Wired's Danger Room blog reports that the U.S. Military is banning Twitter and social networks including Facebook and MySpace because of security concerns. Danger Room says the ban will last one year.
"These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday. "The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel... at an elevated risk of compromise."
The Marines' ban will last a year. It was drawn up in response to a late July warning from U.S. Strategic Command, which told the rest of the military it was considering a Defense Department-wide ban on the Web 2.0 sites, due to network security concerns. Scams, worms, and Trojans often spread unchecked throughout social media sites, passed along from one online friend to the next. "The mechanisms for social networking were never designed for security and filtering. They make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users," a Stratcom source told Danger Room.
Danger Room also notes there are many in the military who find value in microblogging and social networks. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on Twitter at @thejointstaff. He tweeted recently, "Obviously we need to find right balance between security and transparency. We are working on that. But am I still going to tweet? You bet."
A list of military twitterers can be found here on WeFollow.com.
901am reports that RIM has established a social network just for BlackBerry users called MyBlackBerry.
Perhaps it's because the company, while far from abandoning corporate users, is increasingly looking to impress consumers that the move has happened. The company has a large user base but certainly needs to do something fresh to stave off competition from the likes of Apple's iPhone and other smartphone manufacturers.
Facebook this social network isn't, but rather it's designed more as a bulletin board for users to talk (rant) about the various flavors of BlackBerry, set up a personal profile (tailored dependent on which handset you own), and rate and review applications.
The community could help BlackBerry because it provides a forum where people can share help with others and encourage other BlackBerry users to try new Apps and upgrades. There are many others ways - and many other social networks already existance - where manufacturers to keep up with problems, complaints and trends but RIM must have felt they could keep a better tabs on things by having an in-house community.
The White House blogged today about the launch of MySpace, Twitter and Facebook accounts for the White House. The White House says most of the content will come from the White House RSS feed but they do want to hear from followers. The blog posts says, "The WhiteHouse blog (RSS) will power a lot of the content in these networks, but we're looking forward to hearing from our fans, friends and followers."
An Irish rock band named The Script claims that social interaction with fans is the way to music chart success. The Script says blogs, downloads and online chats are the secret to success. On the Script's website you can see that they have set up a number of social networking sites. However, they don't seem to have latched on to microblogging yet.
A new study from Rapleaf.com has found that women outnumber men on social networks.
Here's the overall numbers.
Women: 24,821,901
Men: 20,559,526
Unspecified: 3,887,623
All of the social networks that Rapleaf.com looked at except LinkedIn and Perfspot.com. You can see the full chart here on ReadWriteWeb.com. Rapleaf.com's research did not include microblogging sites like FriendFeed, Plurk and Twitter.
Social Network Users Concerned Media is Watching Them
The BBC reports that a Press Complaints Commission survey found that 80% of those polled said they would be more cautious about what they posted on social media websites if they knew they were being watched by the media.
Almost 80% of social networking site users would be more careful about the details they put online if they knew the media might use them, a poll says.
The Press Complaints Commission said 89% of the 1,000 people polled wanted guidelines on what the media could use.
And 42% of 16 to 24-year-old who used such websites said they knew someone who had been embarrassed by material which was posted without consent.
The PCC is opening talks on how it should respond to the issue.
In a sense they are being watched by the media so they should be more careful. On the other hand a lot of what it is posted to social networks is trivial and unlikely to be of any interest to blogs or the mainstream media.
The study also found people think it is wrong for the media to take information they have posted publicly without their consent.
The poll also found 49% of respondents said it was wrong for the media to use information they had posted on line without asking the consent of the person concerned.
And 58% were fairly or very concerned about the lack of control about how they were depicted on websites.
And of social networking site members, 55% considered whether personal details such as photos might be used by someone else without their consent, before posting them online.
Sir Christopher said the PCC's current code of practice would be able to handle complaints about media outlets using material skimmed from networking sites.
Since this information is posted publicly it is hard to see how the media could be prevented from quoting it. Young people posting information publicly that is inappropriate probably have other even bigger concerns as well such as that an employer or university they are applying to might see it.
We originally heard that The Rising is being created in partnership with Windsor Media, Terry Semel's investment firm, but we still haven't gotten confirmation of their involvement. Windsor was created by Semel before he went to Yahoo, was put on hold during his tenure there, and fired up again after his departure last year.
The Rising will have original video content with a permanent host in addition to the social network where users can share stories and experiences, tapping into serious demand for this kind of thing. There are thousands of forums dedicated to paranormal and UFO topics today - among them is, yes, a Meetup site for ghost trackers.
The Rising sounds like a good name to use. It's vague enough to cover both the paranormal and UFOs as well as other unexplained happenings. You don't want to have the problem the Sci Fi Network has - they are trying to expand beyond science fiction but are somewhat limited by the initial name they picked for the channel. TechCrunch says The Rising is rumored to be launching sometime this summer.
The nonprofit OpenSocial Foundation has been launched. OpenSocial will provide a standard for the sharing of social network data using APIs.
It's like the Justice League of social media: Google, Yahoo, and News Corp.'s MySpace.com announced on Tuesday that they have formed the OpenSocial Foundation, a non-profit group to support the OpenSocial initiative that Google kick-started last year as a way to promote a universal standard for developer applications on social-networking sites.
The specific purpose of the new non-profit, according to a release, is "to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web." It's a particularly crucial move for Google, which has been eager to emphasize that OpenSocial is a community standard, not a Mountain View project.
"OpenSocial has been a community-driven specification from the beginning," Joe Kraus, Google's director of product management, said in a joint statement from the three companies. "The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open."
Dan Holevoet explains the Gadget xml files that developers can use to create applications using OpenSocial data in this video.
Google has a post on the launch and so does Yahoo Anecdotal. Yahoo also has a press release announcing their support of OpenSocial.
Facebook isn't joining the party.
And Facebook won't be joining the OpenSocial Foundation, either. "As the largest contributor to the memecached system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open source initiatives but will not join the foundation," a statement from the company read. "The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience."
As Mashable notes OpenSocial includes a who's who of all the major social networks except for Facebook.
Bigger than the forming of the Foundation is the news that Yahoo has joined in on OpenSocial. For a reminder of who else is in, here's a shortened list: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. So, basically, out of all the social networks and web giants on the web, Facebook is the only one that's out of the loop - for now.
There are going to be some very interesting applications developed using OpenSocial. Facebook may come to regret not being involved. Of course, they could always join down the road as they observe how OpenSocial evolves as developers launch OpenSocial-based features and services.
Spielberg Might Be Planning Social Network About Ghosts and UFOs
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reports that director Steven Spielberg may be launching a social network focused on ghosts, UFOs and other unexplained phenomenon. Spielberg has directed many films that focus on ghosts and aliens including Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Artificial Intelligence: AI. Spielberg also wrote the screenplay for Poltergeist.
Hollywood super producer Steven Spielberg is preparing to launch a new social network, we've heard from multiple sources. The focus will be on users who've had or who are interested in sharing paranormal and extraterrestrial experiences. The new social network may also have original video content investigating alleged ghost and UFO stories.
Michael Arrington writes that Spielberg has also had a paranormal experience.
Spielberg has apparently had at least one paranormal experience himself. There are stories of him staying in a hotel called Excelsior House and being so frightened by ghosts that he fled the room and moved 20 miles away. We've also heard anecdotes about Spielberg seeing the ghost of a dead relative repeatedly as a child. Whether based in reality or the product of an exceptional imagination, these experiences may have had an impact on his life's work and this upcoming social network.
There are numerous websites and web forums about paranormal and extraterrestrial activity. People interested in this kind of subject matter would likely be interested in a social network that had Spielberg behind it. Gawker filed it under bad ideas but it sure sounds like a more interesting idea than another social network TechCrunch recently mentioned called TotSpot - it's a social network for babies.
Will Young People Still Care About Facebook in 2013?
There are some stories here, here, here and here that the traffic to Facebook might be falling or plateauing in the U.S. and/or in the UK. Webware notes that it was never going to be possible for Facebook to sustain its explosive 200,000 new members per day growth forever.
It's inevitable that the explosive expansion that Facebook experienced in 2007 can't possibly go on forever. And since no hot new destination has popped up to potentially suck away Facebook traffic, the obvious conclusion is to blame it on social-networking fatigue. Facebook, one could say, is a trend and users have simply grown tired of it.
The argument makes sense. For many there was an initial novelty to keeping in touch with faraway friends and classmates, wasting time at the office with games and other developer-created applications, and voyeuristically sifting through online photo albums all on a single destination site. Me, I've grown tired of the Scrabulous gaming application on Facebook--it's way more fun to play word games in person.
But an apparent leveling in traffic doesn't equal mass account deletion. "Coolness factor" always fades; now it's up to Facebook to prove it can stay relevant and useful in its post-expansion era. Remember when instant-messaging client adoption was soaring and people were IMing each other just for the heck of it? We're all still IMing, but it's no longer a novelty, it's a utility. ("Utility," by the way, appears to be one of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's favorite words.)
Robert Scoble thinks Facebook is not doomed but it is really too early to know for sure. What we really need to know is how many active members there are at MySpace, Facebook or Bebo. Will users of these sites dump them for another service or for privacy as they get older? Facebook isn't so over dude today but what about five years from now. Five years ago who would have believed young people would stop using email? Will today's Webkinz-using grade school students really want Facebook accounts when they reach high school and college age or will they seek out new destinations of their own that people in their 30s and 40s don't get? There is no real way to answer that question until a few years have passed but there have been many warnings against building a service that primarily targets the very young. If the next generation doesn't want Facebook then as big as Facebook has become they could still end up being beaten by Classmates.com or slowly become as uninteresting as GeoCities.
One Way to Completely Opt-out of Beacon: Delete Your Account
We blogged earlier about Facebook's annoying Beacon. Facebook's Beacon was instantly broadcasting information about Facebook users' online purchases without first getting the users' permission to do so. Facebook ruined some people's holiday gift surprises in the process. In response to numerous complaints the social network giant has now modified the way the Beacon news stream functions. Beacon "news items" will now sit waiting on Facebook users' profiles until they are approved or denied. This at least provides a way for Facebook users to stop information about online purchases and other web activities from being instantly broadcasted to all of their Facebook friends.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really solve the larger issue with Beacon which is that Beacon is aggregating its users online shopping activity. Is there any benefit to consumers in having Facebook compile all this data? The only benefit appears to be to Facebook which will be able to build a constantly improving model of each Facebook user's shopping behavior. Facebook seems to think they deserve to gather this information about their users simply because they provide them with a free online social networking profile. Facebook is going to really struggle as a company going forward if the only method they have for making money is to violate more and more of their users' privacy while providing no additional benefit to the users. Facebook is refusing to provide a way to completely opt-out of Beacon so the only way users can get away from Facebook's invasive new service is to delete their account.
MySpace isn't going to let Facebook have all the fun. The BBC reports that MySpace is also going to be opening up their social network to third-party apps.
The move brings the website into line with rival Facebook, which has seen strong growth since it opened up to outside programmers.
Facebook has become a portal for services such as video, audio and photos since the change.
MySpace has more than 188 million registered users, compared to the 47 million who use Facebook.
MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for $580m in 2005.
"We hoped it would do very well, but we never imagined it would do this well," Mr Murdoch told the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Third party applications can be built really fast and they can take off very quickly. It was only a few months ago - May of this year - that Facebook opened up its social network to third party apps. Just a month or so after that MySpace was reported to be jealous of Facebook's apps. Wired's Compiler blog says the platform will be opened in the next couple of months.
MySpace has nearly four times the amount of users as Facebook so Facebook's several month head start in the widget wars probably isn't much of a lead at all.
Adam Nash, the senior director of products at LinkedIn, has announced the addition of photos to the LinkedIn social network. Nash provides screenshots of his photo and LinkedIn profile as an example. The post says users can choose whether or not their photo will be viewable by the public.
However, before we could add photos to the site, we had to give considerable thought to the best way to integrate photos into a professional site. Privacy is an incredibly important issue to us, and we wanted to make sure we had the right controls in place. As a result, all members will have the option to control whether their photo is visible to their connections, their network, or everyone.
The post also says LinkedIn expects the photos to be professional because LinkedIn is a service for business professionals.
We know that people take their professional reputations seriously, and as a result we expect LinkedIn profile photos to be professional in nature. However, we also hope that the wisdom of the millions of LinkedIn users will help us identify photos that violate that. Similar to LinkedIn Answers, members will be able to quickly and easily flag photos that violate policy for review.
Photos and videos are one of the first things people think of when they think of social networks so it isn't surprising that LinkedIn now has photos. VentureBeat asks, "Why did it take four years to add a feature already offered by every other social network?" It appears that the reason behind LinkedIn's resistance to photos was because they wanted to make sure the website would remain professional. LinkedIn clearly doesn't want the types of photos you are likely to find on social networks like MySpace, MyYearBook and Stickam.
Eons, a social network focused on baby boomers, is cutting 1/3 of its staff according to BizJournals.
Mass High Tech reports the Charlestown, Mass.-based startup, which was launched by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, recently laid off 24 employees or approximately 35 percent of the staff prior to the restructuring.
MHT said the layoffs included some members of the executive team, but the company did not disclose specific names.
Eons, which has the slogan "Loving life on the flip side of 50," will focus on social networking going forward.
Eons debuted in August, 2006 when it was kicked off with a launch featuring actress Jane Seymour. The company says it will focus on social networking going forward. Xconomy has more on Eons' layoffs.
Facebook is making its millions of users' faces available to the public. They have added a search on the Facebook.com homepage. A post on GigaOm explains Facebook's Public Search Listings.
If you thought the news feed was a threat to your privacy, be warned: Facebook is announcing Public Search Listings today, meaning profiles will be searchable through Facebook, and soon turn up on Google, Yahoo and MSN Search.
As of tomorrow, search will be available through Facebook; users will then have one month to change their privacy settings before profiles get indexed by the major search engines. These results will include, at most, your name and profile picture.
Obviously that's a move that could scare some users, and there are some restrictions: you must have your profile set to viewable by "everyone" in order to appear, and only your limited profile will be public.
Mashable says Facebook users will have about a month to change their privacy settings before Facebook user faces and names start showing up in the major search engines. Some Facebook users that want their privacy may complain that Facebook should have made this opt-in instead of opt-out. Providing the majority of Facebook users don't change their privacy setting it will allow Facebook to compete more with some of the popular people search tools. It will also allow Facebook profiles to become more indexed in the major search engines resulting in increased traffic for Facebook.com.
The White House 
TechCrunch 
The nonprofit 
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch 
There are some stories 
Adam Nash, the senior director of products at LinkedIn, has 
