"Facebook" Stories

Pre-Teen Poking: How to Keep Under 13s Safe on Facebook

Jan 6th, 2012 Discuss [0]

Facebook: Now More Popular than Barbie and Ben 10

Parents are regularly informed of the dangers that the internet can expose children to but concurrently, kids are absorbing the ideology that Facebook holds much importance socially – the online phenomenon is constantly discussed amongst peers (both young and old) and is increasingly referred to within newspapers and on television.

Despite the fact that the social network’s own ‘Help Centre’ states that no one under the age of 13 years of age is allowed to construct a Facebook profile, this hasn’t stopped thousands of children around the globe from doing exactly this. Many parents have actually helped to create accounts for children too; a survey (included in a recent academic journal as part of a study entitled Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’) discovered that 76% of parents aware of their children’s underage Facebook-ing had involvement in the creation of their kid’s profile.

You might think that it is pressure from peers alone that is seeing members of the next generation signing up to Facebook before hitting the (less than) big 1-3. There are many parents who feel that using the network is beneficial for children who are growing up in a world that is increasingly driven by computers and online advancements. → Read More

Popular Facebook Games in 2011

Jan 2nd, 2012 Discuss [0]

A recent study of Facebook usage has revealed that approximately forty percent of Facebook’s traffic is the use of Facebook apps. Social games are some of the most popular apps. Below are some of the top Facebook apps that gamers used during 2011.

Farmville and Cityville

These Zynga classics have been popular with Facebook users for a couple of years now. Farmville, one of the most popular Facebook games invites players build and maintain a virtual farm by attending to crops, building storage and feeding farm animals. Farmville players are encouraged to play with their friends and are given the opportunity to grow their rural empire either by paying for Zynga Farmville credits or asking Facebook friends for favors. Also popular is the Zynga game Cityville. Cityville operates along the same lines as Farmville, but with more of an urban twist.

Gardens of Time

This game has recently been listed as one of the most popular Facebook games of 2011. Playdom, a Disney owned company, has created a beautifully designed game where the players are required to find hidden objects in a garden throughout history. The objects eventually give the players clues to a secret society that must be thwarted in order to protect the earth from a sinister fate. → Read More

Blue Nile’s “Manly” Social Media Campaign

Nov 10th, 2011 Discuss [0]

Working up the nerve to propose is hard to do. But imagine working up the nerve to propose in front of the entire world. Terrified?

Blue Nile’s “Are You Man Enough” campaign challenges guys to create a romantic and creative video or essay about why they’re man enough to propose to their girlfriend in front of – quite possibly– millions of people.

The winner of the contest is rewarded with an engagement ring valued at $7,500; a first class flight to New York; hotel accommodations; dinner; spending money and a proposal on Black Friday (November 25th) during the NASDAQ opening in Times Square.

That’s a pretty big deal.

It’s such a big deal, in fact, that it encourages guys to think about the proposal above all else. While other facets of marriage are important, it can be hard to focus on the importance of the proposal with wedding dates, locations, diamond rings or honeymoon plans on your mind.

The Blue Nile campaign serves as an excellent springboard for men to begin thinking about their future and to be bold about love and marriage. This contest gives guys a chance to think about what matters most: love. And everything else will fall into place after that. → Read More

The Seven Cardinal Sins of Facebook

Nov 3rd, 2011 Discuss [0]

Lots of your Facebook “friends” might spend their free time roaming and lurking through your profile and photo albums. Facebook “stalking” is a habit many people have acquired due to wealth of information that is over-shared on the social networking site. They’re enthralled by the things people post, from scandalous pictures to intriguing status updates, and they can’t get enough of it. When you post on Facebook, you should be wary of what you’re contributing. Whether it’s your mom, your boss, or a stranger, anyone you’re friends with can potentially be following your life more closely than you’d allow in person or real time conversation. Too many people post things they’d never do or say anywhere else. To protect yourself from your own over-sharing, be careful to never commit these seven cardinal sins of Facebook.

Pride

Don’t think you’re above the moral code of anyone else and post disreputable photos or updates. When you post that picture of you falling down drunk at the bar, you are telling people you’re proud of it. Having pride over the wrong types of things is a huge mistake to make on Facebook. Anything you post is presumably something you want to share with your friends, so be careful not to brag about your worst moments. → Read More

Facebook’s Timeline: Will it Be a Huge Hit?

Oct 27th, 2011 Discuss [0]

Aside from the fact that Facebook is now getting sued by Timelines.com for calling there new platform “Timeline” (apparently “Timelines” and “Timeline” are the same word when it comes to the law), the hottest social network on the planet seems to be very confident about the roll out of their new feature, which Mark Zucherberg demonstrated at the the latest F8 conference.

If you haven’t heard about Timeline, it is a new feature that Facebook is going to launch that is going to completely change the way people use Facebook. It is more of a “story of our lives” rather than what we are doing at each and every second of our lives. It has the potential to be very addictive…

…Or totally blow up in the users face (doesn’t everything with Facebook usually go like that – think “NewsFeed”).

That being said, I have gotten a chance to begin using Facebook’s timeline feature, which anybody can by following these directions, and I have to say that so far, I have completely no idea how people are going to react to the social network user interface update. At first, I thought it was completely awesome, then I thought it was completely terrible, and then I once again thought it was completely awesome. → Read More

Using Facebook and Twitter to Interact with the World

Oct 5th, 2011 Discuss [0]

Social media is a commonly used term in today’s modern world. The popularity of social media has increased by leaps and bounds since the IT boom splashed over the world, and there are very few people in the world who are unaware of the phrase social media.

Social media can be termed as an innovative way by the use of internet or mobile services to communicate in a very interactive way. There are very different sources of social media nowadays, e.g. blogs, social networking sites, forums, etc. In each one of these, people can connect to each other and share views and ideas on a specific topic, or they can just update their status of how they are feeling or what is their mood so that their friends connected to them through this media come to know of them. → Read More

Facebook and Twitter In The Office – A Business Killer?

Oct 3rd, 2011 Discuss [0]

A lot of people seem to get fired in a business for spending a lot of their time sneaking around Twitter and Facebook and you can see the damage that it can cause a business if their employees aren’t working and are chatting away to their friends and followers instead. On the other hand, if you own a business I wouldn’t rush into banning social media in the work environment straight away. There are both positives and negatives to allowing these services in the office.

The Negatives

Productivity

The first major downside to allowing your employees on Twitter and Facebook during working hours is that they could easily spend half their time on the service. Even if you monitor how much they are pushing out on their walls it doesn’t mean they aren’t chatting away to their friends on the Facebook chat or sharing private messages on Twitter. Productivity across the company could drastically fall with the introduction of Twitter and Facebook. → Read More

Facebook Rewards $40,000 to Bug Hunters

Sep 20th, 2011 Discuss [0]

Facebook, the biggest online social networking site is facing serious threats from vulnerabilities, which may occur in the operations. To identify these issues, Facebook announced rewards to the security researchers. Those, who really responded to the program, have been rewarded in cash, handsomely too. But the rewards are not meant for those, who identify third party apps on facebook, scams related to clickjacking.

The reports suggest that almost $25,000 has been paid in the first 21 days from announcement of the rewards. Another report says that more than $40K has been shelled out in a month to debuggers, who have shown muscle to keep malicious entrants off the network and plugging those gaping holes in the system. → Read More

Facebook Fights Back Google+ Games With New Gaming Features

Sep 13th, 2011 Discuss [0]

The faceoff between Google+ and Facebook is all set to write a new chapter in the domain of cyber rivalries. Google is leaving no stone unturned to uproot the dominance of Facebook. Out of various stunts performed by Google to spread its user base further, ‘Gaming’ is a new entry in the list. On Friday, it launched almost a dozen games to attract users but Facebook was quick in retaliating and fired back with revamped game features for its existing game plays.

Since the launch of Google+, industry experts were expecting a tiff between these two tech giants. While Facebook has a well established rapport with a user base of some 750 million, Google+ is (comparatively) a newbie in the field with a user base of around 25 million. No matter how wide the gap is, Facebook is not ready to give even a slightest chance to any competitor to slit its throat. It has made it clear that nobody is to mess around with it by taking the moves of this new competitor seriously. Facebook’s roll out of new gaming features was cleverly timed so as to even the score with Google. → Read More