Siljaline's Blog : social networking

Facebook Asks More Than 350 Million Users Around the World To Personalize Their Privacy

Randy Knobloch — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:55:00 GMT

PALO ALTO, Calif. — December 9, 2009 — Setting a new standard in user control, Facebook announced today that it is calling on its more than 350 million users to review and update their privacy settings—a first among major Internet services...(read more)

Facebook fine-tunes privacy controls

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:01:00 GMT

Facebook says it is boosting privacy by giving users control over who sees each bit of information they put on the social-networking site, and by doing away with regional and group networks. "We're adding something that many of you have asked...(read more)

Facebook pulls Obama assassination poll

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:35:00 GMT

Social website Facebook yanked a poll this week about assassinating President Barack Obama after being contacted by the U.S. Secret Service. On Monday, Facebook dropped a question that asked voters whether the U.S. president "should be killed."...(read more)

Facebook shuts down Beacon marketing tool

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:04:00 GMT

Facebook says it will shut down its controversial marketing feature Beacon, an application that broadcasts users' activities, including purchases, on other websites to their Facebook friends. The feature was adopted in November 2007 and immediately...(read more)

Facebook 'cash flow positive,' signs 300M users

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:19:00 GMT

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social networking site has more than 300 million users, and earned more money than it spent last quarter. In a blog post on Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote that the company was "cash flow positive"...(read more)

Jackson's death slows web to a crawl

Randy Knobloch — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:13:00 GMT

In life, Michael Jackson once ruled the pop charts. With his death, he dominated the internet. As reports of Jackson's death on Thursday spread, celebrity gossip websites crashed, news sites slowed to a crawl and traffic on social networking sites...(read more)

1st porn app on iTunes 'sold out'

Randy Knobloch — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:52:00 GMT

The first app featuring images of nude women to go up for sale on iTunes can no longer be downloaded because it was too popular, the developer reported Thursday. "The Hottest Girls app is temporarily sold out , " said a post signed by the "ATG...(read more)

Conficker worm sends new instructions: grow botnet, then die

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:29:00 GMT

The Conficker worm has begun to update the machines it has infected with a new set of instructions to spread to other machines and then self-destruct, security experts say. Security researchers tracking the worm said some of the infected computers began...(read more)

Facebook users warned about dangers of being app happy

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Facebook users are being urged to be wary about what Facebook applications they accept and what links they click as cyber criminals increasingly target the popular social networking site. In the past week, several new variants of the Koobface worm, which...(read more)

Facebook undergoes makeover to give users more choice

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:44:00 GMT

The popular online hangout Facebook is revamping its home page and plans other changes so its millions of users can more easily choose the types of information they see. Perhaps taking a cue from Twitter, the rising service for letting people express...(read more)

Facebook to give users say in new policies

Randy Knobloch — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:33:00 GMT

Facebook is trying its hand at democracy. The fast-growing online hangout, whose more than 175 million worldwide users could form the world's sixth-largest country behind Brazil, said Thursday those users will play a "meaningful role" in...(read more)

Facebook backs off changes to terms of service

Randy Knobloch — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:06:00 GMT

The founder of Facebook says the social networking website will return to its previous terms of service regarding user data, after critics complained recent changes had eroded user privacy. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, wrote early...(read more)

Facebook appraisal pegs company's value at $3.7B

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:10:00 GMT

Facebook Inc. quickly concluded it wasn't worth anywhere near the $15 billion US market value implied in a 2007 investment made by Microsoft Corp., according to confidential information obtained Wednesday from court documents. http://www.cbc.ca/technology...(read more)

Facebook paid $65M to settle suit: law firm

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:23:00 GMT

A law firm is claiming Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc. paid $65 million to settle a suit accusing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the concept for his social network. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/11/tech-facebook.html...(read more)

Facebook wins faceoff with Montreal spammer

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:40:00 GMT

Facebook has won its case against a Montreal spammer who bombarded users with explicit messages. http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/11/24/mtl-facebookspam1125.html...(read more)

Microsoft expands Windows Live into social networking

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:25:00 GMT

Microsoft Corp. is revamping its online Windows Live portal into a full-blown social networking site along the lines of Facebook, complete with photo sharing, news feeds and an instant messaging service. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/11/13/tech...(read more)

The rise of Facebook activism

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:54:00 GMT

Copyright reform must have seemed an unlikely hot-button issue in the winter of 2007 — that is, until 50 protesters arrived at Industry Minister Jim Prentice's constituency office in Calgary in December. They were there to voice their complaints...(read more)

Prof says young people have unique sense of Facebook privacy

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:54:00 GMT

Study says older people who run organizations see everything online as public Last Updated: Thursday, September 4, 2008 | 12:19 PM ET Comments 19 Recommended 33 CBC News A "digital divide" exists in Canada between young people who see information...(read more)

Facebook to test New Jersey's Web safety icon

Randy Knobloch — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:41:00 GMT

TRENTON, N.J. - The popular social networking Web site Facebook has agreed to test replacing its own link for reporting abuse with a bigger one developed by the New Jersey Attorney General's Office. Under the agreement announced Wednesday, Facebook...(read more)

Retooled Scrabulous returns to Facebook as Wordscraper

Randy Knobloch — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:21:00 GMT

Online Scrabble knock-off Scrabulous has traded in its letters, returning to the popular social network Facebook after a self-imposed exile with a new look and a new name.

The new game, called Wordscraper, has a different look and an adjustable board, making it more distinct from the board game Scrabble.

On Tuesday, Scrabulous founders Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla from Calcutta, India, agreed to block the game in the United States and Canada in deference to Facebook's concerns over the ongoing legal battle with Hasbro Inc., the company that owns the North American rights to Scrabble.

Over half a million Facebook users had added the Scrabulous application, making it one of the most popular applications on the social network. But that popularity had drawn the ire of two companies that own the rights to Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel Inc., which owns the rights to the game outside Canada and the United States.

Last week, Hasbro announced it was suing Scrabulous's creators for copyright infringement, less than two weeks after the release of an authorized version of Scrabble for Facebook's North American users.

Mattel has yet to launch a formal lawsuit against the makers of Scrabulous, but the toy company did send a letter to Facebook in January asking it to remove a popular add-on.

Facebook users in Canada and the United States can still access Scrabulous from the game's website, and users outside the two countries can still access it from Facebook. While Hasbro owns the U.S. and Canadian rights to Scrabble, Mattel Inc. owns the rights to the game in the rest of the world.

At the time Scrabulous was pulled from Facebook, it had accumulated 509,505 daily active users, while the two official Scrabble games offered through Hasbro and Mattel had fewer than 25,000 users on Facebook between them.

Since then, however, membership in Hasbro's Scrabble games has taken off, with membership now over 60,000 Canadian and U.S. users.

The new Wordscraper application, which appeared on Facebook on Wednesday, has so far less than 4,000 users.