facebook new security changes

Summary: Facebook’s privacy and security settings have changed massively. It’s time to catch up and ensure your settings are up to date.


Every single Facebook user should now have the brand new privacy settings, which have changed radically since the last update.


With brand new features and revamped settings to play with — this three-day holiday weekend is a perfect opportunity for you to take a look at your Facebook account, profile and privacy settings, and lock them down.






However, because of Facebook’s expected profile, account and privacy shift earlier this month, an awful lot has changed — as you will no doubt have noticed.


The previous Lockdown Guides have been some of the most popular content on ZDNet to date.


Each gallery guide will walk you through a crucial focus area of Facebook’s settings, and will run through every single setting, option and feature available to users, to ensure that your privacy is as protected as it can be.
Gallery guide 1: Secure your friends lists




New guide: This guide is a crucial focus to the remaining guides, showing you how to create lists of friends, such as colleagues and family, as well as a ‘limited profile’, allowing you to limit updates and uploaded content from those you do not want to share with.

Gallery guide 2: Secure your profile page
Updated: Believe it or not, your profile settings page is now where your privacy settings are. This guide will walk you through the updated user-interface, as well as the recommended settings for each section of your profile.

Gallery guide 3: Secure your account settings
Updated: Your account settings are at the heart of your Facebook, and have changed significantly. This guide reflects those major changes, and shows you how to be secure using the world’s largest social network. It also helps you manage your data, including a full section on how to manage the applications and games that are connected to your account.

Gallery guide 4: Secure your privacy settings
Updated: Everything has changed! Included in this guide are the new privacy features that Facebook rolled out earlier this month, including changes to how you are tagged, and who can share your data. You can also manage your block lists from here, and make sweeping permissions changes to your old posts.

Gallery guide 5: Secure the miscellaneous bits
Updated: This guide will show you how to download all of your data, as well as showing you how to manage your BlackBerry and iPhone settings. Also, seeing as your status update window has changed, it will show you how to set locations and tag friends in a safe way, and how to create private events that are limited to your network.

Social Network Sites

I am going to focus on social network sites as a case study, because they are still the most massive and relevant case study we can work with. (This might be changing soon with mobile but we're not there yet.)

First, you'll notice that I'm saying "social network site" instead of "social networking site." This is intention. While you might be off using Facebook and MySpace to network with business colleagues, high school mates, and the hotty that you think you might want to date, most teens are not. They're focused on their friends. They use these sites to connect to people that they already know from school, church, activities, summer camp, etc.

One of the most problematic mistakes adults make when trying to make sense of social network sites is to presume that kids interact on these sites just like they do. This ain't true. Teens are using this space as a social hangout with their pre-existing network.

There are four features of social network sites that are relevant for us here today:

1. Profiles. Social network site profiles are where youth write themselves into being. Think of the profile as a digital body. Up until this point, you are an IP address and an IP address can't be dolled up for show and tell. With a profile, a teen can express who they are. Keep in mind the audience. This is about showing off to known individuals. Thus, when teens saying that they're 95 and from Christmas Island, they know they're not and their friends know they're not. They don't care about data accuracy for the system - they care that their friends get a sense of who they are. Profile decoration is akin to decorating one's bedroom wall or locker (back before that was a fire hazard). It's all about self-expression for friends.

2. Friends. Social network site Friends are not the same as your closest and dearest. There are all sorts of reasons to list others as Friends, not the least of which is because it's socially rude not to. Don't assume that when people indicate that they are connected on this system that they like each other. One way of thinking about Friends is as intended audience. This is who teens think that they are hanging out with. Of course, this is also Ground Zero for psychodrama - there's nothing fun about having to answer the question "Are you my Friend, Yes or No?" from someone you know but don't care for.

3. Comments. Most adults look at the comments on teens' profiles or Wall and get all uppity. Sure, the conversation typically boils down to "Yo, wazzup?" "Not much.. you?" "Nothing... I'm bored." "Me too." But be honest with yourself - those conversations that you just had in the hallway about the weather... were they so much more meaningful? I don't think so. All of this is a process of social grooming. It's a way of acknowledging one another and connecting while also letting everyone in the room know that you're not a pariah. I mean, imagine if we all went into the hallway and stood by ourselves and didn't make small chat. Wouldn't we all feel really awkward? Right. So think of these Comments in that regard. Teens know how to have deeper conversations - this just isn't where those necessarily happen.

4. New Feed. When Facebook launched the News Feed (and MySpace copied it), microblogging emerged on social network sites. These "status updates" provide a reverse chronological stream of the state of being of one's network. Many of these are mundane notes, details about food, comments on life, the universe and everything.

Most of you are familiar with this kind of structure through Twitter. Many of you have already send a bazillion Tweets today - we've all been watching them. But before you go thinking that you're down with the kids, let's get one thing straight: according to Pew, the median age of the Twitterverse is 31. That's right: this ain't kids' world.

Take a moment.. Do not assume that youth will adopt every new form of social media. In fact, they won't. There are very good reasons for why they don't use Twitter, not the least of which has to do with the fact that their parents think it's cool. Of course, Ashton Kutcher might change this. But for the most part, teens aren't here and aren't humored with being this public.

So why are they here? What are they doing here? The first thing to understand is that there's social pressure to be where your friends are. This ain't new. It's about the mall, about the school dance, etc. You don't exist if you're not where your friends are.

Of course, just because teens want to gather with their friends doesn't mean that social network sites are the ideal place. Often, being offline together with friends is much more preferred.
danah: If you could choose between hanging out with friends or being online with them?

But they still have good reasons for getting together online with friends, not the least of which is because they aren't allowed out. Teens often turn to them because they don't have other spaces in which they can gather with peers.

Of course, at the end of the day, social network sites are a great hang-out place, a great place to coordinate, and a great place to share. In fact, there's a lot about the way in which youth interact here that signals that it's just like any other public space. Now here's where we need to think about structure. How are these environments similar or different to other public spaces?

Learning about Social Networks

First, I want to make it VERY clear that sociality has learning implications. Youth engage with others to work out boundaries, to understand norms. This is how they learn power and authority, how they learn the networked architecture of everyday life. It's easy to eschew this, to argue that this is irrelevant, but most people spend a decent amount of their time working through social issues as a part of being an adult in this society. We talk about it as "politics" usually but it's about people. And teen years are where this is worked out.

It's also important to note the ways in which we need to learn to learn. Social media is connecting educators and learners in new ways and this too is extremely important. Consider, for example, this quote where a teacher helps a student in the off-hours on her MySpace:
"Pleeeeeeeeeeease tell me why pre-calculus is important to me..."
Mr. C: "... You're not learning this stuff because you need it every day as an adult... The reason is that studying these things (precalculus, Shakespeare, ... whatever) helps you get good at learning how to learn. And that, you will definitely have to do for the rest of your life. That's practically all we do as adults..."

Of course, that doesn't address where and when technology is useful in the classroom. We all know that technology can be useful in education purposes. Many of you are deeply invested in bringing technology to the classroom. I'm speaking to the choir on this one.

But I want to make one thing clear... Just because youth are using social media doesn't mean that it can fit well into the classroom. It needs to be thought through pedagogically and y'all need to understand how it's being used in everyday life before bringing it into the classroom.


Since we're using social network sites as a case study, let me point out one of the places where they FAIL miserably. On social network sites, you have to publicly list your Friends and you have to have the functioning network to leverage it. What happens if you're an outcast at school? Does bringing it into the classroom make it worse? What happens if you're forced to Friend someone who torments you because you share a class? And then you have to face that person in your "private" space online as well? Bringing social network sites into the classroom can be very very tricky because you have to contend with social factors that you, as a teacher, may not be aware of.

While I'm hesitant to introduce many forms of social media into the classroom directly, I think that it is critical to see how they are reshaping information flow. This is actually where tremendous innovation opportunities emerge.

We all know that youth are searching for information in totally new ways so I'm going to skip over that. But they are also sharing differently. Sharing of information is very different in a world of bits where it's easy to make a duplicate and still retain what you originally had. Pointers have value and sharing information can create memes. Needless to say, youth are leveraging social media to share with their friends and peers. Now, most of what they share might be pure gossip, but teens also share links, references, ideas, and original content.

Of course, while adults are increasingly using sophisticated tools to aggregate and disseminate information, youth are predominantly not. Teens are not familiar with RSS feed readers or aggregators like Del.icio.us. Again, just because you use these forms of social media doesn't mean youth do. For the most part, teens are primarily sharing through IM and their SNS of choice. Or simply by word of mouth.

In the same vain, most teens live and breathe open systems like Wikipedia but have no idea how these systems work. They are typically told that Wikipedia is bad rather than being taught how to make sense of the information that is there.

Many of them are producing their own content without a critical understanding of remix or user-generated content. They're experiencing the blurring between consumption and production but they don't have a framework to make sense of this or to understand how to respond to attacks on their practices.


For all of the attention paid to "digital natives" it's important to realize that most teens are engaging with social media without any deep understanding of the underlying dynamics or structure. Just because they understand how to use the technology doesn't mean that they understand the information ecology that surrounds it. Most teens don't have the scaffolding for thinking about their information practices.

It's critical to realize that just because young folks pick up a technology before you do doesn't inherently mean that they understand it better than you do. Or that they have a way of putting it into context. What they're doing is not inherently more sophisticated – it's simply different. They're coming of age in a culture where these structures are just a given. They take them for granted. And they repurpose them to meet their needs. But they don't necessarily think about them.

Educators have a critical role when it comes to helping youth navigate social media. You can help them understand how to make sense of what they're seeing. We can call this "media literacy" or "digital literacy" or simply learning to live in a modern society. Youth need to know more than just how to use the tools - they need to understand the structures around them.


You need to understand what they're doing and why. Most importantly, you need to not reject what they're doing or fetishize it.


The modern world is certainly filled with neat new gadgets. Today's youth are certainly embracing many of them. Yet, at the end of the day, what they are doing is a lot like what previous generations were doing, inflected by the dynamics and features of the technology. So how do we face the next generation living and learning with social media?

We start by opening up a dialogue. We start talking to youth about what they are doing and why they are doing it. We ask them to teach us about the technology while we guide them with the knowledge that we have through experience. We start co-operating and engaging with the shifting nature of everyday life.

At the end of the day, the biggest disruption brought on by technology has nothing to do with the youth themselves, but with the way in which it forces us to reconsider our position of power as adults. We cannot simply tell it like it is; we need to re-learn how to learn and how to evolve with the changes all around us.

Basic's of Facebook

So, you are new to social networking. If this is the case, then you will no doubt be wondering how on earth you operate the social networking maze that is Facebook.
Fortunately, this site is actually really easy to navigate and utilize once you are made aware of the basic functions that this site has to offer.
The good thing about Facebook is that it allows you to keep in contact with all of the people in your life on a day to day basis. Let’s take a look at some of the most basic functions.
First, you are going to want to learn about your wall. Every Facebook user has a wall built into their profile. This wall is used for your friends to comment on, your status updates, and links and images that have been sent to you.
As well as this, any pictures that you have been tagged in will be displayed on your wall. Your wall is essentially the focal point of your profile, which is why it is important that you understand what it is and what it does. So, now we have gotten that out of the way, what’s next?
Your news feed. The feed is probably the most important thing about Facebook. Your news feed is where your friends status updates and activity on the site is displayed. For example, if one of your friends has updated their status then it will be displayed on your news feed which is on your home page.
It will also show when your friends write on other people’s walls, comment on pictures or links, or add new pictures and videos. This is the page that you will see first when you log into Facebook. By switching between top news and most recent you will be able to see different information.
The next thing that you need to know about is the ‘like’ function. So, imagine one of your friends has updated their status to something that you find funny. Instead of telling them, you can click the ‘like’ button which is displayed under their status. This will then be displayed. If you like a band, then you can like them on the site.
If you like a saying or a quote then you will also be able to click the ‘like’ button. The same principal can be used for pictures or videos.
These are the three basic functions that you should definitely know about before you sign up to Facebook.
As you can see, the basic functions really are quite simple to understand, and very simple to use.
These will help you on your way to connecting with the people in your life and making the most out of the technology on offer today. As long as you know these things, the rest is fairly easy to figure out once you become a regular Facebook user. It will all click into place on its own and you will see how great this site can be if you know how to use it. 

Social Media Learning

First, I want to make it VERY clear that sociality has learning implications. Youth engage with others to work out boundaries, to understand norms. This is how they learn power and authority, how they learn the networked architecture of everyday life. It's easy to eschew this, to argue that this is irrelevant, but most people spend a decent amount of their time working through social issues as a part of being an adult in this society. We talk about it as "politics" usually but it's about people. And teen years are where this is worked out.

It's also important to note the ways in which we need to learn to learn. Social media is connecting educators and learners in new ways and this too is extremely important. Consider, for example, this quote where a teacher helps a student in the off-hours on her MySpace:

Of course, that doesn't address where and when technology is useful in the classroom. We all know that technology can be useful in education purposes. Many of you are deeply invested in bringing technology to the classroom. I'm speaking to the choir on this one.

But I want to make one thing clear... Just because youth are using social media doesn't mean that it can fit well into the classroom. It needs to be thought through pedagogically and y'all need to understand how it's being used in everyday life before bringing it into the classroom.

Since we're using social network sites as a case study, let me point out one of the places where they FAIL miserably. On social network sites, you have to publicly list your Friends and you have to have the functioning network to leverage it. What happens if you're an outcast at school? Does bringing it into the classroom make it worse? What happens if you're forced to Friend someone who torments you because you share a class? And then you have to face that person in your "private" space online as well? Bringing social network sites into the classroom can be very very tricky because you have to contend with social factors that you, as a teacher, may not be aware of.

While I'm hesitant to introduce many forms of social media into the classroom directly, I think that it is critical to see how they are reshaping information flow. This is actually where tremendous innovation opportunities emerge.

We all know that youth are searching for information in totally new ways so I'm going to skip over that. But they are also sharing differently. Sharing of information is very different in a world of bits where it's easy to make a duplicate and still retain what you originally had. Pointers have value and sharing information can create memes. Needless to say, youth are leveraging social media to share with their friends and peers. Now, most of what they share might be pure gossip, but teens also share links, references, ideas, and original content.

Of course, while adults are increasingly using sophisticated tools to aggregate and disseminate information, youth are predominantly not. Teens are not familiar with RSS feed readers or aggregators like Del.icio.us. Again, just because you use these forms of social media doesn't mean youth do. For the most part, teens are primarily sharing through IM and their SNS of choice. Or simply by word of mouth.

In the same vain, most teens live and breathe open systems like Wikipedia but have no idea how these systems work. They are typically told that Wikipedia is bad rather than being taught how to make sense of the information that is there.

Many of them are producing their own content without a critical understanding of remix or user-generated content. They're experiencing the blurring between consumption and production but they don't have a framework to make sense of this or to understand how to respond to attacks on their practices.

For all of the attention paid to "digital natives" it's important to realize that most teens are engaging with social media without any deep understanding of the underlying dynamics or structure. Just because they understand how to use the technology doesn't mean that they understand the information ecology that surrounds it. Most teens don't have the scaffolding for thinking about their information practices.

It's critical to realize that just because young folks pick up a technology before you do doesn't inherently mean that they understand it better than you do. Or that they have a way of putting it into context. What they're doing is not inherently more sophisticated – it's simply different. They're coming of age in a culture where these structures are just a given. They take them for granted. And they repurpose them to meet their needs. But they don't necessarily think about them.

Educators have a critical role when it comes to helping youth navigate social media. You can help them understand how to make sense of what they're seeing. We can call this "media literacy" or "digital literacy" or simply learning to live in a modern society. Youth need to know more than just how to use the tools - they need to understand the structures around them.

You need to understand what they're doing and why. Most importantly, you need to not reject what they're doing or fetishize it.

The modern world is certainly filled with neat new gadgets. Today's youth are certainly embracing many of them. Yet, at the end of the day, what they are doing is a lot like what previous generations were doing, inflected by the dynamics and features of the technology. So how do we face the next generation living and learning with social media?

We start by opening up a dialogue. We start talking to youth about what they are doing and why they are doing it. We ask them to teach us about the technology while we guide them with the knowledge that we have through experience. We start co-operating and engaging with the shifting nature of everyday life.

At the end of the day, the biggest disruption brought on by technology has nothing to do with the youth themselves, but with the way in which it forces us to reconsider our position of power as adults. We cannot simply tell it like it is; we need to re-learn how to learn and how to evolve with the changes all around us.

Facebook for old Ager?

I was reading somewhere that, In Atlanta, a shy quiet 14-year-old boy that I’ll call Katlay. he wasn’t particularly interested in talking to me, but he answered my questions diligently. he said that he was on both MySpace and Facebook, but quickly started talking about MySpace as the place where he gathered with his friends. At some point, I asked him if his friends also gathered on Facebook and his face took on a combination of puzzlement and horror before he exclaimed, “Facebook is for old people!” Of course, Mr. Kalyan still uses Facebook to communicate with his mother, aunt, cousins in Kentucky, and other family members.

Cross-town, I met up with Connor, a well-spoken 17-year-old who is more than comfortable in sharing his opinions with me. His manner of speaking and attitude means that he would’ve fit into Eckert’s “jock” category even though he plays no sport. In fact, Connor is more interested in gadgetry (Macs to be precise), but that no longer has the same geek ring as it once did. Connor tells me about how Facebook is the new thing that everyone is using and that, while he prefers MySpace, he now primarily logs into Facebook. His girlfriend deleted her MySpace profile and most of his friends now spend their time on Facebook. In fact, he can’t think of anyone at school who still actively uses MySpace. Connor is also aware of the presence of adults on Facebook. He messages with his mother and his youth pastor on Facebook and he waxes elegantly about how he thinks that Facebook is just as popular among adults as it is among teens. He believes that the reason that people switched to Facebook was because it was more “mature.”

Yet, there’s another important factor here. These teens come from very different demographics. Both teenagers are white and live in the deep south, but they are from different socioeconomic backgrounds and their public schools have quite different characters. Kaitlyn’s family income is near the median of Atlanta while Connor comes from a family that is better-off. Both have had many different opportunities afforded to them by loving and deeply involved parents. The biggest differences in their lives stem from their friend groups and the schools that they attend.

Connor was lamenting the presence of filters in his school (coupled with the sign in the computer lab that warned of punishment if anyone was caught on MySpace). I asked him why his school was strict and he responded by telling me that it was because they were the best school and they had standards. I asked him what made it the best school and he first started by saying that it was because they were strict and kept people in line, but then reverted course. He told me that in Atlanta, most schools are 60% or more black but his school was only 30% black. And then he noted that this was changing, almost with a sense of sadness. Katlay, on the other hand, was proud of the fact that his school was very racially diverse. He did complain that it was big, so big in fact that they had created separate “schools” (think: Harry Potter) and that he was in the school that was primarily for honors kids but that this meant that he didn’t see all of his friends all the time. But he valued the different types of people who attended. These differences are reflected in their friend groups – Connor’s friends are almost entirely white and well-off while at least half of Katlay’s friends are black and most of his friends are neither well-off nor poor.

Both Katlay and Connor follow the crowd when it comes to social media and their instincts reflect more than just their own beliefs; they reflect what is normative among their cohort.

So going back to the question of age and maturity – why do these dynamics of race and socioeconomic factors matter? One argument made about the differences between teens from wealthy and poor environments is that wealthy teens are much more likely to integrate with adults than teens from poorer backgrounds. (There are obviously exceptions on all sides.) Now, Connor is not exceedingly wealthy and Katlay is not poor, but I can’t help but wonder how much of what they’re reflecting is part of that more general trend.

Will Katlay begin to embrace adults alongside his peers in a few years? Perhaps, but I doubt it. Might their differences be simply a personality thing? Perhaps, but I saw these dynamics occur across many other pairings of teens with similar differences and similarities.

Regardless of whether or not this factor explains the differences between these teens, I can’t help but wonder the significance of teens’ willingness to interact with known adults on social network sites. There’s nothing worse than demanding that teens accept adults in their peer space, but there’s a lot to be said for teens who embrace adults there, especially non-custodial adults like youth pastors and “cool” teachers. I strongly believe that the healthiest environment we can create online is one where teens and trusted adults interact seamlessly. To the degree that this is not modeled elsewhere in society.

Employers Have to Check New Employees' Social Networking Profiles?

Every employer tries to hire the best employee in terms of educational qualification and professional experience. Its the responsibility of HR department to seek and recruit the best employee for their job opening.

In Pakistan hiring an employee is an easy task. A reviewing of the candidates papers, an interview and consulting a few references and you are done. Following the philosophy of first impression is the last impression. Every employee tries to present their self  in the best possible manners. Regardless how that person is in its normal life. Everyone would hire a sober looking and a well dressed person speaking fluent English with a charismatic personality. But afterwards when the employee gets hired. He tends to show his true spirit. Behaving in a way which is unacceptable and wasn’t seen during the interview.

The thing is judging the behavior and true personality of a possible employee with just an interview and a few references is not enough. If we take an example, In US HR firms do a thorough check on the social networking profiles of the employee prior to the interview. They check the domestic life and background of their yet to be employees to see what are their habits and living style. If you have put a picture of yours with your friends during a game of beer pong and you happen to be in US then you will would never get the job no matter how many A’s you got in your academic life.

This practice enables employers to hire the best staff which positively impacts the future of their companies. So, companies and HR firms in Pakistan should also consider to check social networking profiles of job seekers to make sure they are recruiting the best people. With more than 900,000 people on Facebook from Pakistan and the ongoing awareness of blogging – every job seeker is likely to have an online social profile. With which his social lifestyle and habits can be monitored.

According to a study from US job website, CareerBuilder:

Forty-five percent of employers are using social networking sites to research job candidates prior to interviewing them. Of those who conduct online searches/background checks of job candidates, 29 percent use Facebook, 26 percent use LinkedIn and 21 percent use MySpace. One-in-ten (11 percent) search blogs while 7 percent follow candidates on Twitter. Thirty-five percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate. Fourteen percent of employers also disregarded a candidate because thy sent a message using an emoticon such as a smiley face while 16 percent dismissed a candidate for using text language such as GR8 (great) in an e-mail or job application. Eighteen percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them to hire the candidate.

This shows that how beneficial  social media can be for both the employer and the employee. I think its time that employers should start this practice and pick the right people. At least IT and Telecom industries must screen their employees prior hiring them. This can also help job seekers to build up a strong social profile highlighting their academic and professional achievements and maintaining a good relationship with their peers. Social media networks like LinkedIn can actually get job seekers the best job they can think about. Social media is a powerful tool – What both employers and employees need to do is use it in the best way.

Facebook Closing Down on March 15th?

This rumor is spreading all across the web that facebook would shut down its operations on March 15, 2011.

This news initiated from Twitter and later on got published on various blogs and news websites. The source mentioned everywhere is a press conference conducted by March Mark Zuckerberg outside his Palo Alto office.

Zuckerberg was quoted as “Facebook has gotten out of control, and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”

Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.

Not only this, there are comments of Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook “Mr. Avrat Humarthi” as well saying “After March 15th the whole website shuts down, So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business”.

The news quite obviously seems a rumor, since Mark himself is fond of posting such astounding things on his Facebook page, as last time we saw the Time Magazine update on his page.

“I don’t care about the money,” said Zuckerberg. “I just want my old life back.”

The way different sources have posted his “I Don’t Care attitude” about the billions of money he is earning from Facebook does not give a very realistic picture. The truth on the other hand is that it is not at all easy to wind up such immensely growing business. The website with over 500 million active users no doubt looks difficult to manage, but instead of shutting it down every sane would definitely think of selling it out to get max benefit possible.

Anyhow, The Facebook Corporation suggests that users remove all of their personal information from the website before March 15th. After that date, all photos, notes, links, and videos will be permanently erased.

More on Google News

Creating Fan Pages on Facebook!

Facebook Pages

We have all seen, visited, liked and even become fans of different fan pages on Facebook. For example, I am a fan of Akcent, Subway, Friends, Outfitters, BlackBerry, Dan Brown, and the list goes on and on.

Fan pages on social networks basically enable general public to interact and engage with their favorite brands, beloved celebrities and even provide them their feedback – both good and bad.

There are in fact tons of benefits of creating and maintaining fan pages on social networks by big brands and well-known celebs on Facebook and Twitter.

For now, the question under consideration however, especially for New and Upcoming Small businesses is, “To create or not to create a fan page on social networks?”

Being an ardent supporter of social networks and believing in their immense power to promote both big and small brands among the right target audience in a short span of time and least amount of spending, I fully support the idea of creating a fan page for your business on social networks!

A Disclaimer though: It DOES NOT end at creating the fan page for your brand… it is just the beginning of an altogether new and holistic brand experience for your customers out there!

As I have come to observe, creating a fan page is especially very helpful for entrepreneurs, start-ups and very small companies – those who cannot spend a lot of money in promotion of their brand on mainstream media. They can gain quick popularity and instant brand promotion in their target audience via their fan pages on popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

There are hundreds of examples of people who have benefitted so much from promoting their brands and their services via Facebook pages. I personally know of few friends who have literally flourished their photography, baking and clothes designing business to amazing level in a very short span of time. They have huge fan following which keeps on increasing day after day.

Here are a few tips for those who are thinking about creating a presence on Facebook for their new business.

First, after you have created a fan page on Facebook for your brand, promote it among your immediate friends network by asking them to join the page and ask their friends to become part of the fan page too. Now that is just as much you can do to spread the word about your brand’s presence on social networks in the beginning.

Next, content is the king and the key to your fan page popularity and it should be fresh! You cannot simply display old content i.e. photos, videos and reviews of your products and services and expect it to leave a WOW effect on everybody, every time.

Remember, any new content becomes old after some time and then it is time to bring something new on the table. So, keep uploading fresh photos and videos portfolio, reviews and testimonials about your brand and share it with your fans.

Also, giving something away every now and then is a great way to promote your brand among online users. Who does not like free stuff and giveaways and how better can it be than winning without doing much of hard work on one’s end?

I have won tons of free stuff from different brands’ fan pages and trust me whenever I won something; I only became more loyal to that brand and talked favorably about it in my social circle. Hence, whenever you can, give away something out to your fans via an online competition and make them love you and spread good word about your brand even more!

In this day and age of ‘online everything’, we are all part of the social media revolution.

The best we can get from this revolution is by giving more and the best to our online users! A fan page on a popular social network like Facebook may just prove to be a one-stop shop for all!

The Power of Sharing in Social Media!

I just wakeup and checked my blackberry my facebook page ohhhh so many more updates from friends family and pages for which I subscribed, as I go thourgh from almost all updates while I sleep last night, Is this happens with you everyday? are you also really in the charm of social media or it just me? I’d say this without any hesitation or guilt that I am obsessed with social media. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or even MSN messenger or Gtalk, I am there, I’m online and I am always ALWAYS connected. Hence my family and friends call me the ultimate social media freak. The pride is all mine!

While I was scrolling down the different posts, I came across a wonderful video. I watched it and instantly ‘Liked’ it so much that I decided to ‘Share’ with my friends, leaving a comment that this is a must watch video!

Just the other day, as I opened Facebook on my BlackBerry, my Homepage updated itself with the most recent posts including links, videos, photos, blog posts and status updates. While some of these updates were simply hilarious, others were quite informative and yet quite a few gave me an update on my friend’s activities.

In almost an hour 25 of my friends had ‘Shared’ the same video in their friend’s network. I wondered how this video had suddenly spread the message among so many people via sharing on Facebook.

Let’s hypothesize. If I have 200 friends on Facebook and I shared that video with all of  them, out of which 25 people ended up sharing that video among their friends, (let’s keep 150 as average number of friends each one of them might have) then the same video that I shared in my friends’ circle managed to get 3,750 views in about an hour.

(we all know the number in reality might have been far greater). This is the power of sharing in social media – the fastest and the least expensive (sometimes absolutely free) way to reach a large number of audience. I have to admit, it does get scary at times too.

The biggest concern of social media sharing is that anything and everything can be shared via social networks. However, the content (images, photos, videos, reviews) shared by people or companies will only spread if it appeals to either people at large aka the masses or a certain pseudo community who will spread the content within their own circle of friends having the same interest.

This is extremely tricky especially for big brands, celebrities or even well known people in their respective fields because if the ‘good word’ can spread like fire among their consumers, fans or followers, the ‘bad word’ will equally spread like a conflagration totally out of control.

Hence, social media sharing is no less than the ultimate power in the hands of the users/consumers to make or break a brand’s reputation in the online world. As the famous saying goes; “With great power comes great responsibility” hence, a word of advice for all the online users of this power, think twice before sharing anything in social media!

While yes, we are entitled to share our opinion, our likes and our dislikes with the rest of the world, let’s not forget that misuse of this power can lead to great damages to people and companies that sometimes can be irreparable.

Work Place vs Social Technology

Surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases our concentration levels and helps make a more productive workforce, according to a new University of Melbourne study.

Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.

“Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case.”

According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB. Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites. Playing online games was the fifth most popular, while watching YouTube movies was seventh.

The attraction of WILB, according to Dr Coker, can be attributed to people’s imperfect concentration. “People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Think back to when you were in class listening to a lecture – after about 20 minutes your concentration probably went right down, yet after a break your concentration was restored.

“It’s the same in the work place. Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days work, and as a result, increased productivity.”

However Dr Coker says that it is important such browsing is done in moderation, as internet addiction can have the reverse effect. “Approximately 14% of internet users in Australia show signs of Internet Addiction – they don’t take breaks at appropriate times, they spend more than a ‘normal’ amount of time online, and can get irritable if they are interrupted while surfing.”

“WILB is not as helpful for this group of people – those who behave with internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without.”

Source

Real social network would you please stand up?

All too frequently, someone makes a comment about how a large number of Facebook Friends must mean a high degree of social capital. Or how we can determine who is closest to who by measuring their email messages. Or that the Dunbar number can explain the average number of Facebook friends. These are just three examples of how people mistakenly assume that 1) any social network that can be boiled down to a graph can be compared and 2) any theory of social networks is transitive to any graph representing connections between people. Such mistaken views result in broad misinterpretations of social networks and social network sites. Yet, time and time again, I hear problematic assumptions so let me start with some claims:

1. Not all social networks are the same.
2. You cannot assume network transitivity.
3. You cannot assume that properties that hold for one network apply to other networks.

To address this, I want to begin by mapping out three distinct ways of modeling a social network. These are not the only ways of modeling a social network, but they are three common ways that are often collapsed in public discourse.

Sociological “personal” networks. Sociologists have been working hard to measure people’s personal networks and much of the theory of social networks stems from analysis done on these networks. Different scholars have taken different approaches to measuring personal networks, but, most stereotypically, this takes the form of a clipboard and pencil as a young grad student queries an individual to recall who they talked to yesterday and indicate who they would lend money to or call when they are having an emotional breakdown. On classic measurement survey is an appendix in the back of Claude Fischer’s “To Dwell Among Friends.”

Most sociological theory stems from analyses of these personal networks. Social capital, weak ties, homophily, … all of those theories you’ve heard about are based on personal networks. Given that these are typically measured by eliciting people’s understandings of certain categories (e.g., “friend”), there’s a strong overlap between everyday language around social networks and the categories being measured.

If you’re a sociologist talking to anyone other than sociologists, you would probably speak of personal networks as the golden standard, the baseline truth. Of course, if you were being honest with yourself or your colleagues, you will note that these measurements have their methodological flaws and biases which is why the scales for measuring personal networks haven’t stabilized and why scholars still struggle with the best ways to elicit meaningful information from people being surveyed.

Behavioral social networks. Behavioral social networks are the networks derived from encounters between individuals. In their efforts to measure personal networks, sociologists have often tried to get people to manually document encounters with others through diary studies. With new technologies in place, folks have gone on to generate behavioral social networks through the traces people leave behind. For example, a record of someone’s email exchanges provides a handy accounting of that individual’s behavioral network. New technologies introduces new opportunities for measuring behavioral networks. Many genres of social media let us see who communicates with who. GPS technologies let us see who shares physical space.

Behavioral social networks provide valuable insight into people’s practices and interactions, but they do not confer meaning. This is not to say that they don’t have value. I would love to find the strangers that I regularly share space with as I traverse Boston. But we cannot assume that these are my friends or acquaintances. Yet, there seems to be a tendency (especially among geeks of all stripes) to overlay meaning-laden terms on top of these networks, to assume that high connectivity means friendship. This is where trouble often arises. Just because I spend a lot of time with my physical therapist does not mean that she is more important than other people in my network who I see less frequently.

The other difficulty in measuring behavioral social networks is that, at least to date, we measure distinct channels of connection. This complicates our ability to do meaningful comparison across people. If I use AIM as my primary way of keeping in touch with Person A and email as my primary way of keeping in touch with Person B and you only look at one medium, you get a distorted picture of who I communicate with. As communication channels proliferate, this only gets messier. So even when we talk about behavioral social networks, we have to talk about them in across a particular channel.

Publicly articulated social networks. Articulated social networks are the social networks that you intentionally list. In some senses, this is what sociologists are eliciting, but people also articulate their social networks for other purposes. Address books and buddy lists are articulated social networks. So too are invitation lists. Most recently, this practice took a twist with the rise of social network sites that invite you to PUBLICLY articulate your social network.

At this point, I would hope that most of us would realize that Friends != friends. In other words, who you connect to on Facebook or MySpace or Twitter is not the same list of people that you would say constitute your closest and dearest. The practice of publicly articulating one’s social network can be quite fraught because there are social costs to the process of public articulation. Issues of reciprocity emerge and people find themselves doing a lot of face-work to navigate the sticky nature of having to account for their social relations in a publicly accountable way. Thus, the list of who you might list as a Friend is often a mix of friends, acquaintances, family members, people from your past, fans, professional colleagues, familiar strangers, and people you don’t particularly like but don’t want to offend. Oh and the occasional celebrity you think is interesting.

Relating Different Social Networks

These networks are NOT the same. Your mother may play a significant role in your personal network but, behaviorally, your strongest tie might be the person who works in the cube next to you. And neither of these folks might be links on your Facebook for any number of reasons.

Our instinct then is to ask: which is the “real” social network? Frankly, it depends on who you ask. Your mother may be cranky that you don’t talk to her as often as your colleague and she may resent your refusal to Friend her on Facebook, but this doesn’t mean you love her any less. Of course, this doesn’t stop her from thinking you don’t love her. If we’re trying to understand emotional affinity, the behavioral and publicly articulated social networks aren’t particularly helpful. But if you’re mother thinks that time is not only a proxy for emotional depth but a proof of it, your behavioral social network might really upset her. (Note: behavioral social networks have gotten people into trouble in the past. See Cobot.)

The truth of the matter is that there is no “real” social network. It all depends on what you’re trying to measure, what you’re trying to do with those measurements.

There are also many opportunities for new research when we tease out different types of social networks. What if we overlay the different types of social networks? Can we get a better sense of how someone manages their social network? Can we see new structural properties that give us new insights into how people connect, share information, gather support, etc.? So many possibilities!

I’m super excited that so many people from so many fields are getting interested in social networks, but I’m also scared that there are a lot of assumptions flying around that make it difficult to make sense of people’s contributions to this emergent field. Increasingly, I see sociologists and computer scientists and mathematician and economists outright dismiss work outside of their field as “wrong.” I think that part of the problem is that we’re each failing to account for what we can and cannot say based on the types of analysis we’re doing. And I think that we often talk past one another because we’re all talking about social networks but we’re talking about different social networks. In accounting for three types of social networks here, I’m not trying to be all-inclusive, but I am trying to point out that there are differences and that we cannot assume transitivity either in terms of structure or theory. If we can find a way to better identify what kinds of social networks we’re talking about and when and where what theories apply, I think that we’ll go a long way in bridging different intellectual discourses.

We do ourselves an intellectual disservice when we assume that these different types of networks are interchangeable or that studying one automatically tells us about another. Most scholars get this, even when they’re quoted out of context by journalists to suggest otherwise (see Cameron Marlow). But I get the sense that a lot of journalists, marketers, advertisers, politicians, and everyday folks don’t. This is a problem.

Those who treat different social networks interchangeably project properties onto the network they’re analyzing that don’t hold. People aren’t inherently cool or connectors because they have a lot of Friends on a social network site. Bus drivers and waitresses are much more likely to encounter more new people on a daily basis than executives, but this doesn’t mean that they have more social capital. People who email regularly do not necessarily have strong tie strength.

This is not to say that structural information in behavioral social networks or publicly articulated social networks may not work as a proxy for personal networks. Perhaps the networks derived from a particular social media tool or through a particular channel of communication do actually provide insight into a person’s personal network. There are great ways to empirically test this hypothesis involving the combination of structural analysis and interviewing. But you cannot simply assume that they are meaningful proxies just because they are both social networks.

Orkut

As i write this, it’s down again. But that doesn’t mean that i haven’t been thinking about it. And dear god, everyone and their mother has written about it. At the bottom of this rant, i’ve included some of the ones that have been making me think (and i’ve been reading a *lot*).

OK… so my take on Orkut.

1) What the hell is up with the elitist approach to invitation? That’s just outright insulting and an attempt to pre-configure the masses through what the technorati are doing. Social networks are not just a product of technologists. Everyone has a social network and what they do with it is quite diverse. To demand that they behave by the norms of technologists is horrifying.

2) Are trustworthy, cool, and sexy the only ways that i might classify my friends? (Even Orkut lists a lot more in his definition of self.) And since when can i rate the people that i know based on this kind of metric?

And goddamnit CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT. Cool as a techy? Cool as a party kid? Trustworthy along what fucking axes?

3) Explain to me why one must be a friend to be a fan of someone? The role of fan is inherently a power differential, not an equalizer. (Don’t get me wrong: on Orkut, there’s definitely pressure to reciprocate.) The people that i’m a fan of are not my friends; they’re idols; they’re people that i read on the interweb but do not know.

It is sooo weird to read which of my friends are a fan of me. Does that mean that the rest are only following social custom in linking to me? Does that mean that they don’t really respect me? [Or does it mean, like it means to me, that it's too bloody weird to consider checking off that fan bit?]

And worse… i can see who is a fan of others. This means that i can check on my friends and figure out that they’re using the fan feature… just not on me. Hello, socially awkward.

4) What’s up with the popular crowd hierarchy both in visual and Friends/Communities listing? Have we not learned that this motivates bad behavior?

5) Hell, haven’t we learned ANYTHING? We still have articulation. But worse, now that everyone is paying attention to this, the network isn’t growing naturally. You jump on. Fast. And connect to everyone you recognize. WTF? And what the hell are you supposed to DO once you get on the damn thing?

6) And boy is it irritating that everything is broken. I know it’s an alpha, but it’s too popular to withstand the interest. Can’t change picture on certain parts. Can’t delete account. Can’t get rid of picture. And what’s up with the regular crashes?

7) And then there are the Terms that show contempt for academics. There’s a blanket ban on robots, collecting information, reverse engineering, and other “unauthorized” use (hello, fair use). You can’t even link from the damn thing (i.e. i can’t identify myself outside of the constraints of Orkut… like on my own site or identifying a research project in which i’d like people to participate. Thus, i can’t use a social networking tool to fucking social network). Of course, there’s not much appreciation for anyone else either. THEY OWN EVERYTHING YOU POST!!! You CAN’T OPT OUT! Complete registration only.

And don’t worry… they can modify the ToS without any notice.

I’m sure more rants are to follow. But in the meantime, tell me why i’m wrong. Cause i’m cranky and disappointed. Everyone’s all excited because it’s Google. But i feel like i just met Jar Jar.

…….

Boris – traffic stat comparisons of Orkut vs. other sites

Anne on why she deleted her account. [Also, i want to read the link to the failure of social networks, but they've reached their bandwidth limit. Stupid fucking ISP.]

Jill on the patchwork view of one’s network

Jay on a fantastic metaphor, paralleling Orkut with a hotel lobby or cruise ship

Foe Romeo on a social network ideal

Anti-Mega on why Orkut lacks innovation

David on the politics of the ToS wrt ownership of identity

Marc Canter on being banned from Orkut

Wired on Social Nets Not Making Friends

Liz – an Orkut analysis

Ross on why Orkut doesn’t work for him

Weinberger on the problems with the expectation to increase nodes

Clay on the Orkut craze

Dina on her blog as her social network (and why Orkut)

Update: additional references

Jeremy on why Google needs Orkut

Lee – another good rant on Orkut

Mary on building a social network site in 24 hours… on privacy… and on collecting baseball cards

Halley on Orkut invitation frustration