Posts Tagged FaceBook
Facebook Exodus
Posted by ShopinJA in Science & Technology on October 30th, 2009
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: August 26, 2009
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.
The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing — some of them ostentatiously.
Leif Harmsen, once a Facebook user, now crusades against it. Having dismissed his mother’s snap judgment of the site (“Facebook is the devil”), Harmsen now passionately agrees. He says, not entirely in jest, that he considers it a repressive regime akin to North Korea, and sells T-shirts with the words “Shut Your Facebook.” What especially galls him is the commercialization and corporate regulation of personal and social life. As Facebook endeavors to be the Web’s headquarters — to compete with Google, in other words, and to make money from the information it gathers — it’s inevitable that some people would come to view it as Big Brother.
“The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook — and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent — the more Facebook can and does abuse us,” Harmsen explained by indignant e-mail. “It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you.”
Scotia raided
Posted by ShopinJA in Breaking News on September 15th, 2009
Facebook probe leads to bank’s IT centre
BY PAUL HENRY, Observer staff reporter editorial@jamaicaobserver.com
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
THE Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica’s (BNS’) Information Technology (IT) Centre has been implicated in what the police have described as the identity theft of the bank’s former president and chief executive officer William ‘Bill’ Clarke with whom it has been involved in a bitter legal battle.
As a result, the Observer has learnt that despite the fact that the identity of the person or persons responsible remains unknown, action is being contemplated under Section 5 and/or 6 of the Libel and Slander Act (1851).
Civil proceedings are also being contemplated for injury and damage to Clarke’s reputation, the Observer was informed.
In June, a person pretending to be Clarke created a profile on the social networking site Facebook and posted comments attacking the Observer’s reports on the banker’s bitter legal battle with the Canada-based bank.
The profile also featured pictures of Clarke at various social events, as well as comments purporting to be coming from Clarke in relation to his legal battle with BNS. The fake Bill Clarke also approved friends, including local journalists and politicians, joined groups and foundations, played games and replied to comments posted on his profile wall.
Facebook strips down to Lite site
Posted by ShopinJA in Science & Technology on September 11th, 2009
The world’s biggest social networking site has launched a slimmed-down version for people with slow or poor internet connections.
Facebook is working on other translations of its Lite site
Facebook has said the Lite site will be faster and simpler because it offers fewer services than the main site.
Initially it is meant to support users in developing countries and where bandwidth constraints make the current version too slow to use.
At the moment it is only available in India and the US.
The company said around 70% of its more than 250 million users were from outside America. Countries in Southeast Asia and Europe are seeing a massive increase in growth where fast internet connections are more common.
News that Facebook was testing the Lite site was first leaked in August.
‘Twitter-like’
The options on Facebook Lite are limited to letting users write on their wall, post photos and videos, view events and browse other people’s profiles. There are no apps or special boxes.
“It appears, at a quick glance, to be a better site for Facebook newbies or for anyone who finds the current site overwhelming and noisy,” said Rafe Needleman at technology website Cnet.
Facebook gets down to business
Posted by ShopinJA in Business News on June 12th, 2009
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, gives his dad, who is a dentist, business advice and shares with us how Facebook is shifting its service yet again: this time to integrate businesses into the social graph. He also talks about the new competition that Facebook is seeing from Google, Twitter, and friendfeed.
Source: Building43.com
