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FacebookLeading Indian telecom operator, Bharti Airtel has announced that it’ll be offering free access to Facebook for 2 months. The offer will be available till 31st August, 2010.

Facebook has over 130 million users. And over 17 million users are from India.

“For the two-month period, the partnership enables Airtel customers to access Facebook’s full mobile site faster and at no data cost from their Airtel mobiles via m.facebook.com,” said an Airtel statement.

Facebook will be available in English, Hindi and five more Indian languages – Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam.

To avail the offer, customers accessing mobile Internet for the first time need to SMS ‘FACEBOOK’ to 54321.


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Facebook simplifies Privacy Settings

by Admin on May 28, 2010

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Last week, I wrote an article telling you how to protect your Facebook privacy. This week, Facebook has made changes to it’s Privacy. Now, the privacy settings are much simpler and you can see what you are sharing.

Improve Facebook privacy

Facebook’s privacy settings are more or less the same as previous settings. Facebook has just made it simple for it’s users to customize their privacy. Check more about the update on Facebook blog. Also, this page explains you how to control your privacy.


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n00b guide to Facebook Privacy

by Admin on May 21, 2010

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Want to protect your Facebook account’s privacy? Here’s a post to guide you to safeguard your privacy to the maximum.

Note: This is a long post. Please wait while all the images load. It may take some time, depending on your net connection. Click on the thumbnails for a larger and clearer view.

I have posted two methods to customize your Privacy. The 1st one is long and manual. I’ve written that first. If you want a simpler way, check the end of the post.

Login to your Facebook account (This step is common for both procedures).

Customize Manually:

Click the Account tab and then Privacy Settings.

Facebook Privacy

You’ll see the following page there:

Facebook Privacy

Now, let’s customize one by one.

Click on Personal Information and Posts. This section contains settings to all your personal information and posts, like Bio, Birthday, Interests, etc..

Facebook Privacy

Start customizing from Bio and favorite quotations. Click on the text at right side. It may be Everyone, Friends of Friends, etc. Change it to Only Friends, or if you want more privacy (like you keep on adding random people), select Customize.

Facebook Privacy

Here, you have the option to make your Bio and posts visible to only yourself, or you can choose to specific people or also you can hide from certain people. Click on Save Setting and return.

Once you finished for Bio and favorite quotations, go for Birthday, Interests upto Comments on Posts. After that, click on Back to Privacy.

Facebook Privacy

Now, click on Contact Information and start customizing in a similar manner.

Facebook Privacy

I suggest you customize your phone number, address, email addresses only to yourself or your close ones. Here’s a preview of my Settings for Contact Information.

Facebook Privacy

Now again return to the previous page and click on Friends, Tags and Connections. This page controls information people can see on your profile. Customize according to your needs.

Facebook Privacy

Now, let’s go back to the previous page and choose next option to customize. It’s Search. This page will let you control Facebook search and various search engine results for your profile.

Facebook Privacy

If you don’t want your profile to land up in search engine results, uncheck the Allow box besides Public Search Results. Go back to Privacy Settings page and open Applications and Websites.

Facebook Privacy

Are you a hardcore Farmville fan? Or, like to play quizzes and all? Then, you have to make sure your privacy is rightly set. If you want to know what does your profile share while playing all those quizzes, click on What you share.

Now, edit settings for What your friends can share about you

Facebook Privacy

Uncheck all the options, unless you want your friends to share information about you. Click Save Changes. Then there are options to Block Applications, Ignore application invites, etc.. Customize to suit yourself.

Return to Privacy Settings and there is a last option to Block People.

Facebook Privacy

Enter person’s name/email to block him/her from accessing your profile, sending you friend request..

Gosh! That’s a long procedure to secure your profile.

Customize using Javascript:

If you want to save your time, there’s a javascript to scan your profile for privacy setting flaws.

Facebook Privacy Scanner

But, I don’t trust any of these 3rd party javascripts. They can be malicious. So, I prefer the manual way.

So, go ahead and customize your profile, either manually or using the javascript.

Update: Facebook has simplified privacy settings. Check out the updated post here.


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Facebook Hacking Alert! Beware!

by Admin on March 25, 2010

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I just checked my Junk/Spam folder of my Yahoo! Mail to see an email containing confirmation for Facebook Password Reset. The mail is attached with a .zip file (probably containing a virus).

facebook hack

I didn’t request any password reset for my account from Facebook. So, it’s probably a work of the Black Hats.

Beware of such emails. No site will send you an attached file even if you have requested for a password request. Don’t just download the attached file because the email came from @facebook.com. This is just done by email spoofing.

So, protect yourself from Hackers & Viruses.

Happy Social Networking.


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Social networking website Facebook was awarded $711.2 million in damages relating to an anti-spam case against Internet marketer Sanford Wallace, court documents show.

Wallace did not oppose the motion or appear at the hearing on September 18, 2009, according to a filing on Thursday in a San Jose, California federal court.

The site filed an anti-spamming case against Wallace in February for accessing people’s Facebook accounts without their permission and sending phony mail and posts to the individuals’ public message wall, the company said in a blog post.

“While we don’t expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent,” Facebook said in a blog post.

Wallace did not immediately respond to a Reuters email seeking comment. His email address was obtained from the court documents.


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@Mentions are live on Facebook

by Admin on September 15, 2009

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There was a post on Facebook’s Blog recently mentioning that Facebook would soon be launching @Mentions like Twitter. Facebook enabled this functionality to its users yesterday.

facebook_at_mentions

Now, when you type a status update and type ‘@,’ an auto-updating drop-down menu with the names of your Facebook friends will appear. While users could always write the name of their friends in a status update, these names are now linked to a user’s profile.

facebook_at_mentions

Whenever somebody tags you in a status update, a notification will appear. For now, however, there is no place where you can easily find all the updates where somebody tagged you. It is also worth noting that while Twitter actually displays the @ symbol in status updates, Facebook just replaces it with the full name of the tagged person.

facebook_at_mentions

Obviously, this now makes Facebook even more like Twitter than ever before. At the same time, though, this is also a very useful feature, as it allows your friends to easily head over to the profile of the friends you tagged in your updates. Facebook’s Twitter-like new Facebook Lite interface, however, doesn’t support @mentions, yet.


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Facebook is planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. Facebook also expects to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future. So, get your username before somebody else does!

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. It will be like Twitter. (http://twitter.com/username) This feature of Facebook will be easier to find people via search engines like Google, etc.

Currently your Facebook profile url looks like this
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789

Now you can change it to
http://www.facebook.com/yourname

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

facebook_timer

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it.


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Social networking site Facebook has been blocked in Iran since Saturday, according to the country’s opposition, as opposition voters increasingly turn to online tools like social networking to promote their candidates.

Iran will hold elections in June for a new president.

Lacking other suitable media, youth in Iran were using Facebook to promote opposition candidates, and to convince people to participate in the elections, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president of Iran and a reformist politician, said in a post on his blog.

Abtahi blamed supporters of current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for blocking Facebook.

Facebook, blogs and similar websites are a key component of the election strategy of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi as he tries to mobilize Iran’s youth.

There is an account on Facebook in the name of Mousavi which claims over 6,600 supporters, besides a number of other accounts that are mobilizing support for the candidate.

Some reports from Iran suggest that the ban on Facebook may have been lifted. Other bloggers and users of Twitter in Iran are worried that these services may also be cut off.


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Internet social media company Facebook plans to allow outside developers access to core parts of the website so they can build new services, a person familiar with the situation said.

The person said the company is expected to announce the plans on Monday. The new capabilities would let third-party developers build services that access content uploaded by Facebook users such as pictures and videos with the users’ permission.

Facebook, which has more than 200 million active users worldwide, does not plan to charge for the service.

The company is expected to brief developers on the plan, first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, at an event it is hosting for developers at its Palo Alto, California headquarters on Monday.

Facebook would not comment on the plans to open its service to outside developers, but the company said it was preparing an announcement on Monday related to developer opportunities.


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With MySpace falling behind Facebook as the world’s largest online social network, MySpace tapped a former Facebook executive Friday as its new chief executive.

Owen Van Natta, 39, replaces Chris DeWolfe, a co-founder of MySpace, who stepped down as chief executive Wednesday. News Corp., which owns MySpace, said Van Natta’s new role begins immediately.

Van Natta faces the lofty task of reinvigorating MySpace at a time when Facebook is growing at a faster clip and Twitter, the short messaging site, is grabbing scores of headlines and celebrity attention. While MySpace is still the largest social network in the United States, it has only 130 million users worldwide, compared with more than 200 million for Facebook.

Even so, MySpace may be making more money, at least for now. Research firm eMarketer estimates that the company brought in $585 million in U.S. ad revenue last year, nearly three times that of Facebook. A big chunk of that, however, comes from an ad-sharing deal with Google Inc. that expires next year. Neither Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace nor Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook discloses how much money they make.

The executive change could be energizing for MySpace, said Charlene Li, an industry analyst and founder of Altimeter Group.

“MySpace has a very interesting product and a loyal user base,” Li said. But from a technology perspective, they’ve been stagnant, she added.

Facebook, meanwhile, continues to redesign and update the site, even if doing so often leads to user rumblings.

“Owen is coming from Facebook and the history they have with being much more technologically innovative than MySpace,” Li said. Shaking things up, she added, is the “whole purpose of a change in management.”

At Facebook, Van Natta was chief operating officer and helped negotiate a $240 million investment from Microsoft Corp. that valued the company at $15 billion — though it later emerged that Facebook placed its value well below that.

With Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ensconced as the site’s CEO, Van Natta left in February 2008 in hopes of landing the top job at another company. Later in the year he became CEO of Playlist.com, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based online music company.

On Friday, Playlist named John Sykes, a board member, as the company’s CEO and said Van Natta will be adviser to the company. Sykes is a co-founder of MTV and has been president of VH1.

MySpace’s other co-founder, Tom Anderson, had been president of the company and has been in talks about taking on a new role. News Corp. did not give an update on that Friday. Van Natta will report to Jonathan Miller, News Corp.’s chief digital officer, who was named to the post April 1.

Facebook, where Van Natta spend about three years as chief operating officer and then as chief revenue officer, declined to comment on the appointment.


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