Why Facebook's Internet.org is so Controversial in Asia. There are two types of corporate-supported foundations. The first are the mostly benevolent: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Ford Foundation, which work on social projects that are quite far removed from the business of their founders’ companies (in this case, Microsoft and Ford Motor Co., respectively). The second are the corporate fronts. For example, the American Petroleum Institute, or anything connected to the Koch Brothers. These put on a facade of social care but focus on topics directly connected to the bottom-line of their main funders. See climate-denying science or pushing for government policies that benefit big business. India and Indonesia are the world’s second and fourth most populous countries and also the largest untapped Internet markets.
Thus enter Internet.org, which is currently focused on proving a basic suite of Web tools for free, in partnership with major telecom companies in both countries. Also concerning is privacy. LinkedIn Gets a New Notifications Feature. 5 September '12, 06:23pm Follow It’s been a biggish day so far for announcements in the tech sphere, and LinkedIn has just made a not-so-insignificant announcement of its very own.
The professional social network has rolled out a new notifications feature, which lets you know – in real-time – when someone likes something you shared on LinkedIn, views your profile, accepts your invitation, among other things. What will you see? Well, similar to a Facebook notification you’ll see a little flag at the top of your screen, as well as a new Inbox envelope icon. A red circle appears when you have something new – this could be comments, likes, an accepted connection request, new inMails…whatever. “This new feature is all part of our ongoing effort to make it easier to keep engaging discussions going with your network,” says the company in its announcement.
Why Zuckerberg Should "Share" the Facebook Kingdom. Facebook is worth $75-$100 billion. If we broke that down by user, it would mean that each individual is worth $118.34. Or, if we're looking at it in terms of revenue from 2011 - $3.71 billion - each user is worth $4.39 in revenue per user per year. Yet Zuckerberg owns 28.4% of Facebook, and holds 56.9% of the voting power. The world over is reacting to the fact that Facebook has now put a dollar value on 845 million users' personal data.
Zuckerberg had something to say about it, too. The status update has more than 70,000 "likes" and 6127 shares, but only 128 comments. There's a common, understood practice in the Facebook culture. Zuck didn't "like" any of the comments that anyone posted. "Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society," Zuckerberg writes in his IPO letter. Facebook Launching "Social Energy" App for Improving Energy Efficiency. Wonderlane via Flickr CC/CC BY 1.0 Can Facebook do for energy monitoring what Google and Microsoft couldn't? Facebook is planning to launch a new app that will allow users to monitor their energy use and compete to reduce their electricity bills.
Sound familiar? Despite the failure of home energy monitoring platforms PowerMeter and Hohm, Facebook and partners Opower and NRDC think it's worth another go. NRDC reports that the new platform will focus on energy efficiency, helping people to "enjoy same level of comfort at lower costs. " The app will allow comparison of your home to similar homes as well as to friends' energy consumption, and post conversations about energy consumption in your newsfeed. It will automatically import your energy data (which might be way TMI for many users already concerned with Facebook privacy issues) or if your utility isn't participating with the app you can input your energy data manually. Facebook Rolls Out Overhauled Comments System (Try Them Now On TechCrunch) Over the last few months there have been numerous reports about a new, fully revamped Facebook commenting plugin that would make the social network a viable competitor to the likes of Disqus, Echo, and the stock comment engines found in WordPress and other CMS platforms.
Well, the reports were true, and today Facebook is lifting the curtain on its big new comments platform. If you want to get a taste of them, look down — we’re currently testing them on TechCrunch. Now let’s take a look at what makes this interesting. First, you’ll notice that if you’re already logged into Facebook, you won’t have to click though any authentication options. More important, you’ll notice that any comments you write are being left under your real name, which spells bad news for you trolls and spammers. And then there are the viral Facebook-centric features that other comment engines simply can’t compete with. Let’s say I leave a comment on TechCrunch and opt to have that comment shared to Facebook, too.
Celebrities Tell Facebook to Ditch Coal (Video) Screengrab via Greenpeace's Facebook Page Awhile back, Greenpeace launched a campaign against Facebook telling the company to "unfriend" coal as a power source for its data center slated to go up in Oregon. The activist group wants Facebook to publicly commit to 100% renewable energy for the thousands of servers that will keep hundreds of millions of people connected and playing Farmville. And now, the company is getting celebrities on its side, starting with this video message... Greenpeace's Facebook fan page has 59,480 "likes" as of this writing, hoping to see Facebook bow to public pressure. It's an impressive number, but they'll need a whole, whole, whole lot more people on board to get Facebook to consider switching. While no other names are currently mentioned, I'm told that there are more eco-celebs on board beyond Begley Jr.
Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps. Facebook recently announced on its developer blog that it will now be "making a user's address and mobile phone number accessible as part of the User Graph object. " In other words, the site will now let third-party applications (think Farmville or that spammy app your friends keep falling for that promises to show them who is stalking them on Facebook) access your contact information. "Because this is sensitive information," reads the announcement, "[...]permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs.
" Take a look at the example permission dialogs box, however, and tell us if you think this is enough. Update: Facebook has announced that it has suspended the controversial feature and will be "making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so. " Thankfully, this sort of information cannot be shared via your friends' careless actions, unlike other profile information.
Facebook: We're Not Kicking Wikileaks Off Our Site. Classified document publishing website Wikileaks has now been kicked off of Amazon, Paypal, its DNS server and its Swiss bank account - but it lives on, including across hundreds of mirrored sites and is the subject for widespread discussion on Facebook and Twitter. Site leader Julian Assange is hiding on the run but said to be facing imminent arrest in multiple countries. US Republican party figureheads have reportedly called for him to be hunted down like a Taliban leader and executed. He may very well be named TIME Magazine's Person of the Year for pushing the envelope on questions of technology disruption of media and diplomatic secrecy.
Senator Joe Lieberman called on US corporations to stop doing business with Wikileaks but tonight Facebook has issued a statement about its stance: for now at least, Wikileaks can continue publishing updates to supporters on the world's largest social network. WikiLeaks Coverage From ReadWriteWeb: Facebook Kicks Off a Weak Green Offensive: Cleantech News « Tech press is full of it. Facebook doesn’t need a device, this is what they need to do in mobile: By now you’ve seen the “Facebook is doing a phone” and “No we’re not” headlines. Just check out this grouping on Techmeme if you haven’t. Techcrunch started it, with a post by Mike Arrington, that said that Facebook was secretly working on a phone. Arrington was right that Facebook is working on mobile with some very smart folks, but the headline overreached and MG Siegler’s followup assumes that a smart team is working on a device.
Well, I think that’s horsepucky until Facebook actually ships an innovative mobile app that works on all the modern platforms. Truth is, while a Facebook-branded device would be popular it won’t get most of us to switch off of the phones we already have. I’ve been talking with folks high up in Facebook and they deny it. Well, OK, now that we’re clear on that, let’s talk about what I hope Facebook is doing by looking at what’s missing from Facebook’s mobile strategy: 1. 2. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Untitled. Untitled. How one CEO Facebooked his company - Jun. 13, 2008. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- When Jeremy Burton arrived as CEO at private-equity-owned Serena Software last year, he found a respectable but boring 25-year-old firm still profitably churning out mainframe-oriented products.
But he also discovered some underplayed non-mainframe products as well as new technologies in R&D that could be killer in a mashup Web 2.0 world. Of course the company's owners at Silver Lake, wanted him to find ways to make the place grow. So he turned R&D loose to develop the new products, and then turned to Facebook to change Serena. "The challenge was taking a mainframe culture into the 21st century," says the 40-year-old Burton, a veteran of Oracle and Veritas who speaks with the lilting tones of his Newcastle, England hometown.
"We've got to be relevant to the future. So we instituted Facebook Friday. " "I told all the employees it's OK on a Friday for everybody to goof off and spend an hour or two on Facebook," he explains to me at lunch in New York. The Social Network Wars Begin In Earnest: Facebook Bans Google F.
Update: More details here. Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users. Facebook just shook the tech world by announcing several major initiatives that collectively constitute an aggressive move to weave the social net on top of the existing Web.The rumors were that the leading social network would launch a "Like" button for the entire Web. Instead, Zuckerberg & Co. unveiled a bold and visionary new platform that cannot be ignored. The bits of this platform bring together the visions of a social, personalized and semantic Web that have been discussed since del.icio.us pioneered Web 2.0 back in 2004.
Facebook's vision is both minimalistic and encompassing - but its ambition is to kill off its competition and use 500 million users to take over entire Web. Whether we like it (pun intended) or not, we have to understand what this move means. It impacts users, publishers, competitors and, of course, Facebook itself. Facebook Open Graph: Publisher Plugins The Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API. Checkmate? Like Button Reveals More Than Friends Realize. I'm not sure why but I saw this and it made me nervous. I felt I was peaking into a neighbor's window when I landed upon the Likebutton.me website. When I wear my marketer's hat (as I did for this Adweek interview) everything seems just fine. But maybe it isn't or maybe it just takes getting used to. Does this worry you?
This website is a mashup of "like" button activity among your friends around the Internet. A dashboard of what your friends are finding important and are liking on websites beyond Facebook. What makes it unusual is that in those moments of liking something, your friends aren't thinking about who or what else is going to be seeing their actions. The benefits to marketers is undeniable and as long as companies look at the data in an anonymized fashion that's fine too. First Take Analysis: Facebook’s Crusade of Colonization « Web St. New App Helps Keep Facebook's Hands Off Your Data.
A new application aims to put users back in control of their private data stored on the increasingly public social networking site, Facebook. With "The Green Safe" app, Facebook users can now export their profile data for offsite storage on Green Safe's servers. Data can then be purged from Facebook itself, allowing only friends to view profile information by way of a profile page tab labeled "My Info. " Privacy Concerns for Facebook Users With the ever-growing concern about Facebook's data-sharing policies - policies that are now under attack from several U.S. senators - people are becoming more concerned about how personal information shared with the world's largest social networking site is being used.
After already having been blindsided with "recommended settings" that automatically publicized previously private data like status updates and photos, Facebook users are now dealing with even more changes that have major privacy implications. How "The Green Safe" Works 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. ReclaimPrivacy.org | Facebook Privacy Scanner.