“FIND OUT WHO VIEWED YOUR PROFILE!” promises a particular Facebook group containing almost 45,000 members at the time of this post. Or, so they’d like you to think! I mean, who wouldn’t want to know which of their friends dropped by their profile, photos, or other items for a short (or perhaps not-so-short) visit? I’ll admit, I was even interested for a couple minutes. Given the chance to find out if he or she’s been staring at your profile pic for hours on end has got to be enticing. Anyone could fall for it…
Okay, stop! Back to reality. Here’s five reasons you shouldn’t join any groups or click any links promising the latest in Facebook (or other) spying or tracking technology. (and no, if you were wondering, I didn’t even have to think to come up with these!)
1. It’s a serious breach of privacy. (kinda like spying on your friends. you’re not allowed to follow them around town even if you’ve known them since you were two!)
2. It’s a group or an external website. (the only way this could work is if it were a Facebook application, you and all of your friends added it, and the Facebook admins allowed it through check. fat chance!)
3. Everyone’s telling you to join. (they just wanna know if it works or not. since you (now) already know it doesn’t, turn and run the other way. quickly.)
4. There aren’t 100 million members of the group. (if this type of tracking were possible, don’t you think all of Facebook would be on it already? come on!)
5. It sounds too good to be true. (then it probably is! don’t you ever listen to your mom??)
Okay, some of those are, of course, more obvious than others. The point here is: think before you click! So do us all a favor, watch out for those messages, invites, and emails that promise crazy awesome things, and help the world become a better place by clicking Delete.
This public service announcement brought to you by an annoyed Facebook user…
facebook, scam, social experiment
If ever you’ve wished for a way to connect all 120+ million Facebook users with your business or community website, wish no longer–the solution is here. Facebook Connect promises to link any Facebook user’s existing account with a website which implements the service and integrates it with a new or existing database of users. Basically, this means that with a site visitor’s approval, you can access certain information from their personal profile on the popular social networking site. The uses for such information are practically unlimited, providing businesses new ways to target ads to specific users–making them even more relevant than Google’s own advertising system, which displays ads based on the analysis of each search.
Facebook Connect is hot on the heels of Google’s own “Friend Connect” system, which similarly allows anyone with a Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID account to login to a partner site using the credentials of their choice. I suspect that Google’s program is probably a bit more open at this point, but it remains to be seen which service is the most effective.
While Google is by far one of the most popular sites on the web, with more than a billion searches performed each day, it certainly has a significant user base. Unfortunately, not nearly as many people have a Google Account or supply that account with personally identifiable information as they would on popular social networking sites. Facebook has the edge here in collecting users’ favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, hobbies and more, so if a site like Amazon partnered with Facebook Connect, it could offer pinpoint accurate suggestions to shoppers. You like Lord of the Rings? Here’s a set of books and movies in the same genre. The possibilities really are endless.
Ultimately, I believe that APIs like Google’s OpenSocial will be the key to linking each social network site into one global peoplenet. It’ll be crucial for the average user and consumer to be able to login to any site, whether using Facebook Connect, Friend Connect, or the older MySpace Data Availability initiative. It shouldn’t matter which service I prefer–I should be able to access my information from Facebook while logged into Google and vice-versa. It only makes sense!
All things equal, this opens up a huge can of worms in the privacy arena and it’ll be up to users and social networks to come to an agreement on what information is sharable without violating privacy rights.
It’s exciting though, and I can’t wait to see how things progress from here!
APIs, facebook, google, myspace, social-networking
Design and content are the two main things that cross most people’s minds when they begin crafting a new website, whether for themselves or for a paying client. But even in the design phase, it’s crucial to consider search engine optimization (SEO), accessibility, and how you’re going to make updates and improvements after the site goes live.
Is the client going to be making updates themselves? Can they do it without destroying the layout or other features? What about when a new page is added, or one is deleted?? Is there a mechanism in place to detect and remove/fix broken links? It’s also good to think about the next redesign. As the web evolves and changes it’s necessary to update the look and feel of a site to keep up with the changing times. Can this be done easily without breaking the existing content?
All of these are valid questions to begin asking early on in the construction of a good website. But even beyond that, Smiley Cat has 12 Essential Site Building Blocks that I’ve found, well, essential to jumpstart good website development. Check them out before starting your next project (or even finishing your current one!)
web 2.0, website design
If you haven’t seen it already, the long awaited Facebook makeover can now be viewed live and in full color! At the moment, it’s an opt-in thing–use it if you want to get used to it, but if you’re not ready for the change you can still stick with the current layout.
In my opinion the new look provides a much needed layout to an already successful social network. It should attract even more people than before. Also, in listening to their users, the crew over there at Facebook has moved the profile pics back to the left-hand side of the page among a couple other minor tweaks.
My browsing wasn’t without difficulty though. Many times clicking a link or button resulted nothing happening. Either the browser would just act like it was working but never came back with a new page. Other times clicking a link just didn’t do anything–as if the link wasn’t programmed to go anywhere. My guess is that Facebook’s servers are getting hit fairly hard at the moment with everyone checking out the improvements and I’m sure the development team is actively working to make the transition as smooth as possible. I don’t foresee too many problems come mainstream launch day.
In a few weeks (my guess is sometime toward mid-August) the new Facebook site will go live for everyone and you won’t have a choice but to use the new UI. It’ll take a bit of getting used to at first, but all in all it’s for the better and I think you’ll like it a lot. Go take a look!
facebook, profile, social-networking
SitePoint Blogs has an excellent article on Facebook and the crossroads it faces. Still trailing MySpace it needs to take action in order to continue the growth it has experienced in the past. How the site leverages the brains of its developers, the lives of its users, and the robust social platform it already has in place could make or break the popular networking web hotspot. Read SitePoint’s take on it here.
data, facebook, social-networking, storage