Maryland corrections officer Robert Collins was recently forced to give his Facebook Login to his employer, the Maryland Department of Corrections, during a recertification interview in order to keep his job. The American Civil Liberties Union has taken the case and will be helping Mr. Collins sue the Maryland DOC.
This all started on January 25th, 2012, when the ACLU sent a letter to the Maryland DOC, in response to the requirement that all people applying for employment, as well as current employees in need of recertification, provide the state of Maryland with the logins and passwords to their personal social media profiles, for background checks.
“The demand for Facebook login information is not only a gross breach of privacy for Officer Collins and his friends, it raises significant legal concerns under the Federal Stored Communications Act and Maryland state law, which protect privacy rights and extend protections to electronic communications,” an ACLU spokesperson said in a statement. “As many of us begin to rely on sites like Facebook to stay connected to our friends and family, it’s important for employers and the government to keep in mind that, for most users, Facebook is a medium for private communications.”
Demanding a person’s private social network credentials is not the same thing as performing a background check on their public internet postings. With a login and passwords in hand, an employer has complete access to every message, picture, video, and post the person has ever made in their account. This is equivalent to a government agency rummaging through an employee or potential employees private mail.
Do you feel that most of your post and updates are going by unnoticed by people in your network on Facebook? Fret not! Facebook is testing a new feature that would make post made by users on the social network is more visible to friends, family and colleagues, by charging a small fee.
This feature is being tested among the Facebook users in New Zealand.
The Sun reported that users in theNew Zealandthought they were being scammed after they were presented with an option to “highlight” their post for $2.
Facebook later confirmed that they were “trialling” the feature, and charging was one of the options they were considering.
Facebook said it was constantly testing new features.
A Facebook spokesperson told BBC that it was testing different methods of highlighting posts, with charges ranging from 25p to £1.25 ($2).
Would you use the service if it rolls out?
Facebook announced Wednesday that it will be launching it own App Center, a single location for the platform’s many applications.
The social networking giant announced that it will begin supporting paid apps, with Facebook charging users flat fees.
“Well-designed apps that people enjoy will be prominently displayed. Apps that receive poor ratings or don’t meet the quality guidelines won’t be listed,” Facebook’s Aaron Brady said in a blog post.
“The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook whether they’re on iOS, Android or the mobile web,”
Developers will have to create an app detail page to provide images and other details about their app in order to have their app listed in the App Center.
For mobile apps, the App Center not only recommends, but also showcases web-based applications embedded in Facebook and even those websites that are based around the Facebook logon.
The App Center will look different to different users, as they will receive recommendations based on their demographic and history rather than star ratings.
Facebook has launched a new File-Sharing feature for all Facebook Groups. This new feature will allow group members share files with each other, similar to Dropbox or Box.net.
Users will have the ability to upload most common file types, up to 25MB in size. Exceptions include .mp3 and .exe files. Users will have the ability to report abuse of the file-sharing feature, which will hopefully precent the spread of copyrighted or malicious material.
Facebook File-Sharing should be enabled for most users by this weekend. Stay tuned for more information.
Today Facebook announced they will be launching Facebook App Center, an app store for Facebook Apps similar to Google’s Play Android Marketplace and the Apple iTunes App Market. The new Facebook app center will distribute social web, desktop, and mobile apps.
Facebook has grown to have a user-base of 900 million people, which means that there is a huge audience for Facebook apps. Developers should be all over this. It could be just like what happened with both Apple and Google’s app marketplaces. Smart developers should start building apps for the Facebook App Center right away.
Facebook App Center apps can be iOS apps, Android apps, web apps, mobile web apps, and even desktop apps. There will be both free and paid apps, which means there is a great incentive for developers to build and sell apps. The apps will also have the ability to handle in-app purchases in the near future.
Like the Apple iTunes Store, apps in the Facebook App Center will be rated based on a 5-star rating system. This will ensure the quailty of the apps, and like in iTunes, enable the best apps in a given category to rise to the top of the charts. And because Facebook knows so much about you, they will be able to suggest apps to you in a very targeted way. This sounds like a great monetization opportunity for both Facebook and developers across the world.
App developers will be given a detailed webpage, similar to an iTunes app store page, to describe the app. This will include a written description and screenshots.
We’re looking forward to the release of the Facebook App Center. Stay tuned to Facebook Login for more news on this and more!
One cannot deny the fact that more and more people are getting addicted to social media, such as Facebook and many of us users fail to see that.
But now, with the help of a new tool called the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS), an instrument developed by researchers from Norway to measure this addiction, we can measure our social media enthusiasm.
The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale is based on six criteria, where all items are scored on the following scale: (1) Very rarely, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Often, and (5) Very often:
- You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or plan use of Facebook.
- You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.
- You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems.
- You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
- You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.
- You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.
Study showed that scoring “often” or “always” on at least four of the seven items may suggest that you are addicted to Facebook.
Cecile Schou Andressen, doctor of psychology, who heads the research project Facebook Addiction at the University of Bergen (UiB) young users are more likely to develop Facebook dependency. They also found that Facebook addiction was related to extraversion. While people who are organized and more ambitious tend to be less at risk from Facebook addiction, as they often use social media as an integral part of work and networking.
Andreassen’s study showed that the symptoms of Facebook addiction resemble those of drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and chemical substance addiction.
In preparation for a May 2012 IPO, Facebook amended their S-1 filings today, revealing some interesting stats about the world’s largest social network. The biggest revelation is confirmation, directly from Facebook, that the site now has 901 Million global users. Of these, 526 Million are daily active users, up from 483 Million in late 2011.
Let’s just think about this for a minute… Facebook almost has 1 Billion users, and there are 7.7 Billion total human beings on the planet, which means approximately 1 out of every 7 people on earth now use Facebook, while 1 out of 14 use the site on a daily basis.
New numbers also illustrate Facebook’s mobile dominance, reporting 500 Million mobile users. What’s interesting here is that 83 Million of these mobile users access Facebook exclusively through the mobile app. Based on the trends in mobile internet usage, this number is bound to rise sharply in the near future.
Facebook can’t keep up growth like this forever, but things look very good at the moment, and the company appears poised to fully exploit the move to mobile, as users shift from the desktop web to the mobile web. How big can Facebook get? Only time will tell.
A Taiwanese woman gave a running commentary to her friends through Facebook chat while she was suffocating herself to death.
Claire Lin, 31, committed suicide by inhaling poisonous fumes. She was reportedly upset as her boyfriend failed to return home on her 31st birthday.
Police said her final Facebook entries show her chatting with nine friends, describing her gradual asphyxiation.
A picture uploaded from her mobile phone shows a charcoal barbecue burning next to two stuffed animals. Another shows the room filled with fumes.
While her online friends pleaded not to kill herself and to put out the charcoal fire, and some reportedly tried to track her down to stop her, none of them called police.
Her final words were: “Too late. My room is filled with fumes. I just posted another picture. Even while I’m dying, I still want FB (Facebook). Must be FB poison. Haha.”
It has emerged that social networking giant Facebook is trying to tighten its grip over another generic word ‘book’.
The social media behemoth slipped in the word in its updated user agreement page, which will soon become official, and that means all Facebook users who log onto the site are agreeing to the terms.
Facebook is said to have at least 70 trademarks already that includes ‘F,’ ‘F8,’ ‘Wall,’ ‘Friendfeed,’ and ‘Facebook Ads,’
The current statement reads:
You will not use our copyrights of trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.
But in the updated user agreement page, the statement reads:
You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Book and Wall), or any confusingly similar marks, except as expressly permitted by our Brand Usage Guidelines or with our prior written permission.
Wired said that while the agreement isn’t as binding as a registered trade mark, because every Facebook user ultimately agrees to the new terms, the net Facebook casts is a wide one.
What do you think of this?
Roman Andreev of Russia was crowned the 2012 Facebook Hacker Cup World Champion, in the recently concluded Facebook Hacker Cup at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
More than 8,000 hopefuls from 150 countries entered the competition that started on January 20, 2012 . Three months and three online rounds later, 25 finalists went head-to-head in a three-hour batter for supremacy at Menlo Park campus, which turned out to be an all-male show.
Andreev walked home with $5,000, as well as his name inscribed on a 50-pound trophy.
The participants get challenged with three problems to solve in 3 hours, and whoever finished first win. However, the winners were able to complete only one problem correctly.
The winners of the 2012 Facebook Hacker Cup are:
- 1st Place: Roman Andreev from Russia ( 1 hr 4 min)
- 2nd Place: Tomek Czajka from the US ( 1 hr 5 min)
- 3rd Place: Tiancheng Lou from China ( 1 hr 44 min)
Maryland corrections officer Robert Collins was recently forced to give his Facebook Login to his employer, the Maryland Department of Corrections, during a recertification interview in order to keep his job. The American Civil Liberties Union has taken the case and will be helping Mr. Collins sue the Maryland DOC.
