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Facebook Welcomes Back Gifts
MASHABLE - Sep 27 - Two years after its last attempt failed, Facebook is giving Gifts another shot. Facebook closed its “Gift Shop” in August 2010. At the time, it seemed that Gifts just wasn’t popular enough to be in Facebook’s list of priorities. Facebook said it has hundreds of gifts to chose from, with more added daily. Gifts include cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, a stuffed animal from Gund, or a digital gift card from Starbucks.
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California Passes Law To Stop Firms From Snooping On Staff Social Networking
THE INQUIRER - Sep 28 - Universities, schools and employers in California have been banned from snooping on citizens' social networking. The governor said that signing the bill bought some common sense into an area of employment law that was becoming increasingly murky. He said that it was designed to take on the "growing trend" of educational establishments and prospective employers wanting to snoop on their applicants.
by Dave Neal
See full article at The Inquirer
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Mail.Ru Tests Social Browser
WSJ - Sep 28 - Mail.Ru has launched a new browser just weeks after it revamped its confusingly-named “Internet” browser with a strong focus on safety. The latest browser is called “Amigo” and its main selling point is its tight social network integration. The Amigo browser, which is at an early stage of alpha testing has a side panel that allows users to keep track of many social networkis and their e-mail while they continue browsing.
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MySpace Is Testing Its Relaunch
CNET NEWS - Sep 25 - Managers are teasing the relaunch of MySpace. The site will apparently be reborn as a media-centric network. Timberlake, mySpace co-owner has some sizeable celebrity, which can't be overlooked when trying to get an entertainment service off the ground. He can help boost MySpace's profile and breath some credibility into the service.
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CanWeNetwork: Business Networking App
PR NEWSWIRE - Sep 25 - CanWeNetwork is a new mobile business networking tool that provides users with valuable professional recommendations of people they need to meet for business opportunities. Recommendations are based on location, skillset, experience, shared interests and personality traits extracted from LinkedIn profiles.
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How To Land An Angel Investor
HUFFINGTON POST - Sep 24 - The Small Business
Association estimates there are ~250K angel investors in the USA. Angel
investors are drawn to Chicago's tech renaissance of app developers,
game developers, a large Drupal community, product developers for mobile
devices and much more. Most -- but not all -- startups are losing
money.
- Insist it's a $1 Billion Company
- Pretend You Don't Need Funding
- Miracle Marketing: Tell investors your marketing plan is to eventually create a video that will go viral
- Have an Unoriginal Idea in Need of Talent
- Pitch a dating site that sounds like 20 other dating site pitches in the last month
- Throw Away Success
- Take Credit for the Angel Tax Credit
How to Close an Investment
- Barrier to Entry: If you have a provisional patent, if you've developed proprietary information, if you have a sustainable competitive advantage, if you have previous industry experience, mention it right away
- Skin in the Game: If you've invested your own money, mention it. Explain how far your investment took you and why you need more funding to take your business to the next level
- Show Off: If you have a developed product, demonstrate it
- Have a Business Plan: No one expects you to have all the answers, but if you know the right questions, you're head and shoulders above other pitches
- Value Your Company: Explain how much of an investment you think you need and how much of the ownership of the company you're willing to give up.
by Janet Tavakoli
See full article at Huffington Post
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
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Facebook Share Takes A 9.5% Hit After Negative Article
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 25 - On Saturday, the financial magazine Barron’s published a very damaging cover story against Facebook and its business model. It sums up all the negative points that Wall Street has been discussing since Facebook’s May IPO. The result is that shares are trading at 9.49% below yesterday’s price. It rose slightly from a low of 20.36 to 21.07. Facebook’s shares were up 25% after Disrupt two weeks ago and even at $21 a share Facebook is not hitting an all-time low.
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Facebook Snoopers And The Rise Of The Social Network Stasi
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK - Sep 24 - Facebook is seeking informants. It has been asking users about their friends usernames, trying to wheedle out people using false names. On Sep 4, an American mother Holly Biffle, appeared to post this on Facebook page: “Caught my son walking home from school with the gay kid across the street. My hand and his butt are going to be sore for the rest of the night.” The words spread and soon a Facebook page had been created called “Holly Biffle: Proud Homophobe And Child Abuser”. Biffle’s home address was posted online and she received a number of death threats. It now seems the message was a vindictive hoax but that revelation does little to fix the damage done to a young woman’s life and remove the scarlet mark placed on her by virtual vigilantes. A recent Home Office statement makes the legal position clear: “What is illegal offline is illegal online. People should not be able to use social media to post anonymous, abusive or threatening comments without facing any consequences.” That’s right, but we have to resist the growth of this social network Stasi and the imposition of a set of "acceptable" political and cultural positions.
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Facebook’s $9.5 Million ‘Beacon’ Settlement Approved
WIRED - Sep 23 - A divided federal appeals court is approving a $9.5M settlement to a class-action lawsuit challenging Facebook’s "Beacon" program that monitored and published what users were buying or renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other locations.Terms of the settlement, in which Facebook denied any wrongdoing, require the site to finance what the deal calls a “Digital Trust Fund” that would issue ~$6M in grants to organizations to study online privacy. Meanwhile, the attorneys who faced off against Facebook in the Beacon litigation are to receive ~$3M of the $9.5 million pot, as much as $500 an hour in some instances. Only a handful of the estimated 3.6M class members are to receive financial damages.
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Facebook Suspends Photo Tag Tool In Europe
BBC.CO.UK - Sep 21 - Facebook has suspended the facial-recognition tool that suggests when registered users could be tagged in photographs uploaded to its website. The move follows a review of Facebook's efforts to implement changes recommended by the Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland last year. In December 2011 the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) gave Facebook six months to comply with its recommendations.
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How To Find Happiness In A World Of Password Madness
PC WORLD - Sep 21 - In June, hackers stole ~6.5M LinkedIn passwords and posted them online. That same month, intruders compromised ~1.5M eHarmony passwords in a security breach, and in July hackers grabbed 450K Yahoo Voice passwords. Among the most common passwords used by those Yahoo members: "123456," "welcome," and "password." “These days you have to have dozens of passwords and logins,” says Terry Hartmann, VP of global security solutions for Unisys. All of the passwords breached in the LinkedIn, eHarmony, and Yahoo exploits had been "hashed"—that is, the actual passwords had been replaced with algorithmically generated code. Complex passwords infused with numbers and special characters give you a fighting chance against hackers. Password management programs are essential tools for managing your digital life. A good password manager remembers all of your logins, replaces the simple passwords you choose with complex ones, and lets you change those passwords quickly if a site or service you use gets hacked. Instead of having to remember dozens of unique passwords, you only have to remember one: the master password for your vault. A biometric security system taps into the unique properties of your own physical packaging to authenticate your identity. Biometric systems can scan fingerprints, irises, faces, and even voices to establish whether a person should have access to a service or piece of hardware.
by Dan Tynan
See full article at PC World
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
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MeetMe Launches iPhone App In Spanish And Portuguese
MARKETWIRE - Sep 19 - MeetMe, the social discovery serivce, has launched MeetMe iPhone app in both Spanish and Portuguese. MeetMe launched its web and Android apps in Spanish and Portuguese in May. Meetme expects to be in half a dozen languages by the year's end.
See full article at FinanzNachrichten.de
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
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Facebook Offers No Longer Free
CNET NEWS - Sep 20 - Facebook now charges merchants to posts ads along with deals on its site. Facebook launched Offers earlier this year as a free service that allows business to send promotions directly to user news feeds. A company's Facebook fans are able to redeem vouchers for discounts. The offers remain free to redeem, but Facebook now requires merchants to spend at least $5 on related ads to accompany their vouchers. Offers is also now available globally to all merchant pages with more than 400 fans.
by Shara Tibken
See full article at CNet News
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Another Harvard Alum Says Zuck Copied Him
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 20 - Aaron Greenspan, a programmer and web entrepreneur who was a contemporary of Mark Zuckerberg’s while the two were students at Harvard, has released a new batch of IM conversations that allegedly took place between himself and Zuckerberg in 2004. He is not new to claiming that he has been neglected for his role in the founding of Facebook. While at Harvard, Greenspan created a social network called houseSYSTEM, which had a feature called “Facebook.” Greenspan may decide that he now has the evidence needed to pursue a fresh legal claim about the founding of Facebook. But as for now, his settlement with Facebook from 2009 is his last on-the-books interaction with the company. Since then, it’s been only verbal allegations, blog posts, and e-books.
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