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October 28 2011
Those who toil away on free-to-play Facebook games may have built up a false sense of security as they blindly click on all the permission buttons in order to get to the good stuff. But an ad that claims to offer Facebookers access to a free Mario Kart game is a trap, like one of those upside down question blocks in the real version of the game.
Sophos Naked Security reports a scam masquerading as access to the non-existent game is popping up as status updates and messages, tricking users into filling out a seemingly endless stream of online surveys and possibly asking users to install dubious software, as well as an offer to attempt to win a non-existent "iPhone 5."
If you run across this offer as a message or post, you'll probably want to delete it to stop it from spreading.
Mario Kart on Facebook? Fast-spreading scam hits many users' accounts [Sophos Naked Security via Kotaku]
October 21 2011
Kodak Wants to Print Your Facebook Pictures for Free
Kodak is running an offer to help turn your Facebook pictures into printed pictures you can hold in your hand. The contest itself is pretty standard fare: Like Kodak’s Facebook page and get a voucher for 20 free prints of your Facebook images.
What’s more interesting is that Facebook, via Kodak, is taking a serious shot at the online image-sharing giants, such as Flickr and Picasa. Facebook’s image galleries have always been a little more about capturing private moments between friends. Or, rather, Facebook albums were the things you hid from your employer.
While Flickr and Picasa host their fare share of intimate moments, the two sites have attracted more serious and amateur photographers. Facebook has been trying to break into the image market for a time by making uploads easier, featuring photos and revamping the way images are viewed. The latest Facebook redesign further emphasizes photography with a large image across the top of all profiles pages called a cover, which is yet to be implemented across all profiles.
Kodak’s promotion, which runs until Oct. 23, is also part of the legendary photo company’s attempt to stay relevant in the digital era. Last year, Kodak integrated their real-world Picture Kiosks with Facebook Connect at various American retailers. These kiosks could pull information from Facebook accounts and print out images as if they were from a camera or memory card. Facebook will be added to Kodak Kiosks in participating Targets and CVS Pharmacies.
What do you think of Facebook competing in the online image market? Is Kodak doing the right things to stay relevant? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of Flickr, fullyreclined
More About: Facebook, Kodak, photography
October 17 2011
Accusing Facebook of violating federal wiretap laws by tracking her web use when she wasn't logged in to the site, a Mississippi woman is taking the social networking giant to court. Her suit, which seeks class action status, is going after Facebook for trespassing, invasion of privacy, unjust enrichment and breach of contract.
The Register reports her complaint says Facebook tracked, collected and stored portions of browsing history without her consent while she was not logged on to the site. The complaint says Facebook violates a portion of its own privacy policy that says logged-out users who visit sites with Facebook-connected plugins send limited info to Facebook.
The company has said that tracking cookies singled out by privacy advocates are meant to prevent spam and phishing operations and that Facebook doesn't log all of the data it reaps with the tracking devices. Facebook did not comment to the Register about the woman's suit.
Facebook accused of violating US wiretap law [The Register via Slashdot]
October 14 2011
The Hunger Games is a wildly popular series of books about a dystopian future where the government spies on your every move and teenagers square off in a to-the-death tournament for the amusement of the upper-class residents of the capitol city. The books are soon to become a big-time Hollywood franchise and as part of the much-hyped countdown to that release, millions of people are getting in on the viral marketing by logging onto a website that creates a unique badge for each user. But are these people looking at the permissions they're signing away when they log in?
We've received complaints from people who went to TheCapitol.pn to take part in the badge-making fun, only to find out that they are required to use either Facebook or Twitter to log in. And then when you click either of those options, you're greeted with a litany of permissions you need to grant the site.
Signing up through Twitter allows this site to:
Read Tweets from your timeline.
See who you follow, and follow new people.
Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you.
Signing up via Facebook gives the site the following permissions:
Access my basic information
(name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information you've made public)
Send me email
Post to Facebook as me
Access my data any time
Access my custom friend lists
Access my profile information
(Birthday and Current City)
Access my photos
Access information people share with me
(Birthdays, Family Members and Relationship Statuses and Current Cities)
One person who made a badge on the site tells Consumerist she was originally able to sign up and create hers using just an e-mail but confirms that the site has been updated in the days since and that this option no longer appears.
October 03 2011
5 Brands That Are Surprisingly Successful on Facebook
The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a full platform of marketing software, including social media management tools.
When Facebook became a big deal a couple of years ago, it was fairly easy to predict that some brands would quickly become popular there.
It didn’t take a genius to see that, for example, Starbucks would have a big following. The brand has a tech-savvy clientele who are frequently filing a status update from one of the chain’s many locations. (Full disclosure: This story is being written at a Starbucks.) Likewise, you’d have to try hard to screw up Coca-Cola’s inevitable path to Facebook success, and at times it appeared that Coke was trying to do just that.
What is surprising as you go down the list of the top Facebook brands, though, is how random it appears. The list doesn’t remotely match up to what are judged to be the top global brands.
For instance, IBM, a giant in the global brands landscape, is a pygmy on Facebook with just around 68,000 users. General Electric, meanwhile, has around 104,000 fans, which is about 700,000 fewer than Jones Soda.
On the other hand, there are a lot of brands that are huge on Facebook that are just medium-size in real life. Sometimes this is by design, other times it’s dumb luck, and sometimes it just appears to be a case where fans over-index as Facebook users. Whatever the case, these are what are known in the movie industry as “sleepers” — that is, unlikely hits — and they exist on the world’s largest social network, too.
1. Oreo
Chances are you know Oreo and, unless you're a health fanatic, you probably have a pretty positive opinion of it. But are you so into Oreo that you want to go on Facebook and talk about it? Well, apparently more than 22 million people are. What's really amazing is that most of that growth has taken place over the last year.
Launched in 2009, the site was originally very American-focused, but in July 2010, the company realized that about half of its then-5 million fans were from outside the U.S., a discovery that Mark Clouse, senior vice president for global biscuits at Kraft Foods, called an "aha moment."
Armed with that information, the brand and agency 360i revamped the brand's Facebook Page to make it more international. New features like "world's fan of the week" recognized Oreo's foreign followers. Beyond that, 360i has created some attention-getting stunts for the brand, most notably a bid to break the Guinness World Record for most Likes in a 24-hour period, an attempt which was overshadowed by rap star Lil' Wayne.
2. Nutella
Perhaps given Oreo's success, it's not surprising that another sweets brand has made this list. The odd thing about Nutella, though, is that, initially at least, the company did absolutely nothing to establish its community of users on Facebook. Yet by early 2009, the brand was number three in popularity on the network, above President Obama and Coca-Cola.
It turns out, Nutella is one of those cult brands that people love to talk about. There are, for instance, about 12,000 videos on YouTube featuring Nutella and 40,000 images on Flickr. It's not hard to see why: Nutella is a yummy chocolate treat that also has an air of European sophistication. Who wouldn't want to friend that?
3. Converse
Converse is a great example of a brand that has a relatively small presence IRL, but is a giant online. Converse has about 20 million fans on Facebook, and Converse All Star has another 20 million, so if you put both together, they'd have more fans than anyone on Facebook, even Rihanna.
What's Converse's secret? As chief marketing officer Geoff Cottrill explained to Mashable in May, his philosophy is to get out of the way and let Converse's fans set the tone for the Page. "We listen more than we talk," Cottrill said.
4. Audi
What's notable about Audi's Facebook presence isn't so much it's size -- though 3.6 million fans is respectable -- as it is the amount of engagement from its followers. Audi got more than 225 Likes per 100,000 fans, a level of engagement that topped even Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, according to researcher Visibli. Audi has run some "Like-gated" programs of late that helped it get to that figure, but the brand also keeps up a steady stream of photos on its Page. Three photos on July 16, celebrating Audi's 102nd birthday, netted more than 16,000 Likes.
5. I Love Being Black
I Love Being Black is an apparel company, but the brand's Facebook Page seeks to be a not-so-mini social network for African-Americans.
The brand throws out questions to fans like "Who's your favorite black comedian of all time?" and "Should Chris Brown be cast in Think Like a Man? Do we forgive too quickly or has his image been reborn?" that generate hundreds of comments and Likes. The discussion is rarely about apparel, a function of ILBB's "more than a brand" positioning.
Series supported by HubSpot
The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a full platform of marketing software, including social media management tools.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Like_The_Grand_Canyon
More About: Digital Marketing Series, Facebook, features, mashable
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September 09 2011
Foursquare Wallpapers: iPhone
With the popularity of Foursquare’s recently released iPhone wallpapers, we thought it would be fun to take fan favorite badges and make some of our own.
Currently we have created 13 for the iPhone and iPod Touch with hopes of adding more. We also wanted to stay true to Foursquare and Mari Sheibley’s iconic minimal design with the logos, so we carried that through to the wallpapers as well.
Hope you enjoy them. Let us know which one you have on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Also feel free to leave a comment below for one that you would like done.
Directions for iPhone or iPod Touch
- Click the preferred image (below)
- Press and hold image and select the “Save Image” option
- Go to your Photos app and select the wallpaper you saved
- Click the lower left-hand arrow and select “Use as Wallpaper”
- Click Set and select whether you want “Lock Screen”, “Home Screen” or Both
Wallpapers
April 17 2011
Unfriendly Policy of the Day
Unfriendly Policy of the Day: Richard Metzger @ Dangerous Minds recently received a rather puzzling e-mail from Facebook, informing him that a photo his site posted on Facebook had been removed for violating “Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” which prohibits “shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content.”
The photo in question? Two men kissing (above).
It gets worse: The photo was associated with a post on his site concerning a London-based “kiss-in” organized to protest the mistreatment of two gay patrons of The John Snow pub — a protest which originated on Facebook. The John Snow protest page has since been removed as well.
Facebook, by the way, does not respond to violation reports with an automatic removal. According to the Facebook Help Center, an administrator “looks into each report thoroughly in order to decide the appropriate course of action,” only removing the offending content if a violation has occurred. So make of that what you will.
Tagged: Facebook, Kiss-In, The John Snow, Unfriendly Policy
March 25 2011
Facebook’s New Way Of Using You As Free Advertising (& How To Stop It) [News]
Unwitting Facebook users may soon find themselves starring in adverts for free by simply using the service. The new feature known as ‘sponsored stories’ will recommend products and services to your friends based on your tastes and whether your profile settings allow it.
Actions such as checking into places, clicking “Like” on a page, application interactions and posting on Facebook pages can be then used as marketing ammo, sending targeted recommendations to your friends featuring your name and profile picture. Users who are featured in the adverts won’t be paid a penny.
This new way for advertisers to target their audience on a startlingly personal level quietly launched in January, and (in a move that’s angered many) each Facebook user’s account, by default, allows this to happen. Despite many voicing their concerns, Facebook insists that this new breed of social advertising falls in line with its current privacy policy.
For those of you seething in your office chairs, there’s a simple way to disallow Facebook from using your personal data in these new ‘sponsored stories’ from your Account Settings:
Whilst logged into Facebook, click Account then Account Settings. On the far right of the row of tabs choose Facebook Adverts, which will take you to a page where you can change Allow adverts on platform pages to show my information to and Show my social actions in Facebook Adverts to No one.
What do you think about Facebook’s new adverts? Have you changed your account settings? Spread the word and have your say in the comments below.
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More articles about: Facebook, news, privacy
February 25 2011
Oops, Facebook Advertiser Gets A Mysterious Bill For $8.8 Million
Social ads on Facebook are supposed to be cheap. In fact, they are one of the cheapest ads on the Web in terms of cost per thousand impressions. So imagine Facebook advertiser Joshua Niamehr’s surprise when he logged into his Facebook ad campaign and saw the following notice:
There is an outstanding balance of $8,804,978.14 USD on your account. Your ads will not be displayed until your account is settled. Please enter a valid funding source. When you submit that information, we will charge your funding source for $8,804,978.14 USD.
Needless to say, he did not click “Make Payment.” Niamehr’s credit card had expired, which is why his account was delinquent. But his actual outstanding balance was $58.07, not $8,804,978.14. (He was placing ads to market his site LaundryLocal).
Facebook did eventually correct itself and showed the correct amount, to Niamehr’s relief. So was that $8,804,978.14 just a glitch. Niamehr thinks the number was too specific for it to be random. His theory: “I think this may be the outstanding balance across all or many of their accounts.” That’s just a theory. But if that’s true, it’s not an inconsequential amount. Maybe Facebook should get into social debt collection. It could offer Facebook Credits to friends of delinquent advertisers who shame them into paying their bills.
February 10 2011
HTC To Launch Android-Based Phone With Facebook Button
With the likes of INQ all set to release their own Android phone that ties straight into Facebook, today we learn that HTC is getting in on the action too.
According to a report by the Financial Times, the Taiwanese handset manufacturer is readying its own hardware that is expected to be powered by Google’s Android operating system.
Unlike the INQ Cloud Touch approach of hooking basic phone features straight into the Facebook ecosystem, HTC will go down the route of simply adding a dedicated Facebook button to the handset itself.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has gone on record in the past admitting that the social network’s focus is shifting toward mobile. Getting dedicated hardware buttons that take users straight to their friends’ activity added to phones, along with the more integrated approach of INQ certainly fits the bill.
You can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook fanpage to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google and Apple.
Related Posts
- Android-Based Facebook Phone Launches [Hands-On Video]
- Two Official Facebook Phones in Partnership with HTC To Launch As Soon As Next Month – Report
- Facebook 1.5 For Android Comes On Par With Its iPhone Counterpart ! Brings Chat, Push Notifications
- Facebook for Android Receives Major Update
- T-Mobile G2 Hands-On Review [Video]
January 25 2011
Your Facebook Activity is Now an Ad (via ReadWriteWeb)
Facebook is launching a new ad format called “Sponsored Stories,” which allows participating advertisers to promote your Facebook activity by turning it into homepage ads seen only by your friends. This activity can include “liking” a Facebook page, checking in via Facebook Places or sharing content to the News Feed from a Facebook application.
…
With Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, your activity is now up-for-grabs, available to the advertiser associated with the brand, business or app you interacted with.
Just checked in to a restaurant? That’s an ad. Just liked a brand? That’s an ad. Just shared a news story from the Web? That’s an ad.
January 17 2011
Facebook is now letting third-party apps have phone numbers and addresses of users, but only if they opt in to share the info.
Facebook's Developer Blog announced the news:
Because this is sensitive information, we have created the new user_address and user_mobile_phone permissions. These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs.
Facebook never allowed apps to get their hands on the information before. Apps will be able to submit requests in the form of the pictured dialog box sample that let users decide whether or not to overshare.
Do you think Facebook has taken enough steps to stop people from unknowingly sharing their info? How do you guard your privacy on the site?
Developer Blog [Facebook via ReadWriteWeb]
January 03 2011
5 Tips & Tricks To Avoid Facebook Phishing Scams
We’ve already warned readers about a few of the more recent Facebook phishing scams, but it would seem that a new scam is coming out for every new member that joins the site. While it’s best to stay vigilant and read up on the latest scams to avoid, there are a few other tips that will keep you ahead of the game, protecting your profile 24 hours a day.
With all of your personal information and photographs posted on Facebook, the last thing you want is to find that your account has been hacked or accessed without your permission. We’ve put together a list of ways that you can protect yourself from the latest scams, making sure that your Facebook account is never compromised. Also be sure to check out Tina’s article on how to get instant alerts about the latest threats, whether on Facebook, or anywhere else on the web.
Follow The Sophos Blog
Antivirus developers, Sophos, report on the latest Facebook phishing scams practically on a daily basis on their blog, Naked Security. There seems to be no limit to the rogue applications preying on people’s curiosity, or the desire to activate certain features on their Facebook profiles through these apps. Sophos is one of the best sources today when it comes to Facebook scams.
SafeGo
BitDefender’s SafeGo is a Facebook application designed to keep users aware and protected from spam and any kind of threat that might be floating around Facebook. SafeGo scans your profile for any suspicious links, and you also have the option of allowing the app to automatically post a comment to your wall when a threat is detected.
Facebook Security
Another place to find tips and tricks to stay safe on Facebook comes directly from the source. Facebook’s Security page is constantly being updated with ways to protect your account.
Look For The Signs
Aside from all of these tips and tricks, the most important thing that any person can do is use common sense. See who it was that posted the link and ask yourself how likely it is that they would share something that begins with OMG You won’t believe this! or would they really write to you, through Facebook of all means, if they were stranded in a strange city?
If you receive emails that claim to be from Facebook, always analyse the email address they came from and the link they want you to click. Facebook notifications always come from Facebookmail.com.
What To Do If You Unwittingly Clicked That Link?
If you feel that you may have been the victim of a Facebook phishing scam, the first thing you should do is change your Facebook password. If you’ve linked your Facebook account to other online services, it would probably be best to change the passwords to those services as well.
If you’ve granted permission to an application, you can revoke permission through your privacy settings. Navigate to your Privacy Settings, and at the bottom of the page, click ‘Edit your settings‘ under Apps and Websites.
You will be taken to a page featuring the latest apps you’ve authorised. Click the ‘Edit settings‘ button.
From there you can delete any apps that you have mistakenly authorised by clicking the small ‘x’ next to the app.
How do you keep your Facebook profile safe? Have you been the victim of any phishing attacks? How did you deal with it? Let us know in the comments.
Image credit: Shutterstock
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November 24 2010
Browser Extension Lets You “Like” Tweets
It was inevitable, developer Jesse Stay has built a way “Like” tweets on the Twitter homepage. The winner of Kynetx’s Facebook App contest, Stay’s browser plugin uses Facebook’s iframe code to give you the option to “Like” in addition to “Retweet,”"Favorite,” and “Reply to” Tweets on Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox. Just install the extension and the buttons show up when you hover over the tweet in your stream. Well if Twitter wasn’t going to do it …
“Liked” tweets will also get posted to your Facebook profile and are a defacto way to share your favorite posts on Twitter with your social graph. Stay plans on further customizing Twitter to integrate with Facebook through plugins and is working on a “post to Facebook” checkbox below Twitter status update box as well as Twitter and Facebook profile pic synchronization.
Around 65 million people currently “Like” stuff online daily. As the universal Internet “Like” button evolved out of the Facebook status update, it’s inevitable that the “Like” disease would somehow spread to Twitter status updates as well, especially since the end result is more traffic for everyone involved.
You can download the plugins here.
October 29 2010
Where in the World Is Eduardo Saverin? In Singapore Funding Facebook Games.
I haven’t run into him, but have confirmed from at least ten local programmers and angel investors that Eduardo Saverin– the Brazilian-born estranged Facebook co-founder who helped Ben Mezrich write a devastating revenge book of his ouster before taking a settlement and disappearing from the face of the US tech scene– has been hiding out in Singapore for the better part of the last year-and-a-half. I’m told he lives in the penthouse of the tallest building of the city, and is a regular at Singapore’s club hot spots, especially a place called The Butter Factory.
Rolling with the city’s socialites aside, locals say that Saverin is pretty low-key. No one I spoke with had ever heard him refer to himself as the “co-founder” of Facebook. It either goes unsaid or, on one occassion, he told someone who’d never heard of him he was merely a “programmer of Facebook games.” I don’t know how much coding he’s doing, but he’s reportedly using that Facebook settlement money to fund a variety of Facebook game developers from his perch in Singapore– a perch that happens to be just next door to Facebook’s second largest market, Indonesia. He may be hiding out from the limelight and attention, but he’s certainly not trying to get away from Facebook itself.
By many accounts Saverin is well liked here and people are protective of him. In everyday conversation, people refer to Saverin’s role creating Facebook, not Mark Zuckerberg’s, which let’s just say, you don’t hear a lot in the Valley. One source did a deal with him and wanted to make sure I said he was “the most honorable guy I’ve ever dealt with in business.”
Given TechCrunch’s experience with Singaporean businessmen, I could make a catty comment about that being a low bar. But I’ve met a lot of honorable people this week in Singapore, and it seems like Saverin is keeping his head down, trying to build something on his own and avoid the film limelight his tell all account helped create. I give him credit for that. It’ll exciting to see what games he winds up funding for the platform that seems to have caused him a lot of pain and made him a billionaire household name. With any luck, his games will do well enough that Aaron Sorkin can fictionalize a sequel.
October 18 2010
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, a large number of the most popular applications on Facebook -- including all of the 10 most popular apps -- have been improperly transmitting user info, including names and possibly names of friends to advertising and internet tracking companies.
Writes the Journal:
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook's rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure.
The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online... It's unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to "dramatically limit" the exposure of users' personal information.
Among the apps mentioned in the Journal report are FarmVille, Phrases, Texas HoldEm Poker, FrontierVille, Causes, Cafe World, MafiaWars, Quiz Planet, Treasure Isle and Heart.
The Journal says the apps they investigated were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, "several of which build profiles of Internet users by tracking their online activities."
The report singles out one such firm, Rapleaf, which it says had added Facebook user IDs to the database of Internet users it sells to yet other firms. However, a VP for the company tells the paper, "We didn't do it on purpose."
October 14 2010
For Eventbrite, Each Facebook Share Is Worth $2.52
How much is a shared link on Facebook worth? For online ticketing service Eventbrite, each time someone shares a link to a paid event with their Facebook friends it results in $2.52 worth of ticket sales. In contrast, a Twitter share is only worth $0.43, and a LinkedIn share is worth $0.90. Sharing an event through Eventbrite’s email sharing tool is worth $2.34, almost as much as Facebook. On average, across all social channels, each share is worth an average of $1.78 for Eventbrite.
Events are inherently social, and if you know your friends are going to go to an event you are more likely to go as well. Facebook and email most closely match your real friends, so it makes sense that those shares are worth more in this context. But Facebook has an edge because it broadcasts to all your friends. On average, each shared link on Facebook results in 11 new visits to Eventbrite, compared to 7 visits per share across all channels.
As CEO Kevin Hartz told me a couple weeks ago when he raised $20 million, Facebook now sends more traffic to Eventbrite than any other source, including Google. It is no wonder that Eventbrite is making a big push into social discovery, adding more Facebook hooks into its service. The more it can get people to share events, the more tickets it sells.
The big question is whether this phenomenon is particular to Eventbrite, or whether all commerce sites can benefit from social sharing. Companies should start tracking revenue per social share and see where the money is coming from. My gut instinct is that Facebook will be more valuable for products which get a bigger boost when your real friends are using them, and Twitter will compare better for other more general types of products where people are just looking for a trusted recommendation based on topic knowledge. Twitter might also result in better clickthrough rates for pure media sharing (i.e., advertising versus commerce).
What’s your revenue per share? Send me an email or share in comments.
October 06 2010
Conformity!
“Conformity!” by RevolutionGFX
Just a bit of fun here poking fun at famous companies and the pressure to conform in modern society, now bring on the lawsuits!
September 30 2010
Facebook Photos Going Hi-Res So You Won’t Have To Squint To Relive Your Memories
Facebook has established itself as the biggest photo sharing service on the Internet — by far. But until fairly recently, the maximum size of uploaded photos was a frustratingly small 604 pixels, doing nothing to take advantage of the increasing ubiquity of high-resolution cameras. And that’s a problem when your friends are using Facebook as the primary way to share memories of special events like weddings, graduations, parties, and chubby bunny contests.
Things started to improve in March which it boosted the maximum resolution 20% up to 720 pixels. And now the Photos app is getting much, much better: Facebook is boosting the maximum photo size by 8x, up to 2048 pixels. Now you won’t have to squint when you go to relive your memories a few years (or decades) down the line. This may also make the app more attractive to users who have been turning to Flickr for high-quality uploading.
In addition to the boost in maximum photo size, Facebook is also making some UI changes. The site is going to start rolling out a new light box-based photo viewer that lets you view photos without jumping between pages. Facebook has also improved its UI for tagging friends, making it easier to tag the same person in multiple photos. Finally, Facebook has once again rebuilt its photo uploader for stability and performance improvements.
The features aren’t live for everyone yet, and will be rolling out over the next few weeks.
September 28 2010
If you don't like the concept of having your online actions tracked for marketing purposes, you can add Nielsen to you list of sworn enemies. The audience measurement company is better known for its TV viewer ratings, but yesterday it announced a new partnership with websites like Facebook where it will access user info (age and gender only, it says) to collect aggregate data on ad views around the web.
From the Media Decoder blog at the New York Times:
For example, if a user logs on to Facebook (a Nielsen media partner) and then visits another Web site where an ad that Nielsen is tracking is shown, Nielsen will put a pixel in the ad that will prompt Facebook to send Nielsen the age and gender of the people who viewed the ad.
As usual, if you want to avoid any of this, try using ad-blocking software and/or turn off third-party cookies. Nielsen also says you can opt-out by going to its website, but if you're against tracking schemes, probably the last thing you want to do is play by the rules the tracking company sets up.
"Nielsen Introduces New Ad Measurement Product" [New York Times]
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
