Tag: social networks

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Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Los Angeles and Early Media Reaction

occupy la city hall
Originally posted at KCET’s The Public Note.

Hundreds of people marched from Pershing Square to City Hall on Saturday, some with masks, some with bandanas, and many with signs bearing slogans admonishing the government, corporations and the current financial climate.

“We are the 99%”
“It’s not a crisis it’s a scam”
“Audit the Fed”
“Rights for the people not for corporations”
“200k in grad school debt where is my bailout?”

The protesters have been camped out on the City Hall lawn since Saturday, in solidarity with the 3-week strong Occupy Wall Street movement in New York. If America is a democracy, why does 1 percent of the population control 40 percent of the wealth, and take 25 percent of the income, economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz asked in the May 2011 issue of Vanity Fair.

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Facebook Timeline Thrusts You into the Participatory Web. Be Prepared.

Facebook Timeline
Facebook profiles are now personal timelines

Facebook‘s biggest and boldest move to date was announced last week at its f8 conference. Timeline is a complete overhaul of Facebook profiles and changes the way user behavior is reflected and shared across one’s network, or social graph. In essence, Facebook expects users to be active participants in the social web, actively sharing thoughts, photos, and more but also sharing semi-passively. What you’re listening to, reading, discovering and discussing across many websites can now be automatically archived on one’s Facebook timeline and published in real time to the Facebook News Feed.

Facebook has always pushed openness and sharing on its users and this latest innovation is bound to spark concern among users who wish to maintain significant privacy controls over their profile and presence. For users that embrace the increasingly open and social nature of the web, the distracting nature of Facebook is about to multiply exponentially.

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Facebook Timeline Gives Away Your Age in Spite of Privacy Settings

facebook timeline age bug
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Facebook Timeline, announced this week at f8, Facebook’s Developer conference, revolutionizes the Facebook profile as we know it, unfortunately at the expense of some pre-existing privacy settings and expectations. Timeline is expected to replace all user profiles by September 30th (you can opt in early at the bottom of this page).

All users’ birth dates appear on a user’s Timeline regardless of settings. Even if you choose to disclose only the month and day of your birth (and not the year), your age can still be approximated as a result of its appearance in the context of the Timeline.

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Think LinkedIn is Free? You Got Sold!

privacyIt seems every social network overextends its privileges with users once a year if not more. In the past the culprit has most often been Facebook, changing its Terms of Service and upgrading its platform to create just a bit more vulnerability for its users. It’s become an almost humorous pattern of overreaching only to retreat slightly in reaction to inevitable user outrage.

Today LinkedIn pulled a Facebook.

LinkedIn launched its own social ad network, which utilized users images and profile information in advertisements that would be served on the site, presumably to their contacts. LinkedIn really should have seen this coming — a few years back when Facebook did the same thing it experienced a user backlash.

What’s the fuss? Social network users expect the opportunity to select whether their likeness is used for profit. In both Facebook and LinkedIn’s case, users were initially opted in to the ad programs by default.

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