Privacy policies and terms of service policies are generally so long and full of legal jargon that few users ever bother to read them. There are, of course, some notable exception to this and even Facebook, which regularly finds itself in the privacy spotlight, is making stride to improve how
Compact Disc
As Facebook moves to gather more and more data from its users, some people are getting rather anxious to know what Facebook really knows about them. Turns out, you can actually get Facebook to send you a CD with a PDF of all of your activities on the network – as
apple
When I opened Spotify on my desktop this morning, a pop-up informed me that “Spotify Loves Social” and that I should discover “great music with [my] friends.” To get started doing just that, all I had to do was click “Get Started.” Spotify also conveniently pre-checked the opt-in to Facebook’
f8
[rant] Facebook’s announcements today represent nothing short of a major paradigm shift of how it wants its users to interact with its service and each other. Sure, the new Timeline is pretty to look at, but on the scale of today’s announcements, that’s just a blip on
Apps
Facebook kicked off its F8 developer conference with a large number of product announcements by the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives and developers today. Here is a rundown of all the major announcements. New From Facebook: Timeline, Music Apps, Lightweight Status Updates As Zuckerberg
As of now, Google isn’t making it easy for developers to create apps that can write status updates to the service, but that didn’t stop Nadan Gergeo from building iSatus+, a little iPhone app ($0.99) that lets you post to Google+, Facebook and Twitter at the same
Facebook today announced a major new feature that could put renewed pressure on Google+ and Twitter to out-innovate the social networking market leader. Facebook users can now choose to allow others to asymmetrically follow them thanks to the new (and optional) “subscribe button”– just like on Twitter and Google+. This
baidu
Google’s Doubleclick advertising unit just updated its list of most-visited websites in the world. According to Google’s data, Facebook’s website reaches 46.9% of all Internet users and can now boast a total of 1 trillion page views from 870 million unique visitors. This easily makes the
European Union
Updated: German websites based in the state of Schleswig-Holstein have until the end of September to remove Facebook‘s ‘like’ button or face a fine of up to 50,000 Euro. Germany has a long tradition of using laws to protect its citizen’s privacy. Home owners, for example, can
anonymous
Anonymous, the loose-knit organization of hackers and activists that grew out of the 4chan messageboard, has claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile hacks, defacements and denial of service attacks in the past. Among the groups’ targets were sites from major organizations like New Corp., Iranian government websites and the
android
Facebook just announced the launch of its new messaging app for Android and iOS devices. Facebook has been working on new messaging services for a while now, starting with the announcement of its new and enhanced messaging system last November. Earlier this year, Facebook also bought the group messaging app
circles
Google+ was developed around the concept of Circles – groups of people you organize according to your interests and relationship with them (tech bloggers, family members, etc.). While Google was working on Circles for its new social network, though, another company – Katango (formerly known as Cafébots) – was also working on a