From the monthly archives:

December 2009

Facebook has changed our lives in more ways than one. In my case, it has allowed me to find and reach out to friends I thought I have long lost. To others, it has helped them discover new friends and even gain new loves.

However, Facebook is not all flowers and warm sunshine. There is a darker side to it. I found it frightening to know that children get hurt here. We thought that keeping our kids indoors protect them. But through the networking site, few have been tricked into doing things they didn’t like, while some have gotten into fights.

In fact, in Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School in Union County, New Jersey, two cafeteria fights are being blamed on Facebook. What started as simple disagreements in the site became real life fights. In that High School, girls began calling each other names and then started slapping each other. Although it was a brief clash, one girl with scratches on her chest was reported to have carried a bloody ring out of the cafeteria. This ring was believed to be a nose ring that was ripped from her face. Principal David Heisey suspended six girls because of these fights.

Kids are especially vulnerable in these social networking sites because it is still very important to them how others perceive them. They will get into fights or do things they don’t like just to preserve their image.

It has been reported that only five percent of the kids tell their parents when they get harassed online. So, parents have to be proactive to protect their children from online dangers. It only takes a negligible amount of effort. After all, I’m sure you don’t want anything bad to happen to your kids.

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Last Tuesday, 22 December 2007, Anthony Stancl, a 19-year-old from Wisconsin, pleaded guilty to two sexual assault charges. He now faces up to 50 years of jail time.

The teenager was charged because he had forced at least seven students of New Berlin Eisenhower High School, ages 15 to 17, to have oral or anal sex with him. These occurred from spring of last year up to November of this year, when he was arrested.

He was able to blackmail fellow students by using Facebook. According to investigations, he posed as a girl named, “Kayla,” in the site. “Kayla” met the boys through Facebook, had conversations with them, and then eventually asked them to send nude photos of themselves in exchange for naked photos of “her”. He later used the photos sent to him to blackmail the boys. “Kayla” told the boys that “she” will release the photos in school if the boys do not have sex with Stancl.

It was a 16-year-old student who finally shed light on Stancl’s acts. This pupil approached the authorities and told them that he was being blackmailed by Stancl. He also said that Stancl documented the sex acts to further blackmail victims. He gathered up the courage to go to the authorities after “Kayla” demanded his brother’s nude photos.

In Stancl’s computer, investigators found approximately 300 naked pictures and videos of 13 to 17-year-old schoolmates, including that of the complainant.

Waukesha County District Attorney, Brad Schimel, was happy about the outcome of the court hearing yesterday, because the complainants no longer needed to testify. This was an important part of the negotiations because the they were hesitant to go to court.

A hearing, which may schedule the sentencing date, was scheduled on 7 January 2010.

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Facebook has become a giant in the internet world. In fact, in November of this year, it achieved its 100 millionth monthly U.S. visitor. It has become as popular as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. It has even surpassed AOL. However, there is one place where it not yet king: Japan.

The popularity of Facebook in Japan has increased tremendously, from 355,000 unique visitors in November 2008 to 1.39 million in November this year. However, this number is still dwarfed by the number of unique visitors that go to the Japanese social networking site, Mixi. Japan’s biggest online community has at least 9.2 million unique visitors per month through its PC website. In fact, in June of this year, the Japanese social networking site had 15 million users. Additionally, Mixi can also be accessed using mobile phones.

Furthermore, people stay inside Mixi longer than in Facebook. On the average, Mixi users stay in the site for as long as four and a half hours, while in Facebook, visitors only stay for a little over half an hour.

Because Japan has a unique language and way of writing, the Japanese market is difficult to break into and conquer. Also, Japanese prefer to let their thoughts be known from behind an alias, which is a feature of Mixi.

However with the dramatic increase in Facebook users in Japan, Facebook might finally get into the Japanese community, if they focus their advertising efforts in that country next year.

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Inmate Craig Lynch, 28, talked about tucking in to a venison steak and basking in Caribbean temperatures in his warm home, making mockery of efforts to find him by posting messages on Facebook.

Three months ago, Lynch broke out from an open prison in Suffolk, East England, towards the end of a seven-year sentence for aggravated burglary.

Instead of hiding away, he reportedly set up a Facebook account under the name Craig ‘Lazie’ Lynch with a photograph of him giving the middle-finger-swearing gesture. He even made 199 friends and brazenly posted updates about his life outside bars.

The convicted burglar also believed to have posted a message on a local newspaper website reporting his escape on September 23.

He also confirms his attendance at a New Year’s Eve party in Lowestoft and another party in Norwich in February.

Police warned people not to approach Lynch, but instead to report any sightings of him.

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Joe McElderry’s “The Climb,” had a hard climb through the UK Christmas Chart.

This year, Joe McElderry, the winner of the X Factor was expected to score an easy win his single “The Climb,” a cover of a song by Miley Cyrus, however campaign started on Facebook to stop McElderry from topping the UK Christmas Chart this year.

Jon Morter, a 35-year-old logistics expert and music fan, started a Facebook group and encourage support for the Rage Against the Machine single “Killing In The Name.”

Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name” sold more than 500,000 copies in its most recent week of release to McElderry single “The Climb” which sold 450,000 to take the top spot on UK Christmas Chart.

In recent years, the British charts have been routinely topped at Christmas time by the winner of “The X Factor,” a singing competition produced by Simon Cowell, the “American Idol” judge.

It is being hailed as one of the biggest shocks in the history of the U.K.’s music charts — and a slice of humble Christmas pie for pop mogul Simon Cowell.

All in all i would like to put this whole news in this way – Winner of X Factor, Joe McElderry’s single “The Climb” had a hard climb on the UK Christmas Chart because RATM’s “Killing In The Name” killed McElderry’s race in the name of killing the run of Simon Cowell’s backed artists topping the Christmas Chart.

Are you surprised by the chart list or was it expected?

[Source: New York Times]

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Facebook Blamed By Divorces

December 21, 2009

Facebook has been blamed for the breakdown of thousands of marriages.

The site was named in at least 20% of divorce petitions in America this year, according to research, and the most common reason is spouses engaging in saucy sex chat with their online friends.

Flirty emails and messages found on Facebook pages are increasingly being cited as evidence of unreasonable behavior.

Other social networking sites, including MySpace, Bebo and Twitter, also featured heavily int he sample of 5,000 divorce papers studied.

Around 14 million Britons are believed to regularly use social networking sites to communicate with old friends or make new ones.

In the US, divorce lawyers openly admit to searching social networking sites for evidence of infidelity or wrong-doing in a bid to strengthen their case against an errant spouse.

Connecting with old friends and making new ones doesn’t seem to be handled very well in regard to this news. What do you say??

[Source: Telegraph, The Sun]

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Facebook, the largest social-networking site has just realeased its year-end lists introducing Facebook Memology.

“Memology” refers to the study of how “memes,” or new ideas and trends, are spreading on Facebook.

The data is said to be harvested from tracking (anonymously) millions of Facebook status updates throughout the year.

Many significant new events and celebrities made the list, but more personal topics like family, religion and even emerging digital slang were as common, which undoubtly reflects the way people share their daily lives with friends on Facebook.

Cutting short of the suspense, here is the top five Status Trends of 2009.

Facebook 2009 topmemology 300x175 Facebook: Hottest Status Trends Of 2009What do you think of the list?

Source [Facebook blog]

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Long time ago, i used  to use a mirror to view some photos on Facebook. The reason was fairly simple; some friends just can’t get enough posting rotated photos. My method was simple yet effective in giving zero strain to my neck icon smile How To Rotate A Photo In Facebook . It’s a pleasure to search for dirt in someone’s eye, but i never thought others too were facing this problem viewing my photos.

There is this option, yet overlooked by many, to set things right. Came across a 180 degree rotated photo recently, and so i thought it would be good to write about it here.

Here’s how to do it:

step 1: Go to your photos and select the album or the picture that you want to rotate.
Step 2: Click on the picture you want to rotate.
Step 3: Right below the share button, you will see 2 arrow icons. One icon is to turn the picture left and the other to turn right.

rotate photo How To Rotate A Photo In Facebook

This little extra effort is going to save a lot of strain on many people’s neck.  Psstt… if you are in for a revenge you can use it too icon wink How To Rotate A Photo In Facebook .

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Facebook announced the date of next year’s F8 conference: April 21-22, to be held in San Francisco. F8 is an event where Facebook showcase their latest developer products.

This is a big event because Facebook’s past two F8 conferences have marked the debut of some of its biggest products.

In May 2007, Facebook launched the groundbreaking Facebook developer platform, which spurred the creation of around 500,000 applications so far. The 2008 F8 saw the debut of Facebook Connect, that reaches over 60 million users each month.

We can all expect the launch of something big in the upcoming F8 conference in April 2010.

Though nothing much is known about the products that might get launched, we’ll surely keep you updated as more details and rumors is available. So, stay tuned till then icon smile Facebook Announces 2010 F8 Conference .

[Source: Facebook blog]

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John Burge of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has been living with polycystic kidney disease (PKD) for 16 years. Two years ago, he was told he needed a transplant, but unfortunately could not get a match.

“We felt like we were at the end. We didn’t really feel like there was another option,” said Burge’s wife Katie.

When no donor was found by mid-September, Burge’s son, Matthew, turned to Facebok for the second time.

Less than 30 minutes after making his post on Sept. 18, a 24-year-old friend, Nick Etton, responded. Tests showed that John Burge and Etton were a match.

Etton and Matthew met at Kirkwook Community College several years ago and stayed in touch, but Etton have never met John Burge until he came to Cedar Rapids for blood tests.

“The moment I read the Facebook post — this was something I should do,” Etton said.

“I can’t thank him enough,” Burge said. “What he’s doing is beyond words.”

“I mean you think about it, it’s Christmas, and he’s pretty much giving my family the greatest gift we could ever ask for,” said Matthew.

It’s feel good to come across such heartwarming stories every once in a while.

[Source: News 8 Channel, Chicago Tribune]

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