Facebook Prostitutes: The New Facebook Scam?| Leave a Comment July 3rd, 2008 at 4:04am |
Yesterday, the Telegraph reported about a woman who had her identity stolen on Facebook. The strategy is simply: create another profile of a person but have inaccurate data about them in their profile. When people search for the user they end up finding a false version of their profile which can have horribly inaccurate details about them. The result was that Kerry Harvey was branded as a prostitute on a fake profile.
Then today Ryan Kissiellondon reported about a man who had a fake profile created about him on Facebook as well. The profile had his name and birth date accurate but it also had him registered to a number of gay groups. Mathew Firsht is now “suing old schoolfriend Grant Rapheal for libel and misuse of private information in what is believed to be the first defamation case involving Facebook in the UK.”
These are not the first cases of users having false duplicates of their profile created. In a video posted on College Humor. back in March, this trick was the brunt of a joke movie trailer. This leads to the question of whether or not Facebook should be verifying user profiles when a user registers. As of now there isn’t much of a verification process but perhaps we will start seeing new processes implemented in the future.
Loading ...Peep This - JayZ A Billie [A millie freestyle] Full Version| Leave a Comment July 2nd, 2008 at 9:10am |
Jay takes the ‘a Milli’ joint from Lil Wayne and never looks back. He ain’t the best rapper alive for nothing. Peep it and leave a comment. Who ever said Hip hop is dead must be brain dead to real ass music.
Caption This!!| Leave a Comment July 2nd, 2008 at 8:25am Category: Caption This, Photos |
Hey guys we like to pull interesting photo’s that Facebook members have posted on their pages and ask you to provide us with caption. So go ahead and ‘Caption This’ photo…ain’t that cute!!
WTF - Facebook is getting rid of network pages soon!!| Leave a Comment July 2nd, 2008 at 8:13am |
Facebook is getting rid of network pages soon- the pages that appear for specific networks (ie Dallas/Fort Worth). It eliminates your being able to target a specific market to advertise a product or service. You don’t get to connect with the people within your network as easily. So promote and enjoy this feature while it lasts.
Is Facebook Worth $15 Billion? Not Anymore| Leave a Comment July 2nd, 2008 at 7:03am Category: FB Stuff |
Facebook used to have a valuation on $15 billion based on Microsoft’s investment in the company. According to Mike Arrington the new valuation is probably in the $3 - $4 billion range. According to Arrington and now Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider has reported similar rumors.
One financial wealth manager is looking to unload some shares and apparently some Facebook employees are also looking to sell shares. From the sounds of it, some shareholders have enough shares that they’d be satisfied exiting now. These rumors also may make a potential acquisition more attractive to a large company. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t looking to sell though according to other sources.
While Facebook’s current cash flow doesn’t justify a $15 billion valuation, the launch of their platform payment system could easily justify a higher valuation. Do you think Facebook’s new payment system will help boost their cash flow substantially overnight?
Slide’s Top Friends Remains Under Investigation| Leave a Comment July 2nd, 2008 at 7:01am Category: WTF |
Yesterday, news broke out that Slide’s Funwall application was no longer working and had been banned by Facebook for terms of service violations. According to a CNet news article, “Until Facebook suspended the Top Friends app, created by Slide, anyone could browse partial profiles of anyone else on Facebook who had added Top Friends to their page. CNET News.com confirmed that the security hole exposed the birthdays, gender, and relationship status of strangers, including Facebook executives, the wife of Google co-founder Larry Page, and one profile that seemed to belong to Paris Hilton that used her middle name ‘Whitney.’”
It has now been over 24 hours and the application appears to still be down. Top Friends was the third largest application and you can assume that Slide is rapidly working on a fix. Adonomics currently values the application at a whopping $25 million. The elimination of Top Friends would make RockYou the largest Facebook application developer. Given the historically fierce battle between Slide and RockYou, you can bet that Slide is working around the clock to make sure that this security hole is fixed.
Honestly, I’m surprised that the application is still down. Facebook provided Justin Smith with the following update regarding the issue once news of the application shut down was released: “We have suspended the Top Friends application while we investigate violations of our Terms of Service. We recognize this is a popular application and don’t take this action lightly.”
It’s great to see that Facebook takes security violations seriously. I’m still concerned about the scalability of ensuring the lack of private date leaking from the platform but at least Facebook is willing to enforce their policies.
Another Big App Disappears: This Time, It’s Social Me| Leave a Comment July 2nd, 2008 at 6:57am Category: WTF |
Five days ago, the Facebook Platform policy team made waves throughout the developer community by suspending Slide’s Top Friends application, the third largest application by daily active users, for a privacy violation of the Developer Terms of Service.
Tonight, it appears that another Top 25 Facebook app has disappeared from the Platform as well: Social Me, normally with over 280,000 daily active users, is showing the same signs that Top Friends did a few days ago:
- Going to the Social Me app page redirects to the Facebook home page
- Searching the application directory for “Social Me” yields nothing
- The Social Me box is missing from all profile pages
If two’s a coincidence and three’s a trend, then the disappearance of Social Me tonight should raise all developers’ eyebrows. Several of Social Me developer SocialHi.com’s other applications have gone missing as well. If this turns out to be another case of application suspensions due to user privacy concerns, then Facebook is definitely making a statement with its actions. We’ll have more soon.
Update: Social Me has indeed also been suspended from the Facebook Platform due to privacy violations. According to Facebook, “The Top Friends and Social Me applications have been temporarily suspended by Facebook due to their violations of Facebook’s privacy policies.”
Facebook to Ask More Users to Specify Their Sex| Leave a Comment July 2nd, 2008 at 6:52am Category: WTF |
Most developers have discovered that a large portion of Facebook’s user base - perhaps as much as 30% - haven’t specified their sex on their profile page. According to Facebook, that’s about to change.
Citing the difficulty of translating the gender-neutral (and invented word) “themself” that appears in Facebook feed stories in English, Facebook has decided to start prompting users to specify a gender. Currently, non-English Facebook users that haven’t specified a gender often get assigned the wrong gender in feed stories.
However, Facebook will still make it possible for users to remove gender from their profile altogether. Facebook’s Naomi Gleit writes.
We’ve received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting. We have a lot of respect for these communities, which is why it will still be possible to remove gender entirely from your account, including how we refer to you in Mini-Feed.
OMG!! - Facebook Increases Groups Messaging Limits| Leave a Comment June 23rd, 2008 at 6:33pm Category: Uncategorized |
Good news this week for those using Facebook Groups to manage and communicate with your customer community or otherwise for marketing purposes on Facebook: Facebook has just increased the group size message blast limit from 1,200 to 5,000.
The increase makes Facebook a more usable tool for those managing large user groups. However, for those with large groups, converting your group to a Facebook Page is the right move. (Those wanting to migrate their group to a Page can fill out this request form and Facebook should do it for you automatically.)
And The Beef Continues…| Leave a Comment June 23rd, 2008 at 6:10pm |
Ice T. responded to Soulja Boy’s comment’s today and he kinda sorta apologized…maybe not. Allow me to make a prediction; Soulja Boy is Done!!
Save to del.icio.us
Digg this article
