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.
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!
Facebook announce a number of new features to its recently-launched Comment Plugin to mark the milestone of its presence on more than 50,000 websites.
The features added to the Facebook commenting platform include increased size for comments in the news feed that is expected to increase conversion from news feed exposure.
Another new feature is the addition of Hotmail integration. Facebook users can now log in via their Hotmail account.
Last but not the least, an important addition for webmasters is the new comments API, that provides the ability mine comment data, export, and search comments to identify active visitors or most active conversations.
Facebook will automatically upgrade all sites to the new version of the comments plugin on April 29th. However, those wanting to upgrade now can do so by adding the ‘migrated=1‘ parameter to their existing <fb:comments> tag.
More about the features and can be found at Facebook developers page.
There’s been a rumor going around the internet that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has decided to shut Facebook down on March 15th, 2011, in order to get his old life back.
This rumor is False. We have confirmed that Facebook will not be shutting down on March 15th.
Urban Legened
Update: The rumor of Facebook shutting down on March 15 was published by Weekly World News which is a hoax.
It is difficult to believe every story published by newspaper that publishes false rumors. Weekly World News has published stories like George Clooney is running for president.
According to the Daily Mail, “It is April Fool’s Day all-year round at Weekly World News, which is well known for its false reports. Recent stories have included ‘Kate Middleton, age 36?” and alien spaceships to attack Earth in 2011″.
Moreover, mashable reported that they received an email from Zuckerber saying that the rumor is false.
So, rest assured, Facebook is not shutting down very soon.
We are becoming more obsessed with Facebook every day. 1 out of 13 people on earth and 3 out of 4 Americans are members of Facebook.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Check out this very interesting info-graphic from SocialHype, OnlineSchools.org, and Mashable.com.
Facebook Obsessed
Facebook Login
Facebook has just hit 600 million users and is quickly approaching 650 million. Facebook’s marketing measurement tools have long understated demographics, so after we adjust for this it appears like the website just struck the 600 million user mark.
The site added 100 million people in 6 months, and also over one 5th of them were in the U.S., which continues to be largest-represented nation on the website.
Parts of Asia also had a large amount of development since June, namely India, Indonesia and the Philippines. The latter two have been in the top five amongst countries represented on Facebook, but possess a fraction of the number of people that the U.S. possesses.
But we’re a lot more interested in if the present speed of progress continues, and if so for how long. Would Facebook get to 650 million users in March and 700 million in June? Development in the U.S. is anticipated to level off sometime quickly, and then the rest of the growth will need to come from the rest of the world.
Facebook Login
Facebook Login
Recently, there has been plenty of questions as to whether Facebook has crossed the 600 million user mark. Goldman Sachs is apparently informing possible Facebook investors that the social networking site presently has 600 million monthly active users. But Facebook stats portal Socialbakers puts Facebook’s member list at 596,372,520 members.
Facebook happens to be the third biggest web site on the planet, based on comScore. Facebook received an estimated 648 million unique visitors from around the world in November 2010. Of course, Sharebakers is counting registered members and comScore simply counts unique visits.
How many users do you think Facebook really has? Do you think they have 600 Million yet? Post your responses below.
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.
Facebook Updates Comment Plugin With New Features
April 13, 2011
Facebook announce a number of new features to its recently-launched Comment Plugin to mark the milestone of its presence on more than 50,000 websites.
The features added to the Facebook commenting platform include increased size for comments in the news feed that is expected to increase conversion from news feed exposure.
Another new feature is the addition of Hotmail integration. Facebook users can now log in via their Hotmail account.
Last but not the least, an important addition for webmasters is the new comments API, that provides the ability mine comment data, export, and search comments to identify active visitors or most active conversations.
Facebook will automatically upgrade all sites to the new version of the comments plugin on April 29th. However, those wanting to upgrade now can do so by adding the ‘migrated=1‘ parameter to their existing <fb:comments> tag.
More about the features and can be found at Facebook developers page.
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