Privacy is dead - get over it [part 2] is a talk by private investigator Steve Rambam. It's a talk he has been giving for a number of years where he shows how privacy is being taken away, not by sinister plots but because people are giving it away. With people putting up everything and nothing on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and so on, as well as a growing quantity of data held in private databases, he shows how easy it is to find out enormous amounts of data on just about anyone.
posted on Sep 2, 2008 - View this thread

Facebook the Movie by Aaron Sorkin
posted on Aug 30, 2008 - View this thread

Hamlet as a Facebook News Feed
posted on Aug 6, 2008 - View this thread

Anti-Israel Facebook group "seized" - the Jewish Internet Defense Force (warning: self-starting Google video) says that it has taken control of an anti-Israel Facebook group and is steadily deleting members by the second. "It has also changed the group's administrator titles to read 'Mossad Zionist.'"
posted on Jul 30, 2008 - View this thread

The sad day has come: Facebook has shut down Scrabulous. Read the complaint here (PDF). Those suffering from withdrawal can head on over to Scrabulous.com.
posted on Jul 29, 2008 - View this thread

£17,000 damages for victim of fake Facebook profile. Matthew Firsht found a fake facebook profile created in his name, and he has successfully sued the person who did it. Amol Rajan knows exactly what having your facebook online ID 'stolen' feels like, as do many others. Are your social networking friends always who they say they are?
posted on Jul 29, 2008 - View this thread

Ping.fm lets you update your social network statuses, blogs and microblogs simultaneously from one place. The current sign-up beta code is "tastyping".
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

Who do you want her to be... next year? Fans of Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku vow to save the television series Dollhouse from cancellation by Fox Television - eight months before it is scheduled to broadcast. Is this just guerilla fan-marketing, or are they serious? Or both? (previously on MetaFilter)
posted on Jun 2, 2008 - View this thread

Kevin Colvin may have gotten busted, but his generation is taking over. Millenials are everywhere -- and while some people welcome our bright-eyed, tech-savvy overlords, Gen-X is steadfastly unimpressed
posted on May 15, 2008 - View this thread

Social networks are like the eye: A talk with Nicholas A. Christakis.
posted on Mar 3, 2008 - View this thread

Toymakers Hasbro and Mattel claim that the popular online game Scrabulous (available on Facebook) infringes on the trademark for the board game Scrabble. They have not yet filed suit, but have asked Facebook to desist in its alleged infringement. Scrabulous is one of the top ten plug-ins on the site, developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla in Calcutta, India. "There has been speculation that the challenge to Scrabulous had been launched as Hasbro and Mattel prepare their own online version of Scrabble." Electronic Arts holds the license to the electronic rights to Scrabble. Facebook users are rallying to save the game.
posted on Jan 17, 2008 - View this thread

Tom Hodgkinson, of The Idler, really hates Facebook: "We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships."
posted on Jan 14, 2008 - View this thread

02138 Magazine is "Poking Facebook" with court documents and Zuckerberg's potentially embarrassing online journal (pdf). Facebook responds.
posted on Dec 1, 2007 - View this thread

Moveon.org has now joined the fight. Now you can join too. Previously.
posted on Nov 21, 2007 - View this thread

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has become increasingly popular, until it seemed like everyone and their grandma was joining up. A new feature, called Facebook Beacon, lets corporations join the fray. Might this be cause for concern?
posted on Nov 19, 2007 - View this thread

Bank Intern Busted by Facebook -- Kevin Colvin e-mailed his boss to say that he'd miss work due to what colleagues took to be a 'family emergency.' His boss turned to Facebook and found a photo of Colvin, dressed as a fairy at a Halloween party -- one which he apparently missed work to attend. The boss attached the image to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it. An Internet star/meme is born in this 'Age of Global Viral Embarrassment.'
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

Myspace vs Facebook Amanda Knox (AKA "Foxy Knoxy"). Knox has allegedly confessed to helping to rape and kill her flatmate, Facebook aficionada Meredith Kercher, when she refused to join in with Knox in an orgy along with a Knox's Italian boyfriend and a Congolese musician. Knox's blog makes interesting reading.
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - View this thread

Microsoft buys stake in Facebook. Microsoft has paid $240m (£117m) for a 1.6% stake in Facebook that values the hugely popular social networking site at $15bn (£7.3bn). Facebook spurned an offer from Microsoft's rival Google, which was also keen to invest the site. Microsoft will also sell internet ads for Facebook outside the United States as part of the deal that took several weeks of negotiating. Mark Zuckerberg started the online social networking site in his Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.
posted on Oct 25, 2007 - View this thread

The Facebook Apps Top 30. Opening their source code to application developers, facebook won a strategic gamble. Now, these developers are making their own deals. The I am Hungry application went for just over $20,000, or around 13 cents for data of every user who signed up. But don't worry, you have a chance to bid for yourself.
posted on Oct 9, 2007 - View this thread

"To find people you know who are not using Crackbook, pick up the phone and give them a ring" Via somebody on Facebook of course. Not short on the English - read toilet - humour, Crackbook does manage to capture the uglier sides of social networking: "Michael Thomas is frantically detagging himself from photos of him with other women before his girlfriend Sharon Oliver notices."
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

Facebook and MySpace posts embarrass Canadian border guards. PDF. Another example of Jan Wong's advice in 15 minutes of shame, about a 2005 incident at a Toronto private school: Don't write anything you wouldn't want someone to forward to [the national newspaper].
posted on Oct 2, 2007 - View this thread

Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. Examining the social rules and norms, as well as the pitfalls, of electronic "friending" (yes, it's a verb now - or is it a gerund?). Via.
posted on Sep 24, 2007 - View this thread

10 Steps to a More Dateable Facebook Profile 6. Un-tag photos at will. Bad angle? Bad outfit? Bad situation? Un-tag that picture! It's not worth adding a few numbers to that photo count to be seen in a photo that doesn't cast you in an entirely positive light. Did you see what happened to Miss New Jersey?
posted on Aug 24, 2007 - View this thread

Faceoff -- the three founders of college social networking site ConnectU have accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their business plan and code. Tomorrow they face-off in a Boston courtroom. "It's a mélange of gossip about upper-crust Silicon Valley, allegations of old-school Ivy League skulduggery and an oddball cast of characters that ranges from precocious dot-com millionaires to aspiring Olympic athletes. In what other intellectual-property lawsuit are two of the plaintiffs a set of Harvard University-educated twins from Greenwich, Conn., with several international rowing championship medals under their belts? ...Despite the backstory's semblance to screenplay fodder, the outcome is anything but scripted, at least for now."
posted on Jul 24, 2007 - View this thread

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace: "Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made." (Related blog post)
posted on Jun 25, 2007 - View this thread

Facebook to open their API. Online networking site Facebook is adding third-party app support to their API. Adding a new app (which can include ads) broadcasts it to your contacts. Innovation, or recipe for disaster? But can MySpace even be beaten? And if Facebook can poach MySpace's users, do they really want them? For that matter, is MySpace even the juggernaut some claim? Anyone have any ideas for new Facebook app mashups?
posted on May 24, 2007 - View this thread

Facebook informericial parody This is a pretty hilarious video of Facebook users. Very well done.
posted on Apr 26, 2007 - View this thread

85% of college students now use Facebook. With such popularity schools such as MU are examing Facebook usage and "a few students have been turned in for content that violates the conduct code." The phone-directory-on-steroids even attracts employers, "Linda Kaiser ... spoke with two people — an employer and a parent — who used Facebook to screen candidates for employment." Oh and for the Greeks the Facebook is creating problems of its own.
posted on Nov 7, 2005 - View this thread