Daily Bits

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Facebook Takes a New Step in Site Governance

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Recently, Facebook has published some updates to its statement of site governance. These updates aim to maintain users’ control over privacy and the things they share on Facebook. Here’s a quick look at the salient features of the proposed changes to Facebook’s Site Governance Page.

On Location – Facebook might soon introduce a new feature that will let you add a place to something you post. By place, Facebook means a page for a local restaurant instead of the actual geotag of its location. More details and other privacy controls about this feature will be rolled out in the coming days.

On Sharing and Connections – Facebook is also clarifying on how members connect with people, places and things that are important and how this information and content are shared with friends and other people. Right now, Facebook members share photos or links on their profile and can control who can access those. Facebook will change some wording to further clarify these policy.

On Applications and Third-Party Websites – Facebook will soon be proposing a new privacy policy that would offer more personalzied experience when visiting and sharing third-party websites that are featured on Facebook.

Other Policy Changes – Facebook is also explaining the series of smaller changes on different aspects of Facebook including why invitations that a non-user receives to join Facebook sometimes include the names of other people besides the person who invited them, as well as a thorough explanation of the “Everyone” setting. The new policy changes also explain how people can sync their contact lists on mobile devices and other contact management services.

Here’s the link to the proposal: Facebook Site Governance policy.

Facebook Tightens Policy on Photo Tagging, Feed Sharing

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In a possible move to contain the growing complaints of members who consistently receive unwanted photo tagging notices and news feeds that they are receiving, Facebook is updating its policies on these features.

First, the new policy on policy tagging states – “You can tag a photo only with the express consent of the user on whose behalf you are doing the tagging, and must only tag images when the tag accurately labels what is depicted in the image.”

In short, you can no longer tag your friends and other Facebook members on photo collages, avatars and other images which are being used for marketing purposes, just to get their attention and hope that they clicked on your campaign materials.

On news feed publishing, the new Facebook policy states – “You must not publish a Feed story unless a user has explicitly indicated an intention to share that content, by clicking a button or checking a box that clearly explains their content will be shared.”

This policy aims to put a stop on reports that some apps are forcing their Facebook members to extend permissions to publish news feeds on their walls. This will give other application developers a good chance at getting more followers and users the legit way – that is because they’ve gained the Facebook members’ trust.

And finally, you can no longer publish the same Feed story to more than one friend’s Wall at a time. This is to avoid spamming of Facebook members stream with feed stories that do not interest them.

Facebook will enforce punishments and suspensions of account on a case to case basis if anybody is proven guilty of violating these policies.

So there, hope these new policies help reduce the noise level in your Facebook content streams.

Digg Supports Twitter @Anywhere and Other OpenID Standards

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In the “socially-induced” tech world that we are living in, the old adage that “no man is an island” doesn’t hold true anymore. No matter how geek and anti-social you are, now is the right time foresake all habits, get out into the open, connect and socialize. Even for the pioneers of web 2.0 applications and tools this is now an SOP. If you want to stay cool and relevant to the social world – open up to other online sites even if they use to be your rival.

Such is the case with Digg.  Digg is struggling to stay relevant. After all, it used to be one of the pillars of the web 2.0 phenomenon. It won’t definitely not yield to competition easily. So the Digg folks are rolling out a couple of integration features with popular online services.

First, Digg will definitely support Twitter @anywhere framework which was just announced a couple of days ago. It’s Facebook Connect integration was pretty successful, giving Digg increased in user engagement and a registration increase of around 20-30%.

And after surveying around 14 thousand of its users, Digg is now ready to roll out some more integration with other third party site based on survey responses. So, aside from Facebook Connect, soon you will be able to log in to Digg using your Google, Yahoo, and Twitter accounts. These three plus Facebook are the ones identified by Digg users which they want to use when logging in to Digg.

In addition, Digg will continue to support OpenID accounts. So if a third party site is supporting OpenID accounts, you can use them also for logging in to Digg.

Facebook to Stop Sending Apps Notifications, Thankfully!

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Although you can always add a friend’s updates on Facebook it’s still annoying whenever that friend used another application which you have not hidden on your profile before. So, you go out and hide it again to remove the noise that has been cluttering app your profile. Starting Monday, you will not have to go through each every one of those applications notifications and hide them. Facebook will stop sending those notifications, finally!

So, how could you then communicate with your friends to tell them about this cool new Facebook apps that you’re currently spending your time on? The Facebook Developers Blog suggested that you use counters instead, set news within the dashboards to share lightweight messages and activate the extended permissions to email users and send richer and more engaging messages.

Facebook is also planning to change how app requests function and how Facebook profiles will be displayed, all to make Facebook a pleasant, less noisy social networking platform.

I would have to commend them for doing this, despite the fact that it might actually turn some users away, especially those who enjoy using all those apps and telling their friends about them.  Who knows, some Facebook users might actually miss those notifications about their friends needing this or that on Mafia Wars. Or notifications about the fact they have no watered their plants on FarmVille, and many other time-wasting activities that they are doing on Facebook.

So, will you be disappointed or happy about this announcement or what?

Facebook Acquires Vague Patent on News Feeds, Questions Abound

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There are ongoing discussions right now among social media experts and analysts over a recent patent that was awarded to Facebook. Many analysts are considering this patent crucial in the social media industry. Why? Because Facebook has just been granted the patent for news feeds.

Yes, you read it right. Facebook now owns the technology for delivering news feeds. The patent was first discoverd by All Facebook which was filed by Facebook sometime in 2006. Just before other social networks started publishing news feeds as part of their social networking features.

While this may seem just another case of patent filing by a major Internet player, the thing is – it is not.  This is Facebook, claiming rights to the news feeds which is making other social networks thrive.

And what’s causing the commotion is the fact that nobody knows how Facebook is going to use this patent. Will Facebook use it to kill of rival social networking sites? Or will it use the patent to defend itself?

Another question is what exactly does Facebook own by getting the patent? Is it the technology that generates  the news feeds? Is it the distribution of news feeds? What are the components of these news feeds? Individidual status updates, uploading of contents?

Facebook has not issued an official announcement regarding this issue.  Mashable has published a statement which they got from Facebook saying:

“The launch of News Feed in 2006 was a pivotal moment in Facebook’s history and changed the way millions of people consumed and discovered information on the site. We’re humbled by the growth and adoption of News Feed over time and pleased with being awarded the patent.”

How far Facebook would bring this patent remains to be seen.

We Are Now Posting 50 Million Tweets Daily

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Funny how a short post on the Twitter blog could spark an online discussion that even led to the long-standing Twitter vs. Facebook war.  Yesterday, a post on the Twitter blog announced that we, Twitter users are now sending 50 million tweets into the Twitter-sphere everyday. Now, how’s that for another issues that says Twitter is not growing?

But anyway, yes Twitter has just grown to 50 million tweets a day. Up from 5,000 times a day in 2007, 300,000 in 2008 and 2.5 million in 2009. Right now, it’s at a 50 million per day or 600 tweets per second. If you won’t call that exponential growth, I have no idea what else you can call this phenomenon.

And that doesn’t include spammy tweets. Twitter has removed tweets from accounts that were identified as spam.

Now, the issue that were raised by some analyst is whether Facebook has all the reason to be afraid of Twitter’s growth. Facebook updates were last reported at 60 million per day.  That means that Twitter is fast catching up. But that is in terms of daily updates. When it comes to total number of users and even monthly page views – Twitter is still far inferior to Facebook.

I really think that there is no point of comparison here and we should all try to pause for awhile and rethink how we view Twitter vis-a-vis Facebook. I’m more inclined to think that Twitter compliments Facebook. Facebook is more of a social networking site while Twitter is more of a real-time online communication tool.

But then, who am I to change this predominant mindset, anyway?