Facebook Watcher

Somebody has created ten Facebook fake profiles and is trying to make a profit from selling these fake profiles on eBay. These profiles are said to have a minimum 200 friends each. In January this year, CNet reported that 43% of Facebook messages are spam, now I wonder how many of the Facebook profiles are fake?

via [AdRANTs]

Update: I checked out the eBay link, it showed “This listing (260249755056) has been removed or is no longer available.“

I tried to log-on to Facebook, but unfortunately it is down. A big question is, why does Facebook is down, and what’s the problem that cause the “Error?” I like to figure out what is going on behind the scenes at Facebook. To me, Facebook is not what I read from some China blogs, that Facebook Chinese translation name is “非死不可,” sure going to die in China. Will the history repeat of itself in China? That most of the well-known U.S. Internet startups can’t make it in China. I like Facebook very much, this down incident give me a reason to think about what this world would be like without Facebook.

Aha, I tried and tried again to log-on to Facebook, I see a small notification icon appeared and disappeared for a second. I had a new friend accepted my friend request, whom he/she is?

Facebook has already created a China version of its site. For Facebook China users, they log-on to Facebook, Facebook will redirect them to this China site. In fact, this China version is not a new and separate Facebook site, it is an original Facebook site that Facebook simply translated it into the Simplified Chinese.

CNBeta said after China users log-on to this China Facebook version, users will see the familiar Facebook home.php in English. Only if they re-register a new account, their profile will thus show in Simplified Chinese next time they log-on to it.

How to behave yourself and act in a highest online decorum in the Facebook environment all the time? Frankly, most of us are confronted with managing ourselves when come to making friends in a social network such as Facebook. Here’s the 5 golden rules, compiled by a UK social etiquette advisor called Debretts with the jointly effort of Orange, a Telecoms company.

1. You don’t have to make friends with people you don’t know. Think before you poke.

2. Wait 24 hours before accepting or removing someone as a friend. The delay will help you gather your thoughts.

3. Birthdays, engagements and weddings are not “virtual” events. Always send cards or phone friends when there is an important event.

4. Think before posting a friend’s photo what you would feel like if it was you.

5. Think carefully about your profile picture. Would you want it to be appearing in your local newspaper?

via [Reuters UK]

Facebook has rolled out some of the new updates to its users’ profile pages. Two changes I noticed are the mini-feeds and the new feature of adding friend to your Facebook. From now on, mini-feeds is no longer can be collapsed based on one’s preference. It was not merely a tiny column appeared on user’s profile page; it was served as a permanent box for all your stories/history of what you’ve done on Facebook, albeit with stories are restricted to a list of ten (10) maximum to be shown.

Users are allowed to remove any stories that they do not want to show, but not advised to try to remove the whole mini-feeds, as told by Facebook.

Meanwhile, when you adding your friends to your Facebook, the add friend box now featured an advanced friending capability, by directly adding your new friend to a new Friend List. This save you time and effort in categorize your friends into different list after your friends accepted your Facebook friends request.

In addition, one of the Facebook’s high-profile features such as “People You May Know” reflected Facebook’s well known prowess in recommendation technology. Justin Smith of Inside Facebook said that there was a new tab called “Apps You May Like,” however, I still only see my first tab in the Application Directory remained as “Recently Popular.” I’m not sure this new application recommendation feature is only available to the U.S. users, as all the bloggers announced this news are from the U.S.

I’ve been reviewed some of the Facebook clones in China recently. To know the background of these clones, check out these here: Xiaonei, QQ Xiaoyou, and Hainei. Or if you dare to build your own social network, and not willingly rely on the features of the social platforms such as Ning, a software company based in Chennai, India called Agriya Infoway India Pvt Ltd. said that they can help. Agriya Infoway India now offered a software package namely Kootali which cost $399 that will let you to replicate everything, from design to features from Facebook to your own site.

Does this mean that the Facebook clones will become a new emerging trend in the social networking industry? Hardly.

Facebook has quietly released a new search feature for users. Now whenever users type a letter onto their profiles’ search bar, a small dialog box will prompt out and show all their friends, groups, or applications that match those keywords. See the picture below.

Facebook is not the place barely for users to social networking with each other, or making some business contacts. With an application called Causes built by Project Agape, Facebook users can now act as the good social network citizens and help making our world a better place to live.

According to The Tech Chronicles, Causes on Facebook has raised $2.5 million in charitable donations from about 40,000 users to help nearly 20,000 groups. At the same time, it attracted more than 12 million users with a global vision of supporting 80,000 non-profit causes.

In an interview conducted by Contribute Magazine, Causes on Facebook co-founder Joseph Green said, “Nonprofits tend to focus their fundraising efforts just on the wealthy. But cause networking unleashes the power of a multitude of younger, mainstream donors and gives what they care about a way to be heard.” Adds Sean Parker, “Facebook Causes is a way of leveraging the power of your social network to raise money or ultimately achieve a social goal. We’re very much trying to take social dynamics that exist in the real world and represent them online, which wasn’t really possible a few years ago.”

Facebook plans to unveil a new redesign of profile page to its nearly 70 million members. The new profile page will incorporate features that make a member’s profile more cleaner, simpler, and ultimately less cluttered. According to Facebook blog, this new changes in profile pages are coming soon.

From the preview of this new profile page, you’ll find that the new redesign is all about tabs. User’s information will be organized into a better layout, instead of the previous one single long page. There will be few tabs allowed: personal information, news feeds, photos, applications, etc. On the top of the profile page, you’ll see that there’s three different tabs, Wall, where you can post a wall message, About, contains personal information or data such as address, history and Photos, a place where you can browse and upload photos to the profile.

At first glance, another changes will be the organization of the sidebar. At now, Notes and video are slotted into the left hand side, but under the new redesign of profile page, they are in the right hand side, and carefully notice the mini-feed, the new changes will only display five stories, not the ten (10) stories as we getting used to. One thing for sure, those members who created a long one page profile page can no longer view their profile pages in the same way again.

Consider the new redesign of profile page demands the input of feedback from the Facebook users, Facebook plans to introduce changes slowly, allowing a selected group of testers to use it in June next month before making it available to all of its members later. Meanwhile, Web developers that created third-party applications for Facebook will be given chances to step into sandbox and play with the new design this week.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has opened a profile on Facebook, but if you want to add him as your friends, you’ll not sure which one is his real profile. Today Reuters provides a hint in an article entitled, “The real Steve Ballmer has a golfclub on Facebook.”

“If you actually look there’s about 10 Steve Ballmers and I’m only one of them,” Ballmer told reporters on Thursday.

“I’m the one who actually has a picture that looks like me on it and I’ll tell you a hint — I’m hitting a golf ball. That’s the real Steve Ballmer.”