Twitter, Facebook become lifelines after Japan quake!

Once again, social networking sites Twitter and Facebook are proving to be lifelines in times of crisis.

A devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake and then a tsunami rocked Japan friday early morning . The double disaster is reported to have killed hundreds across Japan, and hundreds more are said to be missing.

And the quake and tsunami caused massive damage to buildings and roads, as well as electrical blackouts and intermittent cell phonce service.

With so many people unable to physically get to family and friends or to even reach them on the phone, countless people in Japan and around the world took to Twitter and Facebook to reach out to loved ones today.

"Social communications, like Twitter, and social networking sites, like Facebook, are at their best when big news is breaking," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research.

"They are the means available to almost everybody to broadcast information, to communicate one-to-many," he said. "And, in some cases, they help get around bottlenecks in one-to-one communication."

An hour after the quake hit Japan this morning, Online Social Media, which tracks social media services, reported that Twitter was experiencing 1,200 tweets being posted every minute. And at most times today, eight or nine of Twitter's top 10 Trending Tropics -- such as #prayforjapan, #tsunami and #japan -- were directly related to the earthquake and tsunami.

Organizations and relief efforts also are taking to twitter , posting information about everything from emergency phone lines for non-Japanese speakers to tsunami alerts, altered train schedules and lists of shelters for those left homeless.

On Facebook, people not only posted thoughts and prayers for the people of Japan, but used their updates to tell friends and family where they are and how they are doing. Facebook Pages like Japan earthquake also popped up, grabbing nearly 3,000 followers in about 12 hours.

Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis, said today really does show social networks at their very best. "The No. 1 trending topic on Twitter right now concerns the 90999 text message number for Red Cross relief," said Shimmin, who calling sites like Twitter "lifelines."

"From what I've seen today, social networks have brought out the best in people, encouraging them not only to take action but also supporting them in those efforts to bring relief to the victims of this catastrophe," he said.

"While there are so many technologies at this time that isolate us from our fellow beings, social networking tools have shown their ability once again to unify us as human beings, and to bring out what is most altruistic and empathetic in our natures," Shimmin added.

This isn't the first time that people have turned to Twitter and Facebook during trying times. The social networking sites became lifelines for people during the massive earthquakes in Chilli and Haiti last year.

They also were key communication tools during the 2009 government crackdown in Iran, as well as when a U.S. Airways plane made an emergency landing in New York's Hudson River.

Facebook takes down Palestinian intifada page

A Facebook page called the Third Palestinian Intifada has been removed from the site following a request from the Israeli government.

Yuli Edelstein, Israel's minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs, sent a letter directly to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on March 23. In the letter, which has been posted on the Web site The Jerusalem Gift Shop, Edelstein asked the company to take down the page calling for a third intifada, translated by some as violent uprising, to begin against Israel on May 15.

Pointing to remarks and movie clips on the page calling for the killing of Israelis and Jews and the liberation of Palestine through violence, Edelstein expressed concern over the "wild incitement" that could be caused by the page, which had collected more than 230,000 friends at the time he wrote the letter.

On Friday, the Anti-Defamation League also asked Facebook to remove the page, labeling it "an appalling abuse of technology to promote terrorist violence" with "inflammatory anti-Israel language calling for supporters to build on the previous two intifadas."

From its initial response, Facebook appeared reluctant to take action.

"We strongly believe that Facebook users have the ability to express their opinions, and we don't typically take down content, groups, or Pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas," Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg.

But as of today Facebook had removed the Third Palestinian Intifada page. Explaining its decision, a Facebook spokesman e-mailed CNET the following statement:

The Page, The Third Palestinian Intifada, began as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used a term that has been associated with violence in the past. In addition, the administrators initially removed comments that promoted violence. However, after the publicity of the Page, more comments deteriorated to direct calls for violence. Eventually, the administrators also participated in these calls. After administrators of the page received repeated warnings about posts that violated our policies, we removed the Page.

Facebook added that it continues to "believe that people on Facebook should be able to express their opinions, and we don't typically take down content that speaks out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas. However, we monitor Pages that are reported to us and when they degrade to direct calls for violence or expressions of hate--as occurred in this case--we have and will continue to take them down."

Saying that it welcomed the decision to take down the page, the Anti-Defamation League asked Facebook to "vigilantly monitor their pages for other groups that call for violence or terrorism against Jews and Israel."

Since the removal of the page, new ones have been created to replace it. Though the number of friends is small so far compared with the original, the new pages appear to mimic the first one with further calls in both English and Arabic for a new intifada.

Literally translated as "shaking off," the word intifada is more commonly translated as "revolution" or "uprising." Palestinians have staged two intifadas, according to CNN, one that began in 1987 and another that started in 2000. During the second intifada, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians died, CNN said.

Resources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20048363-93.html#ixzz1I8W9RP58

Another Google service facing uncertainty in China

Google is facing potential trouble with the Chinese government over yet another one of its services.

The future of Google Maps, the company's online mapping service, may be in jeopardy as the company reportedly has yet to file the required application with the Chinese government to keep the service running, and the deadline is tomorrow.

China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping confirmed that it has not received an application from Google for a license for Google Maps, according to Bloomberg and other sources. If tomorrow's deadline passes, and a license application still has not been received, the bureau said that the service would face "administrative actions" by July 1.

Google has not responded to a request for comment. Bloomberg, however, had the following statement from the company: "We are examining the regulations to understand their impact on our maps products in China."

China's potential actions against Google Maps are part of the country's overall effort to crack down on "illegal" online mapping services in light of their ability to reveal "sensitive and confidential" information, according to China's state-run news agency Xinhua. Such a crackdown would extend to unapproved online mapping sites, potentially leading to their shutdown.

China announced last spring that it would start requiring license for online mapping services, already putting the future of Google Maps in question. As of the middle of February, China has given licenses to 105 Web sites that provide online mapping in the country, including Baidu, Sina, Nokia, and China Mobile, Xinhua said.

Always tenuous, Google's relationship with China took another bad turn last week when the search giant accused Beijing of interfering with the operations of Gmail. The company also just suffered a blow to its overall market in China as Sina, the country's biggest Internet portal, said yesterday that it has replaced Google's search engine on its various Web sites with its own, according to AFP.

Resources: 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20048759-38.html#ixzz1I8UXVDGC

Twitter clamps down on client applications!

Twitter is discouraging development of new client applications and warning existing ones will be held to stringent standards
by Juan Carlos Perez

Developers working on client applications that replicate Twitter.com's basic user functionality should turn their efforts elsewhere, because the company doesn't want any more such apps on the market.

Moreover, developers of existing client applications should brace for stricter enforcement of terms and conditions, as Twitter strives to make the overall user experience more uniform and of higher quality.

That was the message Ryan Sarver, from Twitter's application development team, relayed over the weekend on an official Twitter discussion forum for developers.

"Developers have told us that they'd like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no," Sarver wrote in a post titled "Consistency and ecosystem opportunities."

"If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users' privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service," he added.

Twitter has also modified its developer terms accordingly and provided more details about this topic in that document.

Responses to Sarver's post have so far been mostly negative.

"All third party Twitter developers, no matter what they make, are now walking on eggshells, constantly at risk of

offending Twitter's ideas of how users should interact with Twitter," wrote one developer, echoing similar sentiments from others commenting on the discussion thread.

Tensions between Twitter and its community of third-party developers have been worsening over the past 12 to 15 months, when Twitter started taking a more active role in building out its previously sparse menu of native features.

For the first four years or so of its existence, Twitter relied heavily on -- and encouraged -- external developers to provide extra functionality around its bare-bones microblogging service.

During that time, Twitter, founded in 2006, had its hands full keeping up with the basics of running the company, such as maintaining the site up and available, a notorious struggle for years.

Thus, developers have created hundreds of thousands of applications for Twitter, including desktop clients, mobile interfaces, search engines, photo sharing tools, monitoring and analytics software and profile customization tools.

Many of these developers, which range from individual freelancers to large outfits, have built businesses of various sizes around their Twitter applications.

But starting in late 2009 and very clearly ahead of its Chirp developer conference a year ago, Twitter, having grown its staff and business significantly, has made it clear that it intends to provide by itself or in exclusive partnerships whatever functionality it considers of core importance to the Twitter user experience.

That now includes official Twitter applications for the iPhone, BlackBerry, iPad, Windows Phone and Android devices, for example. "As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps. Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions," Sarver wrote in his post.

So over the past year, Twitter has become a competitor for some of its external developers.

Now, Twitter is setting its sights on client applications, citing user confusion and security concerns. "If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience. In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly violated Twitter's Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy. This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user experience to third parties," Sarver wrote.

As examples of developers who are taking advantage of existing opportunities, Sarver cited SocialFlow's publisher tools, Klout's application which crunches Twitter data to generate individual reputation scores and HootSuite and Seesmic, which let businesses monitor their brand mentions on Twitter and act accordingly.

Recources: itnews.com

4 reasons why Facebook and vanity don't mix!

1.Posting too many pictures

The aforementioned study highlights what most Facebook members already know: Facebook is a forum where most users seek to showcase the best of themselves. For many, that means photos of you looking great, or in glamorous situations (think on vacation, or posing with many people at a party).

Why is this risky behavior? Because the more information you put out there, the easier it is to target you, particularly if the criminal already knows what you look like.

Last month, a California man pleaded guilty to charges of blackmailing a young girl to send him pornographic images of herself after contacting her on Facebook. James Dale Brown somehow got a hold of sexually explicit photos of the girl and used Facebook to find her and demand she send him a video of her having sex. Brown used the alias 'Bob Lewis' on Facebook and eventually sent links to an explicit image of the girl to one of the victim's 'friends.'

And in January, another California man, George Bronk, admitted to breaking into e-mail accounts to find explicit photos of women. Bronk said he used Facebook to learn answers to the security questions that many e-mail services, such as Yahoo and Gmail, use to reset passwords and compromised the accounts using that information.

Facebook photos are also the reason why some people get fired from their jobs. A recent survey from email security firm Proofpoint finds seven percent of organizations have fired an employee because of activity on social media sites, such as questionable photos that show the user in a less-than-desirable light.

2.Sharing too much information
It was last year around this time that the Dutch web site developers who created pleasrobme.com made headlines. The site aggregated the Twitter feeds of people who play Foursquare, a location-sharing application that allows users to "check in" from their various geographic whereabouts as part of a game where they earn badges for reaching certain milestones. Pleasrobme pointed out that in doing this, users were also publicly broadcasting that their home is likely unattended and a good "opportunity" (as the site termed it) for thieves.

The site has since been disabled as the creators said their point was made and mission accomplished. But clearly people are still posting their location using Foursquare, as the site boasts about 6 million users. And there have been recent instances of criminals using the pleaserobme mentality to target empty homes. Three men in New Hampshire were arrested last year on charges of burglary after breaking into homes they knew were unattended. The crooks admitted to using Facebook to find targets.

3.Having too many friends
Having a lot of friends means you are really popular, right? Doubtful. Security experts say having a lot of friends means you'll friend, and accept friend requests from, anyone and aren't very discriminating about your network.

While having a big friends number may make you feel good about yourself, it puts you in some danger. Security firm Sophos conducted a Facebook ID probe last year and created a fabricated Facebook profile before sending out friend requests to individuals chosen at random from across the globe. To conduct the experiment, Sophos set up a profile page for 'Freddi Staur' (an anagram of 'ID Fraudster'), a small green plastic frog who divulged minimal personal information about himself. Sophos then sent out 200 friend requests to observe how many people would respond, and how much personal information could be gleaned from the respondents. The experiment revealed that 82 users, or 41 percent, were willing to divulge personal information, such as email address, date of birth and phone number, to a complete stranger.

This is especially risky is your job gives you access to a VIP or valuable data. Security researchers are noting more attacks that involve criminals who cyber stalk potential victims. The bad guys watch your activity to see what you say, and then use it in an attack.

"There is definitely another network of crime where they are taking time, and closely watching in order to pull off certain things," said Sophos' security advisor Chester Wisniewski.

Additionally, so-called "friend collectors," who typically have 2,500 friends or more, are considered soft targets by spammers who are more likely to friend them knowing they will be accepted and will then have access to thousands of potential spam victims.

4.Bragging too much
Of course you're really proud of your promotion or the award you received at work. But you may want to think it over before you post too much information about it in your status update or broadcast it to everyone who follows you on Twitter. According to Attorney Pria Chetty, founder of Chetty Law, a recent global survey finds that the unauthorized disclosures of trade secrets by employees is among the top five intellectual property risks on social networks.

"This refers to the risk of employees who are not bound to appropriate internal policies sharing confidential information or trade secrets (formulas, know how) to their contacts through social media," Chetty said in a recent post.

But disclosing private information isn't always intentional, and is instead often leaked just by way of a good-intentioned employee who wants to share with social networking friends.

As Sophos' Wisniewski points out, even posting information on LinkedIn, generally seen as the lowest-risk social network, still poses a reasonable amount of risk.

"For someone looking for information about your organization or looking for targeted bits about your company it's fantastic," he said. "I can go and search for your company name and three-quarters of your employees probably have profiles that tell me exactly what they do, what their position is. I can learn a lot about the company and, if I wanted to, I can then take on a social engineering attack and use that LinkedIn information for my attack through Facebook or email."

Resources : itnews.com