Entries Tagged 'Facebook Groups' ↓

A carrier ship called the Cosco Busan recently smacked into the San Francisco Bay Bridge, ripping a gash in its hull and spilling an estimated 58,000 gallons of oil into the Bay.

Since then, there have been thousands of volunteers showing up to help clean the spill, but bureaucracy, fear of lawsuits and a healthy spattering of good, old-fashioned incompetence meant that many if not most of these volunteers were turned away, or were sent to unaffected beaches to do trash cleanup.

The problem is reflected in a Facebook group called Save Our Bay that already has more than 20,000 members. The group, whose officers include two members of Congress, is urging the following:

Let’s tell our Governor, Mayors, State Representatives and Congress that they must clean up our bay quickly and thoroughly, fully investigate this accident and the delayed response to it, and do everything in their power to prevent it from ever occurring again!

That’s an important part, but the group also addresses the very real need for volunteers, especially as officials are getting their act together to provide training and HazMat suits to civilians. The page lists six volunteer resources, both national and local, various hotlines, and documentation for a Congressional Hearing. There’s also the 911 tap that NBC aired of the Coast Guard initially refusing cleanup help, back when they were claiming only 140 gallons were dumped. Although I do think the Coast Guard is mostly great and maybe happened to drop an enormous, Bay-sized ball this time.

There are several cleanup events listed on Facebook as well, although it’s unclear as to whether these are sanctioned by officials. A lot of locals were going out with plastic gloves and buckets until officials started threatening to arrest anyone who hadn’t gone through the lengthy (and, reportedly, frequently repetitive and irrelevant) volunteer training. Not that arrest threats ever stopped our plucky Facebook friends, right?

This image is courtesy of Save Our Bay:

MoveOn.org is doing everything it can to stop Facebook’s Beacon campaign. Apparently there’s a Facebook group to create protest and an online petition.

The philosophy behind Facebook Beacon is to trace user’s online activities outside Facebook and share em” via news-feeds in friend profiles. Nick’s Ironical comment sums it up - If I purchase a b’day gift for my daughter for a portal called Zappos.com it would appear in news feeds of my daughter’s Facebook account which is ridiculous. Obviously you can opt-out of notifications but this happens from your Facebook account not while you make purchases

Petition: "Facebook must respect my privacy. They should not tell my friends what I buy on other sites—or let companies use my name to endorse their products—without my explicit permission."

To sign the petition click here http://civ.moveon.org/facebookprivacy/?rc=fb_privacy

There is so much openness now that whatever we do is going to be traced online.

A noble cause from fellow Facebook members. Essentially, that is the power of Facebook as it can bring people together in the worst of times. This is what has exactly happened in Kyle Fleischmann.

A group of more than 37,000 facebookers are trying to help search for Kyle Fleischmann’ a 24-year old youngster from North Carolina who has been missing since Nov. 9 after leaving a Charlotte bar.

The group was created by a friend of his. It is called "Help Find Kyle Fleischmann". According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the 24-year-old Charlotte man was last seen at 2:20 a.m. on Nov. 9 leaving the Buckhead Saloon.His cellphone activity ended on 4a.m.

To support the man about 37,000+ Facebook users have joined the group which shows information about his last activity. He was seen wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and black dress shoes.

The message on the Facebook Group says, "Please send this on to anyone who may know Kyle, or especially anyone in the greater Charlotte area so they can share this information with their friends and family". "Please invite others to the group and help spread the word as far as possible."

The group is also running a fund-raiser campaign. Right now, they have collected $30,000 which is about 25% of their target of $100K. The group has been requesting more cards and support to the family through this address:

The Kyle Fleischmann Foundation
P.0. Box 77864
Charlotte, NC 28271-7019

Please do visit Help Find Kyle Fleischmann - MISSING and contribute to the cause.

In what could be a serious security issue on the use of Facebook, there are reports that a Facebook forums has been hacked. Apparently, the forums continues to display the same message by every member. The topic of discussion in the forum is "IF KANSAS OR HAWAII GO UNDEFEATED DO THEY DESERVE TO BE IN THE NATIONAL TITLE GAME?"

These discussions are happening in "Total Sports Fan", an application developed by Boris Silver.

The repeated message continuously displays the following:

"Congratulations Mickey you found out that nobody likes us… but US. You’re such a smart person. By the way, all we need is us… we don’t need fan support from other people. Can you give me one reason that Buckeye Nation needs other people than ourselves?? Who the fuck else is there… besides us??? Exactly.
O-H
I-O…………… bitches.
P.S. check the rankings again for me, see if we’re still the team listed next to"

Concerns raised by group members in the other discussion topics, that the problem is not with the application and is just a Facebook flaw.

As one of the members rightly points out "no virus, someone figured out how to edit posts other people made, nothing wrong with the app, just the discussion board".

I am an admin. in the Facebook for Business Group - we just passed 9000 members (yay) - and subsequently have become targets for endless spam. I use the delete button like a bad habit, as I like to keep the discussion board spam free and on topic. It is chock full of useful information and debate on all things FB4Biz, check it out - but I digress.

Over the past several months a web marketing company called Yuwie, which disguises itself as a social network has started paying its members a few cents to trick people into signing up to the site by referring them via web boards/email etc. This is despicable internet behavior in my books but apparently just fine to the many advertisers that appear on the Yuwie site. Naturally this spam appears on message boards throughout FB and it causing me much vexing.

The following is the sign up procedure for Yuwie, these are unaltered screen shots - I think you will see that this is nothing more than a harvester of demographic information and not a social network. Hopefully then you will start an anti Yuwie movement, the likes of which the world has never seen.

Step 1 - if you click a link that is posted you don’t see this, naturally I wouldn’t give a bottom feeding spammer a nickel’s worth of recognition so I just signed up because I wanted to join this ‘awesome’ social network.

Step 2 - make sure we have your correct information to spam you or you don’t get your shiny nickel.

Step 3 - before we allow you to access our amazing social network, please send more information to telemarketers and spammers/direct marketers. Lets start with Old Navy.

Step 4 - not done yet, send your info. to these guys too - you might need this product as you are probably having trouble breathing by now. WTF is a Pulmicort Respule?

.

Step 5 - wait, send info. again - this time to Overstock, she is actually pretty hot, nice job on talent sourcing Overstock!

Step 6 - your eyes are probably tired from looking at all these ads, so try some new contacts…

Step 7 -In case you want to get more spam and mail - here are the rest of our sponsors, Congrats!! you’re a member, you lucky ignorant S.O.B.

Step 8 - Ok, now please post this on every discussion board and wall on FB and email it to all your friends to get a small jar of shiny nickels. Then slam your head in your desk drawer repeatedly.

So I repeat my plea to Facebook - can you parse the word Yuwie? if so ban it from Facebook. This will no doubt piss off all the people named Yuwie, but as Spock said “the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few”

David Robertson, a young 13 year old kid has started a new Facebook group to give $1 to Christmas charity for every person who joins the group. Currently, the group  has 120 members.

So what’s the pledge? David has vowed to to donate $1 to the fund for every person who joins the group.

Although the initiative has evoked good response, the group members have started raising concerns whether the young kind would be able to pay the increasing money or not.

Apparently, the boy is planning to pay the money by doing house chores from where he gets allowance. He also does movie backgrounds and some print ads.

David was recently interviewed by Robyn Doolittle who asked him an interesting question:

Q. But what are you going to do if 20,000 people join the group?

A.) I think that we should set a cap, because I do not have $20,000.

Visit the FaceBook group right now

Via TheStar.com

Recent test scores show that American kids know next to nothing about American civics. (I contend that there is no reason to know a fact that a) you don’t need in your daily life and b) you can instantly find on the internet, but that’s because I know next to nothing about American civics.) It’s a fair bet that we youthful Americans also know next to nothing about geography, and for similar reasons. Happily, Facebook has a way for us to really, really embarrass ourselves by displaying our sad ignorance: the Traveler IQ Challenge. 

This app quizzes you at ascending levels of difficulty: it lists a location, like a famous place or a world capital, and your job is to click the world map where you think the place is. The map is unlabeled, but does helpfully display country borders. Once you click, a flag appears where you clicked, and another flag appears at the correct location, so you can see how right or wrong you were. A box also pops up telling you how far away your flag was, and giving you encouragement or smack-downs as appropriate (i.e. “You rock!” or “You do know this is Earth, right?”). Once you’re done, you can compare yourself against your friends’ scores and against the top scores. 

The game runs on flash so some older computers might have a tough time, as mine does.  I have a hard time moving the cursor around, and each test is timed, so it can be tricky pinpointing the right spot.

I am surprised by how many I’m getting right, though I’m still in the easy rounds. I guess all that “Where in the World/USA/Time is Carmen Sandiego?” that I played as a kid really paid off.  I did check to see if anyone’s created a Carmen Sandiego application, but alas, no. Developers, get on it. I would spend all my time playing that.

In the meantime, there are some Carmen groups you can join if, like me, you never got over your love for that foxy lady and her hoards of humorously-named henchmen (i.e. Baron Wasteland and Sir Vile). Carmen Sandiego Is One Sneaky Bitch has some good photos of Carmen costumes for real people, if you’re still looking for that perfect Halloween outfit. And Carmen Sandiego: Where the Fuck is That Bitch? has excellent Carmen-themed cartoons, including my personal favorite.