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Social Media and Social Unrest: How Twitter, Facebook, and Blackberry Factor into Flash Mobs, Riots and Uprisings

Arab spring, flash mobs, and last week’s riots in England. What two things do these have in common? Well, first, they have a people ready to be incited to action – be it for the cause of democracy, for a flash mob, or for chaos, mayhem, and lining their own pockets with ill-gotten goods. And second, social media has contributed to the lightning speed with which each of the groups coordinated and coalesced.

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Does the Ability to Mine Facebook Email Notification Data in Gmail Give Google+ an Unfair Advantage Over Facebook?

With all the hoopla over Google+ – what with some calling it the Facebook killer, and all – it is interesting to us to note that nobody has yet stopped to question what sort of advantage Google has over Facebook by being able to data-mine all of that email that flows from Facebook to its users, via…Gmail.

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Is Social Intelligence Corp Monitoring Your Social Network Status and Reporting to Prospective Employers?

Last month Social Intelligence Corp. received official approval from the Feds to monitor and search your social network status updates and other information that is publicly searchable online. So just what is Social Intelligence doing with the results of their social network search? They are providing them to the people who pay Social Intelligence Corp. for those results: prospective employers. Anything you say or post online in a public forum can and will be used against you, including remarks that can be construed as racist, photos that can be considered explicit, or anything that can be taken as evidence of illegal activity such as drug use, to name a few. Suddenly the drunk posting of a status update on Facebook from years ago can come back to haunt you and cost you that job that you really want.

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With Launch of Social Network G+, Google Puts Squeeze on Users: No More Private Google Profiles

We’re betting that some in the Google inner circle are ruing the day that someone at Google HQ first uttered “Don’t be evil.” Like Bush’s “Read my lips, no new taxes”, it has become the iconic soundbite with which they are most associated. How that gels with the news that Google is now forcing anyone with a Google Profile to make that profile public or lose it, well, we’re sure we don’t know. But there it is: where users used to be able to keep their Google Profile private, Google has made clear that private profiles will no longer be permitted. Either take your Google Profile public, or lose it when they do a mass deletion of all private Google profiles on July 31st.

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Social Media Pillories “News of the World” as Parliament Investigates Hacking of Dead Girl’s Cell Phone Voicemail

Twitter is aflame with calls for boycotts of Rupert Murdoch, his ‘News of the World’, ‘News of the World’s’ parent company, ‘News International’, and other Murdoch holdings, as the investigation of News of the World’s using a private detective, Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the telephone voicemail of several young girls who had been murdered in the U.K. in 2002, and that of their families, moves into Parliament. The families of Milly Dowler, Holly Wells, and Jessica Chapman have all been informed by police that each of their telephone voicemail accounts may have been hacked, each within days of each girl’s disappearance, and each by Mulcaire, trying to get a scoop for News of the World. Among other things, Mulcaire is alleged to have hacked into Milly Dowler’s voicemail on her mobile phone, and deleted some messages, which caused Milly’s family to continue to hope that she might be found alive when she had already been murdered, and which interfered with the police investigation. Calls for Rebekah Brooks, head of News International, and a personal friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, to step down are escalating, putting the Prime Minister in an awkward position, particularly as his Communications Director, Andy Coulson, also formerly of News of the World, has already been forced to resign his position with the Prime Minister.

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All About Google Plus: What Google+ is and Why You Want It

Google + or, as it is known more fully, the Google+ Project, is Google’s foray into creating a true social network. So what is Google+? As the awesome comic XKCD puts it, it’s like Facebook, but it’s not Facebook, making it a win-win, according to some.

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The “Vote for Nicole Santos” Spam on Facebook – DON’T Click That Link!

Nicole Santos is getting quite a name for herself, and deservedly so. Her name has been spammed all across Facebook, in wall posts that are full of profanities, and also almost always exhort the spammed to “Vote for Nicole Santos”. The trick, of course, is that at the bottom of the post, next to the “Comment” and “See Friendship” links, is a link to “Remove this app”. Because the language in the wall posts is so foul, one’s first instinct is to hit that link as quickly as possible – but don’t click that link because that is how the virus infects your machine. (There is also a similar virus spam going around Facebook right now that exhorts you to “Please do your part in PREVENTING SPAM by VERIFYING YOUR ACCOUNT. Click VERIFY MY ACCOUNT right next to comment below to begin the verification process”.)

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Police Advise Know Your Child’s Facebook Password, Even If You Have to Steal It!

We have often taken flack for saying that children have no business being on Facebook (or the Internet in general), and that parents really don’t understand the dangers of letting your child on the Internet without adequate supervision and precautions. Now a group of police officers is saying the same thing, going so far as to say that you need to have your child’s Facebook password, and monitor their activity on Facebook – even if it means stealing their Facebook password to do it.

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Teens’ “Hypertexting” May be a Leading Indicator of Their Engaging in Drinking, Sex and Drugs

A recently released study has discovered that teenagers who do an excessive amount of texting are more likely to also be involved in riskier behaviors, including drinking alcohol, experimenting (or worse) with other drugs, and being active sexually, even to the point of promiscuity. This excessive texting is being dubbed “hypertexting”.

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Court Rules that Deleted Facebook Posts are Fair Game

If you think that because your Facebook or Twitter profile is set to “private” that it means that you can control who will see what you post, think again. In fact, even if you delete what you have posted – in your private account – you can still be forced to let others see it, even after you’ve deleted it. That’s the Court ruling in a recent case involving plaintiff Kathleen Romano, who may have deleted postings, made to her private Facebook and MySpace accounts, which would be beneficial to the defendant, the Steelcase chair company.

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Should You Use Location-Based Social Media Services? As Facebook Places Launches, We Warn Against Using ANY Location Based Social Networking

The announcement is imminent: Facebook is about to launch its new Facebook Places service. Positioned as a competitor to the increasingly popular FourSquare, and the slightly less popular Loopt and others, Facebook Places is another of the location based social media services, also known as geosocial networking. Put briefly, it is a service that allows you to “check in” when you arrive somewhere, letting everyone who follows you know where you are (and, often, what you think of where you are). Other services that offer some variation of geosocial networking include BrightKite, Google Latitude, Gowalla, Socialight, Hotlist, Scvngr, Fire Eagle, and Gbanga.

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Facebook Panic Button Available as an Application to Report Suspected Child Predators

Facebook has added a Facebook Panic button application, following an agreement with (read as capitulation to, but we don’t mean that pejoratively) UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). The way that it works, at least in theory, is that it provides an easy way for young people on Facebook (and their parents) to report suspicious activity – by which we mean activity that may be aimed at luring, stalking, or bullying minors – to both Facebook and CEOP.

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SMS is Corrupting Our Language – or Is It?

Recently some people have begun to question whether SMS is corrupting our language – have the confines of 140 characters forced people to rethink how they speak such that they use the shortcuts borne of texting even in non-SMS – even face-to-face – conversation? The advent of Twitter has surely pushed us ever more towards that linguistic evolution, and anyone over the age of 30 who has ever had someone, of any age, say to their face “OMG” (pronounced “oh em gee”) may well have asked themselves “Is SMS corrupting our language?” (or may have on the spot concluded that SMS is corrupting our language!) But not everyone – including some experts – sees it that way.

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Racy MySpace Photo Causes Mother to Lose Custody of Infant Son

Last month, with little fanfare, an Arkansas woman lost custody of her infant son due, at least in part, to photos that she posted to her MySpace page. The tale of Robert Lipps, Kathleen Lipps (a/k/a Kathy Lipps), and Baby Lipps all began when Robert Lipps was on deployment, and his pregnant wife Kathy allegedly had an affair with one Troy Whittington. This sordid chapter of their tale ended when Kathy Lipps lost custody of the infant Lipps due to, among other things, her posting pictures of herself, laying in bed with and kissing Troy Whittington, to her MySpace account.

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Your Twitter Tweets Now Searchable in Real Time by Google

Google has announced that they have partnered with Twitter to allow your Twitter messages – known as “tweets” – to be searchable in real-time on Google. This means that as soon as you say something publicly on Twitter, it will instantly be available to millions and millions of people who don’t know you – or who do – in their Google search results.