Tag Archive | facebook

Facebook’s New ‘Subscribe’ Feature

Sep14

Just a day after announcing sweeping changes to friends lists, Facebook has announced another new feature, called Subscribe Button.

Facebook users will soon see a new “Subscribe” option on some other people’s profiles. When clicking the button on a friend’s profile, users will have the option of subscribing to all, most, or only important updates the other person posts to the site. Those updates will show up in the user’s news feed.

To make things a bit more interesting, Facebook is also letting people subscribe to news feeds of users they’re not friends with. Upon doing so, they will see the public updates the person has shared on their profile. And like with friends, users will be able to determine how many of those updates they will see in their news feed.

If Facebook’s new subscription option sounds familiar, there’s good reason for that: it’s rather similar to Twitter. On Twitter, users have the ability to follow others, including those they don’t know, and see their public updates in their timeline. Now, with the subscribe button, users can do the same with Facebook.

What’s more, both services have similar privacy features. If users want to allow others to subscribe to their public updates, they will need to go to their Subscriptions Page and click “Allow Subscribers.” However, those who don’t want to share their updates can just ignore the setting, which stops a subscription option from being displayed. Twitter has a similar function in place, which allows users to protect their tweets and only share them with those they allow to see their updates.

You Can Now Rent and Watch Movies on Facebook!

Mar8

Here’s reason #137 why we are spending too much time on Facebook …

Warner Bros. has become the first Hollywood studio to offer movies for rental or purchase on Facebook, enabling users to watch films on the popular social-networking site, the studio has announced. First up? “The Dark Knight,” available starting Tuesday. Now movie fans have one more reason never to log off Facebook.

Facebook fans who “liked” director Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” can now pay $3 to rent the superhero film through the movie’s page on the site. Warner Bros. said that over the coming months it would make additional titles available for rental or purchase.

The new offering, which Warner Bros. described as a test, is part of an ongoing effort by Hollywood studios to offer their movies in more ways online to boost the still-nascent digital-distribution business. Increasing online rentals and sales is critical for the entertainment industry as revenue from DVDs continues to fall.

Warner Bros. also recently launched applications for “The Dark Knight” and “Inception” that allow users to watch the movies on an iPhone or iPad without downloading them from iTunes.

Source:  Boulder Weekly

New Study: Being Active on Facebook Builds Self Esteem

Mar4

Spending a few minutes on Facebook can enhance your self-esteem, according to a new study from a journal called Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. (Yes, that’s a real academic journal.)

According to a leading theory from social psychology (objective self-awareness), exposure to mirrors, photos and recordings of one’s voice encourages people to view themselves the way others see them. This, in turn, is thought to promote “pro-social behavior” and diminish one’s self-esteem.

However, another prominent theory (the hyperpersonal model) among those who study online communication holds that when people have the opportunity to put their best face forward online – by posting flattering photos and emphasizing certain aspects of their personality – they can give their self-esteem a boost.

To test what happens in the real world, psychologists from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., gave a 10-item self-esteem test to 63 undergrads, divided into three groups.

  • One group took the test after spending 3 minutes on Facebook.
  • Another group took the test while able to view themselves in a mirror.
  • And a control group had no exposure to anything that would evoke self-awareness.

Using a statistical test, the researchers showed that the Facebook students had greater self-esteem than students in the other two groups.  The students who looked at their own profiles for the entire 3 minutes had higher self-esteem than students who spent some of that time clicking around on other people’s Facebook pages. In addition, students who made changes to their Facebook profiles also had higher self-esteem than students who didn’t. Both of those observations support the hyperpersonal model.

“By allowing people to present preferred or positive information” about themselves, Facebook allows people to ehance their awareness of the optimal self,” the researchers concluded. Some of the self-esteem boost may also be traced to being reminded of how many “friends” one has, they added.

You can read the full study here.

Source:  Chicago Tribune

Do you agree with the new study? I actually could have came up with the same conclusion without performing a test. People who add flattering photos or boast about specific moments in their lives to the whole FB world, I would expect, to feel good about themselves. On the otherhand, what is the depth of this high self esteem? If people depend on FB to validate their greatness, then I don’t believe that is true high self esteem. The social networking site can be used for a pick me up. Genuine self esteem comes from within – not from FB.

Facebook Unveils New Profile Layout

Dec7

NEW YORK – Facebook is redesigning the profile pages of its 500 million-plus users to make it more of a reflection of their real lives and emphasize one of the site’s most popular features, photos.

Facebook said in a blog post Sunday the changes are meant to make it easier for users to tell their story — who they are, where they work, their life philosophy and the most important people in their lives. The changes place a bigger emphasis on visuals, from photos to images of users’ interests.

A new biography section includes not just who you are and where you live but a set of the most recent photos that your friends have “tagged” you in. Previously users had to click on a tab to see the latest photos on a profile. Users can also feature important friends in their profile, while previously only random selection appeared. And in addition to listing their job, users can now add the projects they worked on. It’s all a move toward curating a more complete picture of a person, something that will likely appeal to Facebook’s advertisers. The company did not make any changes to its privacy policy as part of the redesign.

Facebook unveiled the changes ahead of an appearance on 60 Minutes by CEO Mark Zuckerberg Sunday evening. Zuckerberg, 26, talked about the profile page redesign, Facebook’s hard-working culture of all-night coding sessions, as well as his take on “The Social Network,” the movie about Facebook’s beginning that doesn’t cast him in a very flattering light.

Users can also see how their Facebook lives intertwine with their friends by clicking on a “See Friendship” link on the top right hand page of their friends’ profiles.

“You can see all the things that you have in common with that person,” Zuckerberg said. “And it’s just like, it gives you this amazing connection with that person in a way that the current version of the profile that we have today just doesn’t do.”

Source: ABC News

Alicia Keys’ Smart and Charitable Campaign

Nov29

Alicia Keys and Lady Gaga take charity work seriously, and they’re going offline to prove it.

 

Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Usher and other celebrities have joined a new campaign called Digital Life Sacrifice on behalf of Keys’ charity, Keep a Child Alive. The entertainers plan to sign off of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday, which is World AIDS Day. The participants will sign back on when the charity raises $1 million.

“It’s really important and super-cool to use mediums that we naturally are on,” Keys said in a phone interview from New York last week.

For the campaign — which also includes Jennifer Hudson, Ryan Seacrest, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Elijah Wood, Serena Williams, Janelle Monae and Keys’ husband, Swizz Beatz — celebrities have filmed “last tweet and testament” videos and will appear in ads showing them lying in coffins to represent what the campaign calls their digital deaths.

The campaign, she said, puts the disease in perspective.

The foundation, which began in 2003, will accept donations through text messages and bar-code technology, which is featured in the charity’s Buy Life campaign. Raised efforts support families affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India.

“We’re trying to sort of make the remark: Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying in the place that we’re all from?” said Leigh Blake, the president and co-founder of Keep a Child Alive.

Keys said recruiting celebrities was difficult because of scheduling, but “once I got people on the phone and I was able to paint the concept for them, everybody was in.”

Not one person said no, Keys recalled.

Continue reading →

New Facebook Email: “The way the future should work”

Nov15

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network will be launching a revamped messaging product, ‘Messages,’ that will give users an “@facebook.com” email address.

Zuckerberg outlined three features that will define Facebook’s new offering, which Zuckerberg described as “the way the future should work”:

  • Seamless messaging (users can chat with people through whatever medium they choose, be it SMS, email, or IM),
  • Conversation history (“see everything you’ve discussed with each friend as a single conversation”),
  • And a social inbox for “filtering exactly the messages you want to see.

“This is not an email killer,” Zuckerberg said. “This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it.”

Facebook will be rolling the product out over the coming months, initially via invite-only. All Facebook users will eventually be offered “@facebook.com” email addresses that match their public usernames, although they will have the option not to have an “@facebook.com” email account.

Facebook’s Andrew Bosworth noted, “The system is definitely not email,” adding, “We’ve it modeled more after chat.”

Zuckerberg called email “slow” and also emphasized that the new product is “not email.” “We don’t think modern messaging system will be email,” he noted, saying that he believes seven characteristics that we will come to define “next generation” messaging: seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal, and short.

See what Messages will look like below.

Source:  Huffington Post

Facebook, the Most Popular Form of DIVORCE Evidence [Survey]

Jun29

Forgot to de-friend your wife on Facebook while posting vacation shots of your mistress? Her divorce lawyer will be thrilled.

Oversharing on social networks has led to an overabundance of evidence in divorce cases. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says 81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years.

“Oh, I’ve had some fun ones,” said Linda Lea Viken, president-elect of the 1,600-member group. “It’s very, very common in my new cases.”

Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama, Viken said.

  • 66% Facebook
  • 15% MySpace
  • 5% Twitter

About one in five adults uses Facebook for flirting, according to a 2008 report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But it’s not just kissy pix with the manstress or mistress that show up as evidence. Think of Dad forcing son to de-friend mom, bolstering her alienation of affection claim against him.

“This sort of evidence has gone from nothing to a large percentage of my cases coming in, and it’s pretty darn easy,” Viken said. “It’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?”’

Divorce attorneys spoke in broad terms about some of the goofs they’ve encountered:

  • Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.
  • Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his “write something about yourself” section: “If you have the balls to get in my face, I’ll kick your ass into submission.”
  • Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook’s Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.
  • Mom denies in court that she smokes marijuana but posts partying, pot-smoking photos of herself on Facebook.

Source:  Herald Net

That’s CRAZY! But why I am I not surprised?? I’m not even a lawyer and I can pick up on flirty/potentially cheating evidence through my own FB Account! I see guys listed as “in a relationship” flirting with women ALL THE TIME. Even the guys that post up kissy face pics of their woman! Ladies, you are not innocent either … just a little more discrete!

Is the Activity on your Facebook Page an Accurate Reflection of your Social/Love Life?

Feb24

After watching a recent episode of “Let’s talk about Pep” I started to put more thought into what Jacque said about Joel after she semi-cyber-stalked his Facebook page. Call me crazy, stalker, weird or whatever but I didn’t find anything wrong in what she did. Maybe she should not have brought it up to Joel in the way she did, making him feel like he was being interrogated on the First 48 – but I believe and support in thorough research. Especially if you are researching for something that holds great value to you.

The Run-down

For those of you who do not watch the show or did not catch episode 7, Jacque has gone on several dates with this man Joel who she has great chemistry with. They’ve been friends for a while but recently rekindled their connection by going on quality “get to know you better” dates. Joel revealed to Jacque early on that he was actually in jail for car theft, that he was in a dark place and has changed for the better now. Jacque was able to move past that. They are FRIENDS on FB and she checked out his page and saw that he was calling some woman a “Freak/Freak-a-Leek” and received multiple requests from women to come over his house so that he can cook.

Continue reading →

New Facebook Feature!

Jan21

The service is extremely simple. It lets Page administrators find out how many impressions each story on their Page receives and what percentage of those impressions result in action (likes, comments, or clicks). While not all administrators are seeing them yet, Facebook is expected to roll them out quickly.

Often times when you post something to your Facebook Page, you have no idea how many people are seeing your story and/or clicking on it. It’s a minor upgrade but it presents a ton of value and it’s something that the competing service, Twitter, doesn’t provide for brands. Knowing your impact is critical. How accurate the new post insights are actually is unknown since Facebook is the one providing the analytics and the one controlling the stream.

There are still a lot of unknowns about the improved post insights product but we’d expect Facebook to provide more details about the upgrades in the near future.

Cool. I tend to use Facebook as a feed to pull in my blog posts from WordPress. This will be useful for me =)

Facebook: Coming to a PS3 Near You …

Nov18

Facebook is coming to a PS3 near you as part of the latest 3.10 update. Sony has been vague about exactly when the update would land. Turns out it was sooner than most people probably guessed, coming only a day after the November 17 release of Facebook’s integration with the Xbox 360.

Here are some of the features listed on the press release Sony just issued about the update:

Showcase Trophies: Instantly share trophies you earn in PS3 games in your Facebook stream. Simply sync your PS3 system and easily show off your accomplishments to friends and family.

PlayStation Store Purchase Log Publishing: Let friends and family on Facebook instantly know which PlayStation 3 games you’ve purchased. The PlayStation Store, available to PS3 and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system owners through PlayStation Network, features over 200 downloadable games, many of which are exclusive to PS3 or PSP system owners, in addition to over 4,000 pieces of add-on game content.

Game Event: With a few quick clicks of the controller sharing select game events, progress and statistics is now easier than ever with the Facebook integration.

Why am I all of a sudden seeing a whole bunch of Madden or NBA Live or C.O.D bragging rights in my Facebook Newsfeed??? Ugh! Guys …