Trends Hut

With many adults in the UK using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, a large number are updating on their actions and whereabouts without considering the associated risks.

According to research by The Co-operative Insurance, 70% of adults in the UK using social networking websites.


Over a third of these though use such as Facebook and Twitter to make people aware of a whole range of personal information – such as where they are, what they are doing, when they are off on holiday etc.
They also divulge information about their date of birth, marital status and family details. In isolation this may seem harmless but collectively in the wrong hands may result in a number of problems.

Divulging personal information puts people at risk of identity theft but detailing when you are away from your home puts you at greater risk from burglary of your home and theft of your personal possessions, such as your car.

Giving this level information is done even though almost two thirds of UK adults believe that they would not be able to make a claim on their home insurance, due to a burglary, if they had clearly documented their movements on social networking websites.

David Neave, Director of General Insurance at The Co-operative Insurance, said: “A common sense approach when using social networking websites is key.

You have to ask yourself ‘would I be happy to divulge this information normally?’ If not, you shouldn’t make people aware of it online.”

He added “Unfortunately, whilst the majority of people use these websites as they are intended, there is a minority group which will be using them for their own illegal gains and therefore it is very important to be vigilant and err on the side of caution when updating statuses.”

A potentially serious security breach affecting tens of millions of Facebook users is the latest privacy snafu dogging the world's largest online social network.

It's been widely remarked that The Social Network  isn't about social networking: it's about the genesis of any kind of empire. Maybe so, but whatever his creators' intentions, the Mark Zuckerberg confected by Aaron Sorkin, David Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg can't help taking on an emblematic quality. He seems to manifest in extreme form a reshaping of the human personality that his own invention is helping to bring about.

The question that Facebook chooses to put to us is "What's on your mind?" In the film's first scene, Eisenberg's version of Zuckerberg pours out the contents of his own mind to his girlfriend Erica with zero interest in either her preconceptions or response. She tells him he speaks as if "every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not to be shared". As it happens, Zuckerberg's thoughts are indeed clever. In the world of digital discourse, however, stupid and nasty thoughts are tumbling out of the rest of us with the same lack of concern for those expected to share them.

Qi Lu, president of Microsoft's online services division, headlined the Wednesday press conference at which Microsoft announced a partnership with Facebook to integrate Microsoft's Bing search engine into the world's most popular social network.

Lu's presentation might lead you to believe this was mostly about Bing continuing to nibble away at Google's seemingly unshakeable 60%-plus share of the U.S. search market.

Lu, whom Microsoft lured from a senior post at Yahoo, vowed that Bing integrated into Facebook would " harness and unlock the tremendous potentials of social."

However, this partnership isn't really about Bing vs. Google. It's much more about Facebook hunkering down to repel the ambitious search giant.

Gartner tech industry analyst Ray Valdes points out that Facebook's engineering team was in lockdown mode from mid-August until last week, when the team emerged to unveil an updated Facebook Groups and several other improvements.

This skunkworks output and the Bing partnership stem directly from Facebook CEO's Mark Zuckerberg's concern about Google's relentless and continuing attempts to muscle its way into the social Web, says Valdes, who has recently spoken with Zuckerberg about this.

Lucky for Zuck, Google thus far has stumbled. It's acquisitions of microblogging site Jaiku and mobile social network Dodgeball have gone nowhere. Its ambitious, would-be Facebook-killer initiatives Google Wave and Google Buzz both fizzled -- Buzz spectacularly so. Last month, Google quietly agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a privacy lawsuit stemming from the February launch of Buzz, the massive social network Google created overnight by automatically including Gmail users' private contacts on public Buzz profiles.

But Google is nothing if not relentless. Its resolve to get a toe hold on Facebook's turf became evident three months ago when Paul Adams, a senior user-experience designer, posted this extensive presentation, which got 300,000 page views on slideshare.net. Adams outlined what he characterized as a glaring weakness in Facebook's architecture: the inability for members to easily create multiple independent groups of friends. The implication: Google is developing a secret project that will exploit this weakness, says Valdes.

Shortly after Adams posted his slides, Zuckerberg ordered his engineers to work seven days a week in the skunkworks, says Valdes. The improvements Facebook announced last week -- and the new Bing partnership -- directly result from the gauntlet thrown down by Adams. Facebook's recent moves should be viewed as pre-emptive strikes to impede the Google juggernaut, he says.

"Facebook's no. 1 threat right now is Google," says Valdes. "So Facebook is trying to align its forces with others, in this case Microsoft, who are also trying to compete against Google."

Google has not been deterred. The search giant has recently "hired a bunch of people, repositioned management and continues to view the social Web as strategically important," says Valdes. "Rumor has it Google will roll out a major new social Web initiative over the next few weeks or months."

"Crime expands to fill the space available" should be a well-known epithet: Evidence it's true is revealed in news that social networking phenomena Facebook and Twitter were used in a classic stock fraud trick.

The two-year investigation of a cocaine-trafficking crime involving $34 million worth of the drug being smuggled through the Port of New York also uncovered something unexpected--a $7 million pump-and-dump stock fraud.

The trick this time, according to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office, is that instead of word-of-mouth "pumping" statements, cold calls or subtle manipulation of traditional media, the Web--and social media sites in particular--were used to spread misleading statements and "defraud the investing public." The 11 fraudsters used more than 15 different websites and managed to accrue over $3 million in profit while fleecing the public for $7 million. Facebook pages and misleading Twitter statuses played a key role.

This new type of "wire fraud" is inevitable, and Facebook and Twitter (along with blogs and other social media services) are absolutely perfect vehicles for criminals to use to disseminate misleading stock information. This is because they're communications systems that rapidly spread messages from one to many (Twitter almost exclusively so, and Facebook increasingly so as it pushes toward public-accessible statuses), and their design means they don't necessarily have to give away personal information about the sources of stock rumors. Expect cybercrimes like this one to only get more common.

And Facebook's also in the news at the moment because notorious spammer Adam Guerbuez is refusing to pay the $873 million fine that a Canadian court levied against him for sending over 4 million spam messages over Facebook (the classic type, offering penis enlargements and drugs). Guerbuez used various tricks to pull the scam off, including phishing for user's passwords, and an appeals court recently upheld the charges against him for the crime. Guerbuez doesn't see himself as a criminal though, and as well as declaring his business bankrupt so he won't have to pay the fines, he's noted he's hoping to profit on his notoriety with a book or movie deal.

David Fincher's The Social Network can easily be labeled the movie of the year, because it shows how the 21-year-old evil genius Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, used his advanced abilities as a hacker to manipulate those around him in order to create the largest social networking site used by over 500 million users. Zuckerberg always seems to have an arrogant comeback for every remark thrown his way.
Eisenberg plays the role of Zuckerberg brilliantly - the way he portrays the young Mark Zuckerberg is believable and matches up with the personality that Zuckerberg presently exhibits.
A huge part of why this is the movie of the year is, because it's more than just a movie. If this was a work of fiction then it may not have as big an impact - but this movie is based on the real story of how Zuckerberg did whatever he had to do, even if it meant betraying his closest friend, in order to make it to the top. The selfish Harvard student can easily be labeled as an arrogant jerk, but he is in fact the arrogant jerk who has created a site that millions of users spend hours of their day on.

Facebook will integrate with Skype to let users of the world's largest social network leverage the VOIP giant's PC-to-PC calling capabilities, rivaling Google's VOIP tools.

Facebook and Skype are reportedly discussing an integration that would allow users of the world's largest social network leverage the VOIP giant's PC-to-PC calling capabilities with their Facebook account information.

Facebook and Skype are working to allow Facebook users to send SMS messages and make voice and video calls to friends and contacts via Skype, according to AllThingsDigital.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt on Friday said that Microsoft's Bing search engine was the company's main threat, not Facebook or Apple.

"While it's true Web search is not the only game in town, searching information is what it is all about," Schmidt said in Wall Street Journal interview video posted online.

He described Apple as a well-respected competitor and Facebook as a "company of consequence doing an excellent job in social networking," but said that Microsoft's latest-generation search engine was Google's main competition.

We consider neither to be a competitive threat," Schmidt said, referring to Facebook and Apple. "Absolutely, our competitor is Bing. Bing is a well-run, highly competitive search engine."
Microsoft's Bing and other Internet search services overtook Yahoo! for the first time to become the number two search engine in the United States in August, according to The Nielsen Co....

We guessed the latest batch of Facebook phone rumors from this morning wouldn’t be the last we’d hear about the supposed INQ mobile/Facebook collaboration, and on cue a new set of tidbits have arrived.  GigaOm have been piecing together their own sources and have fleshed things out a little: they say Bloomberg’s H1 2011 timescale is over-confident but that the first network to see the Facebook phone will be Hutchinson’s 3, likely with a Spotify bundle in tow.  While they reiterate that the vaunted AT&T deal hasn’t been finalized yet, they also say that, if Spotify manage their predicted December US launch, access could also be bundled on the AT&T version of the smartphone(s)....

The story simmered in my mind all day, though, and you know what? Facebook is great, but it’s not the nature of the Internet for things to last forever. This is a living, breathing, growing, changing world, and even though I know Facebook has rabid fans and they definitely wear the crown right now, they aren’t indestructible…or at least, they are uncrownable.*
In short, Facebook may not be king forever – and here’s why:........   click on read more below

Pew Internet has just completed a survey of nearly 2000 mobile users in the US and has come up with some not particularly startling statistics about phone and app usage. Still, it’s good to have some cold hard numbers to look at, even if the sample size seems a bit small. Here are a few highlights from the survey and writeup:

• 23% of Americans are now landline-free
  Higher than I expected. I suspect a fair amount of people with land lines these days are more or less required to have them as part of a internet or cable deal.
• 24% of mobile users are active app users
  That is, 24% use their apps regularly, as opposed to simply having apps sitting there on their phone.
• Apps rank low on non-voice activities
  Pew mentions that many apps are used for such things as text messages, picture taking, and so on, but the structure of the survey didn’t allow for this kind of flexibility.
• 13% of users have paid for an app
  Whether this is high or low is kind of a matter of perspective. Two years ago this number was probably more like 2%.
• Median number of installed apps is 10, average is 18
  You seem to be either a light or a heavy app user, not too many people in between. This stat likely owes a lot to the age gap as well. The young people have way more apps than the geezers....
  

American Idol  hopefuls have a new way to audition, and they might not even have to leave their houses to do so, because this season the show will allow aspiring singers to submit audition videos via MySpace.
Singers interested in going on the show will have to perform a song, a capella, from an approved online list. Participants can only submit one video each, and the video can’t be longer than 40 seconds (submissions are due by October 6).
These web auditions will be judged in a manner similar to the usual tryouts. Aspiring musicians with successful audition videos will be called back to the next round in Los Angeles. Viewers will be able to share the videos, and they will also be able to watch highlights on Idol’s MySpace page....

Google will most probably launch its social network, dubbed Google Me, later this year. However, the secretive project might be more of an added social layer to Google’s existing products and services than an entirely new service.“We’re trying to take Google’s core products and add a social component,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the Google Zeitgeist conference on Tuesday.
Rumors about Google building a Facebook competitor became slightly more convincing back in August, when Google acquired Ångströ, a service that brings intelligent search results on someone’s professional network, as well as social app company Slide.
Now, however, Google Me is shaping to be more like Buzz, in the sense that it will integrate with Google’s existing popular services such as email and Google’s most important product – search.
“If you think about it, it’s obvious. With your permission, knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better,” Schmidt said.
Hearing these words coming out of Schmidt’s mouth must be a a huge confidence booster for Facebook. If social networking is so important for search, well, Facebook has already solved that part of the equation. If Google’s social networking efforts fail, Google may become desperate to partner up with Facebook.
Note that Schmidt was very careful to mention users’ permission. Google Buzz made Gmail social, but it also caused a backlash from users who simply didn’t like the fact that some of their email-related info is now shared with other users.
It’ll be interesting to see how Google plans to make its services more social without making the same mistakes again.

Written by Stan Schroeder


 

People said it would happen with Foursquare, it may have already happened with Twitter, and now the trend has continued on Facebook: Burglars in Nashua, New Hampshire looked at updates from Facebook to figure out when one target wasn’t at home.
Police caught three young men who had used “social networking sites like Facebook to identify victims who posted online that they would not be home at a certain time,” according to local news station WMUR 9.
That said, don’t jump to conclusions. The burglars weren’t using the new Facebook Places location system, despite implications by The Huffington Post and other web publications. Facebook released the following statement published by NECN:

We’ve been in contact with the Nashua police, and they confirmed that they while they have an ongoing investigation and have already made a number of arrests, the only Facebook link was that one of those arrested had a Facebook friend who posted about leaving town in the near future (which is why they believe that home was targeted) and it had nothing to do with Facebook Places. The police confirmed that the other burglaries had nothing to do with Facebook altogether.

These particular burglars performed more than 50 burglaries but they didn’t use Facebook Places, and they may have only targeted one person by looking at his Facebook page. But it goes to show that you should be careful even if you’re using Facebook’s privacy settings to make your updates viewable only to friends.
We’ve heard speculation that burglars would use Facebook status updates to target people in the past, but this time it looks like it’s not just talk. So let this be a warning: Be careful what you include in your social media updates.
 Trends Hut
This Article is written by Samuel Axon

 Trends hut
This Article is written bySamuel Axon
 
Facebook just launched a new web app not-so-memorably dubbed “Discover Facebook’s Popular Pages.” It’s a visual interface intended to help you find more pages to “Like” based on your past selections, what’s popular and what your friends like.
The app divides pages into nine categories: Musicians, Sports, Celebrities, Movies, TV Shows, Media, Politicians, Brands and Games. You can view images representing different pages in each category, or you can view pages from all categories, which include other things like local businesses or photographer friends’ pages, for example.
On the right, Facebook has included a list of the friends who have the most pages in common with you. Clicking on any of the names will pop up a list of your mutual likes, and you can click on the “All Likes” tab to see the other things they like.
You can also look at the most popular pages by country with the drop-down menu in the top right corner of the site.
Facebook provides a ton of ways for you to discover new pages to like as it is. You’ll of course see pages in your friends’ news feed updates and profiles, you’re asked to search for pages to like when you create a new profile, and the site regularly displays boxes with suggestions.
It might all seem like a bit much, but Facebook wants to be a portal that connects consumers and brands because it can provide services or advertise to both, so we’re not surprised that Facebook is adding new ways to build those connections.

Trends Hut
This Article is written by Christina Warren
When Apple released iTunes 10 last week, the newest version of the venerable media app sported not only a refined interface and the new Ping social network but a new application icon, as well.