When you feel that you’re running behind the competition the best bet is to follow what your rivals have done. MySpace is planning to launch Facebook-style "news feeds" in the next one month or so.
Like Facebook, these News feeds will alert a user of what the friends and colleagues are doing.
According to the Interactive Media President, Peter Levinsohn, "The concept of a news feed is something we are very focused on, and we’ll be well down the path in the next 30 to 45 days".
Executives at Molson Coors Brewing Company are scratching their heads over the perplexing misinterpretation of their recent contest.
Seeking, as everyone seems to be, for a way to sell things to kids on Facebook, Molson started a photo contest. College students were encouraged to enter photos of themselves partying on campus to win the contest.
Curiously, some people thought this promoted underage drinking, perhaps because the average college student is under 21.
After some public outcry, Molson, though apparently totally baffled by this, chose to take down the contest a week early.
”The whole realm of social media - there’s lots to learn,” said Ferg Devins, a vice president at Molson Coors. “It’s really a new area. We’re probably groundbreaking and leading in a lot of things we’ve been doing.”
Well, I am pretty sure Zima was marketing alcohol to the underage set before this, but no doubt the Molson Coors set is setting trends of its very own. (Note: I just did some research and it turns out that Zima is a product of Molson Coors. Way to go, guys!)
The other question, of course, is: why should Molson Coors be crucified for trying to sell alcohol to a demographic that is trying to buy alcohol? I kind of think it’s a waste of money to buy advertising aimed at a group so desperate to drink that they will hang around convenience stores for hours begging older strangers to buy beer for them, but I am no businessman. The point is, Molson Coors may not be crossing a moral line in promoting drinking to 19 and 20 year olds.
Two weeks into the new Facebook marketing program, more and more users are complaining that their purchasing stats are being made public.
The program allows retailers to use the social graph in the same way that ordinary users do. Ad information can be disseminated through friend-to-friend recommendations as well as in more traditional ways.
However, when you make a purchase via Facebook from one of these retailers, Techluver.com reports that “a small box […] appears on a corner of [users’] Web browsers following transactions at Fandango, Overstock and other online retailers. The box alerts users that information is about to be shared with Facebook unless they click on ‘No Thanks.’ It disappears after about 20 seconds, after which consent is assumed.”
If you miss your chance to click, your purchase will be shared with your Facebook friends. Companies are hoping this purchase sharing will look like an personalized endorsement: if you see that your friend uses a company’s products, you’re more likely to use them yourself. However, purchase sharing raises some awkward issues, especially as the Christmas shopping season begins. Imagine buying a present for your best friend and then finding out Facebook notified her.
In addition to this, many users are upset at what they feel is a violation of their privacy. Think about some of the items you’ve purchased online and you might agree that your shopping doesn’t need to be an open book to everyone you know.
As this site reported earlier, watchdog group MoveOn.org has created a petition to force Facebook to respect the privacy of users’ online purchases. And, of course, you can simply choose not to buy stuff through Facebook.
This doesn’t really come across as a big surprise. Facebook has been doing quite well in Israel with about 209,000 Israeli members. However, there is growing protest against Facebook from a group called MoveOn. Apparently, this group is a Iraqi war protest group. FaceBook’s advertising platform allows marketers to send goods to users by placing customized ads’.
MoveOn.org, the heavyweight US left-wing campaign group, has suggested that Beacon threatens privacy across the web.
A spokesman from Facebook said,“Facebook and similar sites have the potential to really revolutionize how we speak to each other in our society”.“When people see their privacy violated, it sullies the entire thing.”
According to FaceBook, MoveOn is misinterpreting the whole thing. A spokesman said,”We encourage our users to respond to new products. MoveOn misinterprets the nature of Beacon, our advertising service.
Via TechCrunch - A research study conducted shows a total of 42,966,780 members in the top 31 countries. America is at top of the list with18 million users, followed by the UK (6.8m), Canada (6.7m), Australia (1.9m) and Turkey (1.6m).
US is dominated by female users who occupy about 60%. Forty percent of U.S. users are male, compared to 36% overall. As a matter of fact, China is really dominated by female users at 72%. Facebook should try to guess gender based social networking sites in China, I suppose
Like Orkut internet users in UAE are unable to access Facebook and it is being largely believed that it has been banned in UAE. A number of Facebook users in the last two days are noticing an error message on their screens.
According to Mark Porter, a resident of Dubai, “After the ban on Orkut (a similar web site) three months ago, I am afraid Facebook too has been banned in the UAE as I have not been able to log on to it for at least two days”.
Another guy said, “I am connected through this website (Facebook) to all my friends around the globe now. Earlier, we were using Orkut. So when I was unable to access it, I presumed Facebook might have been banned by the service provider -in my case- Etisalat”.
However service providers have confirmed that Facebook has not been banned in UAE. Primarily, it looks to be a service provider problem.
21 year old, Rudy Hermann Guede from Ivory Coast wouldn’t have imagined in the wildest of his dreams that he would be caught because of Facebook. In an interesting development, he was caught by a policeman who became his friend on Facebook and use to trace his account activity to Mainz - a city in Germany. Rudy is a DRUG dealer has been suspected in the murder of Meredith Kercher in Permian, Italy.
He was arrested for traveling without a ticket on a train between Mainz and Wiesbaden.Cops from Germany were aware of German police were already on the alert for him, after being tipped off by Italian police, who had tracked his movements through his internet messages and Skype conversations conducted from Dusseldorf.
According to the cops, Mr Guede was at an internet point for long time and was using Skype and Facebook. Before he was arrested, a video - in which Guede has gone bizarre in unknown English was posted on YouTube.
"I’m from alien earth who must be called human people," he says. "Oh Mamma. I’m a vampire, I’m Dracula. I’m gonna suck your blood."
