Privacy Issues of Social Networking Sites

Link to us: http://snipurl.com/ucg5w

Have you ever wonder there are so many people signing up to Bebo, Facebook, Flickr, Friends Reunited, LinkedIn, MySpace, Windows Live Spaces and YouTube, BUT.. Since then, privacy issues have incurred from all these social networking sites. It cant be denied that there are many security issues surrounding websites in general and specifically social networking sites – For this time, I have only highlighted the issues that I found relating to privacy and data security.

(image obtained from http://www.boston.com)

Many social networking sites are commercial enterprises owned by large, multinational organisations such as Yahoo! or Google. Many people believe ‘Tom’ to have started MySpace, but it was actually created by a company called eUniverse.

Google famously bought YouTube in October year 2006, paying a staggering US Dollar $1.65bn – but why? Have you ever wonder? And YEAh! It’s all about data and it seems like Google have tonnes of it on its users, but Google never deletes data collected on its users and some day in the future, the day may come when it could make billions and billions from flogging it.

(image obtained from http://info.scrapur.com)

Sites such as Facebook and MySpace say that they find it reasonable to collect and store personal information about users such as occupation, gender and personal interests in order to ‘maximise your enjoyment’ of their sites. Facebook quite eerily states that it may also search for information about you on blogs, newspapers and instant messaging services. Why on earth should they feel that this is appropriate? So that you can enjoy a more personalised service, apparently. Personally, I think that’s a bit much and would not in any way agree to this – but millions of people have done, by signing up to use Facebook, as this privacy encroachment forms part of the privacy policy that all users have to agree to having read and abide by when signing up.

(image obtained from www.hillsidebschool.com)

Accepting Google’s privacy policy forms part of signing up to use YouTube and it’s another one that’s keen to improve your user experience – ‘We may combine personal information collected from you with information from other Google services or third parties to provide a better user experience’.

Yahoo! is another big corporate with social networking interests in the form of Flickr, the popular photo-sharing website. Its privacy terms state that ‘Once you register with Yahoo! and sign in to our services, you are not anonymous to us.’ It also plays the ‘user experience’ card and goes on to say that it uses personal data for three purposes – content customisation, ‘to fulfill your requests for certain products and services’ (whatever that may mean) and to flog you stuff.

So people out there, BEWARE!! As you are signing up for any Social Networking Sites, Please bear in mind to read the policy or terms and conditions. You don't wanna see your pictures to be in some advertisement someday out there without you knowing it! @.@

Signing Off,

Justin

Source of reference: Social Networking by Sarah Tuner, [Online], Retrieved on 12th February 2010. URL: http://www.blogsecurity.net/

Plurk.com

Link to us: http://snipurl.com/ub6oc


A microblogging site that stands as a rival to the famous, Twitter. It is known as Plurk. Created by The A-team, it was launched on May 12, 2008. Ever since it’s launching, it has been successful to date. It has a vast growing group of fans from the Southeast Asia region, (over 31% Plurk traffic comes from Taiwan, where as over 29% comes from the Southeast Asia region).

According to Akan (1/7 of The A-team), Plurk is an etymological deconstruction of the word you love to hate.

He goes on explaining that; (1) Plurk = People + Lurk, (2) Play + Work, (3) The Acronym = People, Love, Unity, Respect, Karma, and (4) It could be a verb potential, for example how Google is used as a word, “Oh, I googled it!” / “Oh, I plurked it!”.

The view of each profile is seen as a timeline that would be updated with random status updates by the Plurk members. Other Plurk members are allowed to comment on the updates that could lead to a chat log. JavaScript is used for the scrollable timeline to be written on, where as it is renewed through AJAX.

The A-team.

More to come in the next chapter ; Twitter vs Plurk. Which would prevail to become the Future in microblogging?

To sign up to Plurk.com ; http://www.plurk.com/Users/showRegister

1. Plurk, the new Twitter? [Online], Retrieved 7^th February 2010. URL: http://www.techleader.co.za/stii/2008/06/03/plurk-the-new-twitter/

2. The A-team. [Online], Retrieved 8^th February 2010. URL: http://www.plurk.com/plurkteam

3. 'Plurk'? An etymological deconstruction of the word you love to hate. [Online], Retrieved 8^th February 2010. URL: http://blog.plurk.com/2008/06/02/why-plurk-an-etymological-deconstruction-of-the-word-you-love-to-hate/

Followers are on the way.

Link to us: http://snipurl.com/uap96

Twitter has become a new hit! Do you know? The actor Ashton Kutcher has million followers when he became the first account holder!

Do you want people to follow you? Well, there are actually tactics to use to become more famous in Twitter World. Imagine no one follow you even you've been updated your status every single minute? Does it make a difference?

1) A good profile picture

Having a nice profile picture does make a difference, your avatar is either appear you as someone who has personality or someone who is lame to keep updating their status without any purposes. Make sure you upload a photo with a file size of at least 450 x 450 pixel. You wouldn't want your followers click your picture with a result of pixelization. Remember, a picture speaks thousand words!

2) Make an interesting bio of yourself

Unless you are as famous as celebrity, create a bio which represent yourself in 160 characters is an effective way to attract follower. Keep it short and simple, yet creative and catchy so that someone would be interested in you. For example: My name is xxx, age 18, students, from KL. Would you follow this person?

3) Share good site

A good website that provides collection of links to the most breaking, unusual and coolest on the Internet able to retain their users or readers. As a Twitter's user, knowing how to update your status such as you gonna hit to gym or you are having BigMac is not a good way to attract followers. Spend more time on surfing any sites which people might get interested in the topic you share with. You will also become a reliable resources which can retain your regular followers.

4) Share picture!

Everyone likes to look at picture, visual normally works! Share a picture of you've found, or yourself to update your status instead of using words only. If you have I-phone even greater, you can upload pictures wherever you are by using Tweetie.

5) Advertise your account

The only way to get recognition on your account is to keep promoting. Post it on your Facebook! Post it in your blog! Put it under your MSN status! You can even include your link under e-mail signature. There are ways to do it, it just the matters of whether you want to do it or not.

With these few tricks, I hope you guys learn something and start your own Twitter now!!!

Cheers,

LiHui =)