something like this. Find the invite on the page. When you move the mouse pointer over the app notice, a small ‘x’ will appear to the right.

3. Click the ‘x’. When you do, it will say ‘turn off’. Click ‘turn off’, and a notice will appear telling you you’ve successfully blocked the game or app. That’s it!

 

 

There are other ways to do this through privacy settings and blocking all notices from a friend. Here are a couple of links that may also be helpful:

http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=202866049749634

http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=121070141307903

 


Jul 112012
 

Facebook recently added an option for pages to make “unpublished” posts through the Pages API. Unpublished posts do not appear on a page’s Timeline or in fans’ News Feeds, but they can be promoted with ads.

Facebook ad and page management platforms can integrate this feature to help page owners test different creative options. Previously, page owners using the self-serve ad tool or Ads API could not run page-post ads without creating a post that would also show up in fans’ feeds. Now, for instance, a business can target non-fans with an ad that includes an intro video that might not be relevant to users who have already Liked the page.

MORE:  Facebook now allows pages to make ‘unpublished’ posts to test creative options.

 

Jul 052012
 

Here is a great graphic tool that answers a question we’ve asked ourselves many times – what size does that image need to be? This graphic breaks down the layouts on all your favorite social sites, giving the dimensions so you can properly size your images, and get exactly the look you want. Link below, or you can find it in this post on our forum here.

 

Online Marketing Trends: Social Media Marketing: Most Used Tactics Across Social Media.

 


Jul 022012
 

Facebook appears to be testing a new “Want” button plugin similar to its popular Like button.

Developer Tom Waddington from Cut Out + Keep discovered that a Want button has been added to the Facebook Javascript SDK as an XFBML tag – <fb:wants>. The button is not publicly listed among the other social plugins on Facebook’s developer site. Waddington says the button will only work on Open Graph objects marked as “products.”

With Open Graph, developers have been able to create their own “want” actions, but users have to authorize a third-party app in order for those buttons to generate stories on Timeline and News Feed. If the Want button plugin works similarly to the Like button, users will not have to go through the step of authorizing an app. This means even more users will be likely to click it.

MORE: Facebook testing ‘Want’ button plugin.

 


Jun 222012
 

Facebook announced today that developers will be able to add a new Open Graph-enabled Like action to their apps so that users can easily share content back on Facebook.

Mobile and web app developers can now build custom buttons that function similarly to Facebook’s traditional Like button. For example, Instagram and Foursquare use hearts in their mobile apps. Now instead of those actions being seen within the app only, they can be published to Facebook without any additional steps. Further, when a user Likes their friend’s photo or story using the new Like action, the friend will receive a Facebook notification about it. This feature could help increase discovery and engagement of apps that integrate Open Graph.

MORE:  Facebook gives Like button functionality to third-party mobile and web app buttons.

 


Jun 222012
 

Thursday’s sporadic Twitter outages gave addicts like us the shakes. After all, Twitter users average over 100,000 tweets per minute, and the site was down for a whole lot longer than that.

Twitter is far from the only channel through which web users funnel data. Business intelligence company DOMO paired up with Column Five Media to create this infographic, which shows just how much data is generated every minute.

Next time you run a Google search, think about the fact that it’s just one of 2 million that Google will receive in that minute. In the same amount of time, Facebook users post 684,478 pieces of content. Crazier still, online shoppers spend an average of $272,070 every minute. That’s over $391 million every day — quite the chunk of change.

SOURCE:  How Much Data Is Created Every Minute? [INFOGRAPHIC].

 


Jun 042012
 

A preview of the new version of Bing has been available for some time, but as of today the new layout and features are now available to everyone in the United States. So far there’s no word on when the same features might come to international users.

If social search features leave you feeling cold, fear not, the new Bing doesn’t follow Google’s lead and integrate social results right into the main search results. Instead Bing has completely overhauled its look and now sports a three-column layout. To go along with the new layout Bing has cut back on the chrome and other UI elements so even though there’s quite a bit more info on the page, it still feels relatively uncluttered.

The new look pairs the traditional search results — still on the left side of the page — with two new columns — a so-called snapshot column in the middle, and the new social results on the far right.

The most intriguing of the three is the snapshot info, which varies according to your search.

SOURCE Microsoft Goes Social With Bing Search Overhaul | Webmonkey | Wired.com.

 


May 292012
 

Bragging about your big pile of cash on Facebook isn’t a great idea.

A 17-year-old Australian girl learned this lesson the hard way last Thursday when she posted a picture of some money on Facebook. The girl was helping her grandmother count the loot and couldn’t help sharing that information with her online friends.

SOURCE Girl Posts Pics of Money on Facebook and Attracts Robbers.