I don’t have a Facebook account. At least, not yet, as I have mentioned in another blog post I shared over here not so long ago. But from that to say "[…] sites such as Facebook could be costing firms over £130m a day" is a bit of an over-reaction.
Danah Confused By Facebook’s Fans
Danah Boyd writes that she’s she is “utterly confused by the ways in which the tech industry fetishizes Facebook”.
She asks some good questions and makes some good points. Lets go through them. My answers in italics.
MySpace Gets Facebook Travel App
Where I’ve Been (WIB), an interactive map that allows users to share the places they have visited has launched on MySpace.
Facebook’s Power Studied
By spending time on Facebook, a person might hope to find a friend, a significant other, or even a job. I can accept that. What’s surprising is the power the social network wields over things like candy companies and banks.
Facebook Public Profile Resources
Yesterday’s news of the day was the buzz surrounding Facebook making profiles public to the major search engines. We did predict this enhancement by Facebook earlier this summer when Rumors of Google purchasing Facebook were flying around. Here’s the official word from Facebook:
Starting today, we are making limited public search listings available to
Facebook search: What’s the big deal?
There’s a large brouhaha (or perhaps it’s a kerfuffle) brewing in the blogosphere over the fact that Facebook has opened up its network to search bots from Google and others, something that was blocked by default in the past.
Facebook to Expose Profile Info
Facebook announced that they are going to begin exposing a minimal amount of user profile information to people who are not logged-in to the service, including allowing the info to be crawled and indexed by search engines.
Facebook Opening You To Google
Users of Facebook will have their profiles indexed by the likes of Google and Yahoo unless they opt to keep their listings from appearing in search engines.
Using Facebook To Reach Readers
(This is a story I wrote for the Globe that ran in the Review section of Tuesday’s newspaper. I’m posting it here for anyone who might be interested but doesn’t read the newspaper).
Necessity is the mother of invention, the old saying goes. But boredom and the desire to experiment are powerful forces too, says Canadian author Michael Winter. That’s how he came up with the idea to “serialize” his latest novel on Facebook, the hot social-networking site.
Facebook Users Fight (And Beat) Bank’s Decision
Here’s a brilliant financial guideline by which most people live: don’t spend more money than you have. But when a UK bank tried to enforce that guideline by charging interest on overdrafts, a big, Facebook-style fuss erupted. An interesting resolution then occurred: the Facebook users won.