Users made a big stink about the Facebook news ticker, that annoying, constantly updating feed in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage. Facebook responded. Now some users have the option to hide the ticker. This is good news for people who prefer to use the news feed and would like to avoid noisier information about which links their friends "like," what friends are listening to on Spotify and who is now friends with whom. Teenagers spoke up about the news ticker, calling it the "stalker feed" and insisting that it provided too much information.
If you feel compelled to curate more of your Facebook life, there's an app for that: Timeline Movie Maker. Go to TimelineMovieMaker.com and click the green button. As with most Facebook apps, this one asks for your basic info, email, profile info and your Timeline stories. Then Timeline builds a one-minute movie for you. It's similar to Intel's Museum of Me, a virtual museum of you - all it needs is access to your Facebook data.
The Facebook friendship is a sacred one.
It is a voyeuristic portal into your ideas, links you like, viral (or not-so-viral) videos you share, cute puppy pictures and maybe even your relationship status.
But there comes a time for certain Facebook friendships to end.
Facebook defriending is part of our collective Internet culture. Sometimes it's enough to just hide someone from the news feed and avoid clicking on their profile. Other times, defriending is a necessary last resort.
Pinterest is growing fast, and 80% of the site's users are women ages 25-44.
Laura Skelton, owner of Prix-Prix, told me about Pinterest months ago when we met up one chilly Chicago morning for brunch. "Have you tried Pinterest?" she asked me with a glint of excitement in her eyes. I shook my head no. "Try it out, but be careful, you'll get addicted." I am always wary of that caveat because I do end up getting addicted. I decided to stop by just to see what was up. I registered for an account and then left. Everything looked too pretty. Then, a few months later, I started receiving a slew of notifications: "So and so is following you on Pinterest." It was around then that Pinterest blew up.
AdAge's David Teicher wrote about how Pinterest is driving traffic to sites like design magazine RealSimple. But more importantly, he writes, "the true potential in Pinterest may be in its ability to impact purchases, which is why retailers like Etsy, Nordstrom, and Lands' End have taken to developing a presence on, and strategy for, this new platform."
If you're not smiling in your Facebook photo, your life is probably going to suck in four years time.
Reseachers J. Patrick Seder and Shigehiro Oishi at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville discovered that smile intensity from a single Facebook profile photo in the first semester of college predicted self-reported life satisfaction three and a half years later, at the time of college graduation.
This type of study isn't actually unique to Facebook, however. A 2011 study by Harker and Keltner showed that female students smiling in their college graduation yearbook photos from 1958 and 1960 were reportedly happier 30 years later. A similar study by Abel and Kruger (2010) found that professional baseball players who smiled more intensely in archival photos lived seven years longer than those who didn't smile much.
People familiar with the matter say that Facebook could file for its initial public offering as soon as next week, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. The source also says that Facebook is close to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter. The filing could happen next Wednesday, and the company is aiming for a $75-$100 billion valuation. It is looking to raise $10 billion in stock.
Facebook started in 2004 as a college-only social network. It opened to the public in September 2006, dropping the minimum age requirement from 18-years-old to 13-years-old. In little over seven years, it has grown to a userbase of 800 million people across the globe.
Yesterday Facebook and Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna filed dual lawsuits against co-owners of Adscend Media, LLC, which Facebook Security claims is an ad network "that is alleged to develop and encourage others to spread spam through misleading and deceptive tactics, including the one known as clickjacking."
Clickjacking (a.k.a. likejacking) is a technique that tricks users into clicking on an invisible "Like" button. Naked Security's Graham Cluley explains that this button "follows their mouse across the screen, not realizing that they are recommending the webpage to all of their Facebook friends." It relies on a code hidden in links. It activates the Facebook "Like" function, dropping the spam onto the news feeds of the users' friends. The scam spreads as soon as the Facebook user clicks on a link. Facebook users who take the bait are lured to outside websites that ask them to submit personal information.
The rollout of Facebook Timeline forces you to take a look back at your own "Facebook past," and think about whether you want to add to it.
Today 1000memories launched the ShoeBox Facebook app, which gives you an opportunity to scan paper photos from the past and post them to Facebook. It brings back those "pre-Internet photos from the past."
"A Facebook Timeline-integrated app (such as ShoeBox) which lets you post photos into the past, represents a recreation of an autobiographical memory," says Dr. Ash Nadkarni of the Boston Medical Center's Department of Psychiatry. (She co-authored the study "Why Do People Use Facebook?") "There are several facets of this activity that could influence our perception of our memories -- specifically by triggering memory bias, a cognitive bias that enhances or impairs the recall of a memory."
Today Google+ announced that it is now open to users ages 13+ (in all countries except for Spain, South Korea and the Netherlands). Until today, Google+ had been 18+. When Facebook began in 2004, it was open to college students only, most of whom are 18+ years old. In September 2006, Facebook became available to everyone, including users ages 13+.
A study published last year by researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada looked at how parents acted on Facebook. Their study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. They discovered that parents revert to adolescent behavior, which suggests that there's something inherently adolescent about social media.
Plink has just announced a Facebook Credits loyalty program in partnership with fast-food chains Dunkin' Donuts, Quiznos, Red Robin and Taco Bell. Users earn Facebook Credits by joining Plink and logging on with their Facebook credentials and credit or debit cards. Like any loyalty program, the more people purchase, the more Facebook Credits they'll rack up.
Members will be able to accumulate Facebook Credits at 25,000 locations nationwide, including Quiznos, Dunkin' Donuts and Taco Bell. They can use those Facebook Credits for Facebook virtual games, movies or music.
