This post was written by Jody Jonnson

Facebook is not completely immune to fraud but there is room for fraudsters to violate the rules and gain info to user account details. The platform should stay the same; meaning it is up to us, the user to stay vigilant when using Facebook at all times. Overall, it is good at breaking the ice with companionships whether it’s work or play. Long gone are the days that Facebook was predominantly for students; though the student population on Facebook is massive. It certainly looks that Facebook will continue to be versatile in concept building.

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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

A new survey conducted by Harris Interactive for IT security firm Cloudmark has raised serious questions about the security of social networks such as Bebo and Facebook. The survey found that over the past year more than four-fifths of social networking site users said they received unwanted or spam friend invitations, messages or postings on their social or professional network account. Jamie de Guerre, chief technical officer of Cloudmark said
“Social networking sites need to be concerned about the proliferation of spam and phishing attacks and the impact it could have on their ability to grow and retain members. Social networking providers must address the security issue head-on or risk declining usage and revenues.”
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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

Mobile operator 3 has unveiled a phone designed for accessing Web 2.0 services such as Facebook. 3 hopes the phone will do for data consumption what Apple’s iPhone has done for smartphone uptake: light the blue touchpaper. The device has been designed for always-on integration with a range of mobile social-networking and IM services, including Facebook, Windows Live Messenger and Skype.The phone is client-based so it synchronises in the background with web services such as Facebook, pulling in contact and profile data and updating it automatically.

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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

AdaptiveBlue has announced the launch of its new social networking web browser plug-in. The Glue plug-in works by showing users visiting a particular website what their friends looked at on the same site and any comments they had on specific item. Websites such as Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yahoo! Finance, Wine.com and Citysearch are supported by the plug-in. Glue remembers the last 20 items browsed and allows users to click on a ‘Like’ button to show that they favour a particular product, as well as add comments in the ‘2Cents’ box.

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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

Small businesses thrive on their ability to network and with the popularity of social networking sites, they are shifting that zeal to get-together online on specialized, business-focused communities. Forrester Research Inc. expects small businesses’ adoption of social networking technology to grow by 20% to 33% during the current year. Many entrepreneurs have begun to carve out small business communities on spaces originally designed for individual users, such as the online directories Myspace.com and Facebook. The free community, which will be supported by online advertising, is designed to help small businesses connect with each other through robust searching tools and to gain access to resources such as “ask the expert forums” through partnerships with media outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

The battle to provide social networking in the enterprise is under way between solutions from established software vendors and readily available offerings such as Facebook and LinkedIn, with these sites possessing a lot of momentum, an industry insider stressed during a conference on July 11. Antony Brydon, former CEO and founder of Visible Path said, “I think we’re in a market that could end up looking a lot like the IM market, where consumer products like AOL IM gained dominance in the enterprise.” He added he did not take it for granted that companies such as Microsoft would dominate the business social networking space.
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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

Facebook has sued a German social networking site, StudiVZ, saying that the site has stolen its look and feel by creating a clone site and merely replacing a blue background with an orange one. Facebook, which had filed suit right before unveiling a redesign, is seeking compensatory damages from StudiVZ but has not specified an amount. However, StudiVZ is accusing its larger rival of using the pretence of protecting its intellectual property rights to make up for its failure to succeed in Germany.
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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

The Facebook Platform celebrated its one year anniversary a few months ago. Never before have I seen the introduction of a new platform, Web site or service so quickly change the marketplace. There are more than 20,000 applications, some with nearly 2 million daily active users available on Facebook alone. Businesses and even venture capital funds have been created around the development of social network applications to capitalize on Facebook’s popularity.

OpenSocial, an open platform for application development across multiple social networks, spearheaded by Google, was quickly developed and launched to compete with (or maybe complement) the Facebook Platform. The opportunities presented by the Facebook Platform and OpenSocial are very exciting from a developer’s perspective. Now they can focus on building cool technology and not on building traffic from scratch. From the perspective of consumers, they have more choices and better ways to communicate while having fun on their favorite social networking site. But what does it mean for brands? How can brands successfully leverage these platforms to build their business?

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This post was written by Jody Jonnson

JuiceCaster, the mobile social-networking service, today unveiled location-based geotagging. With geotagging, JuiceCaster users can send pictures and videos that automatically include their location to various social-networking platforms, including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. JuiceCaster provides one-touch, real-time sharing of pictures and videos directly from a camera phone to many social-networking and blogging sites. Users update their status with pictures and videos captured on their mobile phone using the wireless application. Through its new location-based geotagging feature, JuiceCaster now allows individuals to see a video’s location information, which can be used as a friend-finding service.

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