Posted 11/20/09 at 05:56:39 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Just recently an American man accused of robbery was exonerated after a Facebook status update posted at about the same time as the robbery became his alibi. But Nathalie Blanchard, a 29-year-old Canadian woman, witnessed a different side, a much darker side, of using Facebook. Her rather jaunty Facebook alter ego has cost her dearly.

This IBM employee has been on sick leave for the last year and a half after being diagnosed with major depression. As if her long-drawn battle with depression wasn't enough, her insurance company, Manulife, withdrew her monthly sick-leave benefits this fall, using her happy Facebook pics as a pretext. Pics of Blanchard partying and holidaying were enough to convince the insurance company that she was back to normal.

The fun she was having, or trying to have, was strictly therapeutic - just what the doctor ordered, says Blanchard. She is also miffed at Manulife's meddlesome ways: the insurance company accessed her photos despite the fact that she has chosen to limit her profile to only friends. "My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape," Blanchard's lawyer Tom Lavin told CBC News.

The insurance company admits using social networking sites to keep a tab on clients. But it claims that it does not terminate claims "solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook."

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Posted 11/20/09 at 08:21:54 AM by Paul Lilly

YouTube's reign as the No. 1 online video site doesn't appear to be in jeopardy, but among the also-rans, Facebook now ranks as the third most popular portal for viewing video on the Internet, according to Nielsen's VideoCensus report.

YouTube leads the way with 6.6 billion streams and just shy of 106 million unique visitors in October, leaving the real battle to be fought for second place. As it stands, the No. 2 spot belongs to Hulu, which served up 632.6 million streams and recorded 13.4 million unique visitors. Facebook trailed not far behind with 217.7 million streams, but had more unique visitors than Hulu with 31.6 million hits.

Not to underestimate the significance, Nielsen noted that the amount of time Web users spend hanging out at social networking sites watching videos increased 98 percent year over year. And viewing of video streams in general jumped by 26 percent, Nielseon said.

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Posted 11/17/09 at 11:00:22 AM by Paul Lilly

Well that was short lived. Twitter, the crazy-popular microblogging service responsible for Miley Cyrus' sheltered IRL existence until she disconnected her account, said it plans to end a service that links distinguished message posters to new users.

Called the "suggested users" list, the idea was to connect new Twitter users with some 500 celebrities, sports figures, and politicians that might be of interest, but the service drew criticism in California over perceived unfairness towards GOP gubernatorial candidates, according to an AP report.

"The list will be going away," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said at a conferences in Malaysia. "In its stead will be something that is more programmatically chosen, something that actually delivers more relevant suggestions."

As it stands now, names on the suggested user list are selected by company officials. Some took issue when, until recently, only Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls in California were placed on the list, which helped boost their number of followers.

As to the new service, Stone didn't offer up any additional details.

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Posted 11/13/09 at 07:06:29 PM by Ryan Whitwam

It’s been nearly a year since Twitter exploded into the mainstream. Instead of seeing the year go out with a bang, Twitter may be headed for disappointment. The number of unique domestic users visiting Twitter’s homepage declined for the first time in October, down 8%.

The new numbers from comScore put Twitter’s users at 19.2 million in October, which is, admittedly, nothing to sneeze at. Growth began to taper off over the summer, but people are taking notice of this decline. Twitter CEO Evan Williams has acknowledged the drop off, but hopes new features, including lists and retweets, will reverse the trend. While the numbers don’t include access via Twitter’s API, it is still a troubling situation for the microblogging site.

Rival Facebook’s growth seems to be continuing unabated. If this is the beginning of a trend for Twitter, things could be bleak. Without their massive growth, are they even a viable company?

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Posted 11/12/09 at 01:30:35 PM by Paul Lilly

Ten years ago, the phrase "Where's my pancakes" wouldn't be nearly enough to get a robbery suspect off the hook. Even 6 years ago it wouldn't have worked. But that's only because Facebook was no where to be see. What are we talking about?

Rodney Bradford, a 19-year-old resident of the Farragut Houses, was arrested on October 18th for a robbery that took place the day before. His alibi? A status update on Facebook on October 17, at 11:49AM, from a computer in his father's apartment in Harlem, asking about his pancakes.

"This is the first case that I'm aware of in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence," said John Browning, a lawyer and member of the Dallas Bar Association who studies social networking and the law. "We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become."

The charges against Bradford where dropped when Facebook verified that the update, which occurred during the time of the robbery, originated from his dad's PC. Of course, this begs the question of how anyone can be sure that it was Bradford who typed the message, and not someone else.

"This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this; he is not Dr. Evil," said defense lawyer Robert Reuland, adding that the Facebook entry was just "icing on the cake" since Bradford had other alibis.

But what about in other cases? With Facebook for the first time being used as an alibi, we wouldn't be surprised to see this type of defense being employed more often, including by those who really are guilty.

Where do you see this headed? Hit the jump and sound off!

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Posted 11/12/09 at 01:15:35 PM by Paul Lilly

Trend Micro has issued a warning that the Koobface botnet has begun pushing out a new component capable of automatically registering a Facebook account and confirming an email address in Gmail to activate the fake persona. Once Koobface becomes part of the social network's community, it begins randomly joining Facebook groups, adding friends, and posting messages to people's walls.

"Overall, this new component behaves like a regular Internet user that starts to connect with friends in Facebook," says Trend Micro. "All Facebook accounts registered by this component are comparable to a regular account made by a human. The details provided about the account are complete such as a photo, birth date, favorite music, and favorite books, among others. In addition, every account registered is unique in such a way that the details vary for every account registered."

That's pretty wild, and it's done using Internet Explorer to create and register the account, according to Trend Micro. But what's interesting is that the Koobnet botnet halts its dastardly deed if the affected user is kicking it old school with IE6.

So how do you avoid being duped by a fake friend? You could become a loner, but that might get, well, lonely. Common sense applies - be sure you know who it is you're adding. And as usual, be wary of clicking on links. Trend Micro says the messages posted through Facebook's wall contain a link that leads to the fake Facebook or YouTube page hosting the Koobface loader component.

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Posted 11/10/09 at 07:08:14 AM by Paul Lilly

Perhaps looking to restore order in the court -- and a little common courtesy -- a federal judge in Georgia has banned using Twitter while in the courtroom, CBSNews.com reports.

According to U.S. District Judge Clay Land, Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure should be interpreted to ban Twitter. This is what it says:

"Except as otherwise provided by a statute or these rules, the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom."

The ban came after a reporter for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer asked permission to tweet the deets from a corruption trial, which was scheduled to start on Monday.

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Posted 11/06/09 at 09:05:57 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Facebook is the king of social networking with more users than any other web 2.0 site. With all those users, it’s also an attractive place for scammers that want access to lots of eyeballs. After a few embarrassments, Facebook is promising to take a stronger stance against deceptive advertising.
 
Facebook has gotten a bit of a black eye in the press lately after some companies using the platform were accused of scamming users. These scams often come in the form of special offers and surveys within games. Facebook’s Nick Giano wrote in a blog post that the site was aware of the problem and was actively working on it.

Users of the site also encountered a rise in stimulus scam ads earlier in the year; Facebook notes that they were quickly removed from the site. Hopefully this new wave of scams can be dealt with in the same manner. Facebook claims that over 100 developer applications have already been removed or “brought into compliance" so far. Have you noticed any fishy behavior on Facebook?

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