Google+ and Facebook. One is the largest social network in the universe with more than 800 million members, and the other is, well, Google+. If Google's social playground is ever going to truly challenge Mark Zuckerberg's social amusement park, it's going to have to keep its momentum going. So far it's been doing that. Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page announced yesterday evening that Google+ now has more than 90 million users worldwide, over double what he announced just three months ago.
The topic of Facebook becoming a publicly traded entity is increasingly a matter of "when" and not "if," and if we're to focus on the former, the most likely answer is sooner rather than later. Nailing down an exact time frame has been difficult. Mark Zuckerberg isn't exactly approaching an IPO with any sense of urgency, though as competition heats up with Google and its Google+ platform, going public may be more important than he realizes.
The thing about being a criminal is there's always the risk of being caught or otherwise exposed. This applies to the life of a cyber criminal as well. To wit, Facebook has identified five men it believes are behind the Koobface worm designed to burrow into various social networks like Facebook and Twitter in search of login information to help spread its related botnet far and wide.
A metaphorical boxing match between two 800-pound gorillas is quickly shaping up in the social network arena. In one corner: Facebook, the reigning champion. In the other corner: Google+, a fast-rising up-and-comer with a big name and deep pockets behind it. At stake: the time-deprived attention of millions of social network users. There can be only one victor.
Have you changed your Facebook password lately? Perhaps you should do it again. Cybercriminals have taught an old worm some new tricks, pointed it towards the world's largest social network, and slapped it on the backside. It didn't take long for this particular variant of Ramnit to rummage through Facebook and steal over 45,000 usernames and passwords around the globe.
Facebook has revealed much about the human condition, and now it’s reminding us how vain we humans can be sometimes. According to a recent interview with Facebook’s engineering director Arturo Bejar, the majority of photos flagged by users as inappropriate are actually just unflattering images of the user that reported it.
Neil Sedaka sang how "Breaking Up is Hard to Do," though if he were to go back after all these years and add another verse, it would have to include a disclaimer about Facebook, even if he decides to only sing the bonus lyrics when touring the U.K. According to a survey carried out by U.K. divorce website Divorce-Online, 33 percent of divorce petitions filed in 2011 made mention of the world's largest social playground.
Most people make it a point to avoid places they or their loved ones aren't welcome, so the fact that Mark Zuckerberg chose Vietnam as the destination for his holiday getaway indicates that perhaps the trip was at least partially diplomatic. Officially, Zuckerberg, along with his girlfriend and a few friends, spent time in Hanoi simply for pleasure and not for business, but there are plenty of other places he and his entourage could have visited, ones where his social networking site is welcome with open arms.
Facebook's ongoing privacy policy reform will undergo even more changes in the next six month as the social network attempts to improve transparency and do a better job with how it collects and handles private data in Europe. The vow to change comes at the conclusion of a review by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), which oversees Facebook's legal compliance to users outside the U.S. and Canada (Facebook's international headquarters is in Ireland).
An Israeli entrepenuer formerly known as Rotem Guez has employed the unusual tactic of legally changing his name to dodge a lawsuit. His new name? Mark Zuckerberg, the same as the co-founder and CEO of Facebook. He changed his name after receiving a cease and desist order from Facebook over his Like Store, which sells advertisers "Likes" for their pages.
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