Facebook, Washington Country sue Alleged ad scammer
Published January 28, 2012 | 
It was a complicated scam that Facebook has blocked, executives from the companionship articulated during a press conference in Seattle. Facebook users would see a link to a provocative video recommended by a supporter on Facebook. A user would click on the video link and see a pop-up that might require the user to verify that he or she is over age 13. By clicking on the verification box, the user would unknowingly portion the video on his or her Facebook page.
After clicking the box, another pop-up would look taking the user to an advertiser site that might require the somebody to furnish personal info or buy an detail alike a telephone ringtone.
“Every time a user links to one of these advertiser sites, Adscend is paid a commission by the advertiser,” enounced Paula Selis, supporter attorney general in Washington.
The attorneys said that advertisers didn’t necessarily know that Adscend was utilizing these methods to drive traffic to their advertisements. The advertiser might be a big company working with a bit of online advertising companies alike Adscend, paying them for the traffic they generate to their ads, articulated4 Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna. “What happens is an advertiser doesn’t know every post the ads are being placed,” he said.
Facebook alleges that Adscend was earning more than $1 million a month, articulated66666 Craig Clark, Facebook’s star litigation counsel. He refused to enunciate how long the action got on.
Facebook articulated that a browser vulnerability that allowed the exploit has been fixed so users shouldn’t proceed to see the scam.
Neither Facebook nor the state attorney general’s post required Adscend to blockage the activity before they filed the lawsuit. When necessitated why, Selis said: “There’s no specific reason. They are big, they are pernicious, they receive been doing this for a while and they know they are violating the law.”
Adscend, which is based in Delaware, could not instantly be strained for comment.
In addition to the attorney general’s lawsuit in the U.S. District Courtroom for the Western District of Washington, Facebook also filed a lawsuit against the companionship in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, charging that Adscend violated Facebook’s damage of use and a U.S. anti-spam law.
Facebook Sues Label Zuckerberg
Published December 19, 2011 | He doesn’t clothing hoodies and he wasn’t a social misfit at Harvard, but the Israeli social-media entrepreneur erst known as Rotem Guez now has several important things in common with Facebook founder Label Zuckerberg.
For one, they portion a name, with Guez officially altering his name to Label Zuckerberg earlier this month.
The other thing: a knack for court appearances, with Facebook suing the former Guez — we’ll yell him, Zuckerberg II, for the sake of clarity — and the entrepreneur suing the social media society right back. This, granting to his website, MarkZuckerbergOfficial.com.
For its part, Facebook claims that Zuckerberg II is violating its damage of service with the job he co-founded, the Similar Store, which helps individuals and business entities on Facebook increase their “likes.”
Zuckerberg II, meanwhile, is suing Facebook decently back, claiming the fellowship had no right to closed down his Alike Store profile, which it had closed down.
Perhaps sensing the media tending such a cite modify could deliver, Zuckerberg II posed up Twitter and Facebook accounts under his new refer — he eve included one in which he poses with his new Tag Zuckerberg passport.
Your Spirit on Facebook, in Full Recall
Published December 16, 2011 | 
Remember those karaoke video from three years ago that somehow rolled up on Facebook? They were embarrassing for the few hours they spent at the crown of your Facebook profile, and then they were buried under a cascade of young updates. Simply on Thursday, Facebook begun rolling out a revamped profile feature anticipated Timeline that makes a user’s integral history of photos, links and other things shared on Facebook accessible with a single click. This may exist the first mo that many of Facebook’s 800 million members realize just how many digital bread crumbs they get been leaving on the site — and on the Web in general.
For meliorate or worse, the new format is likely to convey back a destiny of old memories. Just it could also construct it harder to shed past identities — something people growing up with Facebook might struggle with equally they motility from high school to college and from there to the working world.
“There’s no routine also little to record on your permanent record,” enunciated Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard who studies how the Internet affects society. “All of the mouse droppings that seem equally we migrate about the Web will exist saved.”
The old Facebook profile page shows the almost recent items users have posted, along with things alike photos of them posted by others. But Timeline creates a scrapbooklike montage, assembling photos, links and updates for each month and twelvemonth since they signed up for Facebook.
When Tag Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, introduced Timeline in September at a developer conference, he described it as a mode to cause a more comprehensive portrait of someone than by only reading updates or look at a profile picture: “We believe it’s an important future measure to help tell the floor of your life.”
Facebook enunciated in a blog place that users could either hold to get a notification most Timeline on their pages or expire to facebook.com/about/timeline to activate it immediately. Eventually whole profiles will be switched to the new look, though the fellowship is not saying when. And there will be no switching back.
Some adept users experience been able to ambit Timeline for weeks employing a workaround meant for developers. They pronounced that while the intent might exist attractive, it was unnerving to realize but how much info they received been flowing into Facebook.
Facebook pushes Away Timeline of users’ online lives
Published December 15, 2011 | The Timeline does precisely what it sounds alike it will do — it’s designed to automatically organize your condition updates, relationship changes, videos and photos (yes, even the embarrassing ones) into an interactive timeline of your online life.
Timeline isn’t brand new. Facebook announced its maturation at the company’s f8 conference in September. Equally of today, however, it’s wide available.
“Timeline gives you an tardily way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect your nearly important moments,” indited Paul McDonald, a Facebook engineer, in a blog post. “It likewise lets you percentage new experiences, similar the music you listen to or the miles you run.”
McDonald added that Facebook will be adding to Timeline, which will also exist available on Android and m.facebook.com, over the succeeding few months.
Some users should already be viewing an announcement at the crest of their profile near getting Timeline. Anyone who doesn’t receive the announcement nonetheless and doesn’t desire to wait for it, can die to the Introducing Timeline page and button the change.
In his blog, McDonald famed that moving to the young Timeline will substitute a user’s old profile page only none of their condition99 updates or photos should exist lost. And when users start applying Timeline, they’ll experience seven days to review everything that looks before it goes public.
He likewise articulated that users can see how their Timeline looks to Facebook friends by clicking on the “gear menu” at the top of their Timeline. Merely select “View As.”
Have something you’d alike to highlight in your Timeline, like the daytime you went a new line or your wedding day? Bun over that info and click on the principal that seems to expand the update.
Conversely, if you want to keep something private, alike that drunken berth party, motility the cursor over it and click on the pencil that appears. That allows you to hide something, edit it or even delete it.
According to McDonald, users also could utilization the privacy dropdown menu to adjust who may see any of their posts. They could choose to make something public or elect to merely construct it visible to supporters or they may even select “Only Me” thus no one else could see it.
Facebook launches Timeline — in New Zealand
Published December 7, 2011 | 
Totally the style back in September, Facebook anticipated that we would wholly soon be basking in the scrollable glory of its young profile layout, known equally Timeline. It’s travelling to be incredible, CEO Tag Zuckerberg said us. It will blow. Your. Mind.
Well, equally of former yesterday, Facebook users may finally enable their Timelines — simply exclusively if you alive in Young Zealand. That’s right, Young Zealand, the island nation with half equally many people equally Young York City. Great. Thanks, Facebook — for nothing!
Actually, as Colleen Taylor at GigaOm reports, this is merely the first measure in the Timeline rollout process, which agency we’ll whole exist able to enjoy — or freak away nigh — the most major overhaul of the Facebook profile intention since the social network launched in 2006. The reason for starting with New Zealand, says Facebook, is “because it’s English speaking, hence we can read the feedback and construct improvements quickly.”
“We declared Timeline in September and made it available to developers building apps on our platform,” writes Facebook’s Samuel Lessin on the society blog. “Since then, over a million people receive signed up for the developer beta to access Timeline. The feedback we’ve received so far has been invaluable. Starting today, we are making Timeline more widely available equally we measurement swiftness and other types of performance. We’ll commence by making it available to people in New Zealand and then roll it out more generally in the near future.”
You heard that? “The near future.” That sounds like a good thing. Of course, we’re Americans, dammit, and soon99999 merely isn’t shortly enough, particularly when some strange race of kiwi-lovers already has access to this life-changing new feature. So kinda than experience a turn of patience, but moderate out our instructions for how to enable Timeline decently now. You may thank us later the initial blast of staggering awesomeness wears off.
Facebook doubled its advertising market Portion from 2009 to 2010
Published December 6, 2011 | We wholly know Google dominates the Internet advertising space, while its three traditional competitors, Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, are floundering at the bottom. Many seem to forget, however, that the new guy on the block, Facebook, is starting to ascent up from underneath the failing trio. In fact, the social networking giant coped to twice its advertising market share from 1.4 percentage in 2009 to 3.1 percent in 2010, according to the ROI agency ZenithOptimedia.
A nearer flavour shows that between 2006 and 2010, Facebook is the exclusively one to experience steadily gained market percentage in damage of Internet advertising expenditure: from 0.2 pct to 3.1 percent. Google had a minor hiccup in 2009, simply overall it is very quickly gaining share. Equally you may see in the chart above, the other three experience wholly failed to amplification market portion every single year.
Facebook is even a far outcry from Google, only at this rate it will apace overtake Microsoft by the close of this year. If it doesn’t have instant position from Yahoo this year, it most likely will in 2012. This is whole assuming that the pact formed by Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL doesn’t act things around for them.
It’s not also surprising that Facebook has dealt to demonstrate itself as a major advertising supplier: the fellowship has a unique offering to businesses that are willing to gamble a small with their marketing dollars. Many are finding advantages, such equally being able to target users with a precision not found in most other forms of advertising, and are thus increasingly investing in Facebook pages and Facebook apps instead of spending their budgets on Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. With its quickly growing user meanspirited (800 million monthly active users and counting), the company’s social graph is exploding across all demographics, which only further fuels improved ad targeting, performance, and revenue as well.
5 Reasons Why Facebook’s Phone Will Fail
Published November 23, 2011 | Facebook’s supposedly forthcoming smartphone, reported by AllThingsD, paints the movie of a fellowship that either thinks it could do no wrong, is feel incredibly squeezed by Apple and Google or is willing to lose large money merely because it can afford to.
The impression created is that Facebook is weaker and has more problems than nearly people imagine. Not good with an IPO supposedly about the corner.
According to AllThingsD:
“After years of seeing how to best cause into the telephone business, Facebook has tapped Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC to construct a smartphone that has the social network integrated at the kernel of its being.
“Code-named “Buffy,” subsequently the television vampire slayer, the phone is planned to coursed on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deep integrate its services, as considerably as to brook HTML5 equally a platform for applications, allotting to sources familiar with the project.”
Since Walt Mossberg’s site gets totally the best leaks, I am betting the report is as straight a level as Facebook is willing to tell 12-18 months pre-launch. Merely if their level is a tad off, the alternate reality is more interesting and might exist more successful.
I’ll abstract that “B” version subsequently foremost offering my five reasons while a Facebook telephone is a reasonably dumb idea.
Here goes:
1. People hate Facebook While Facebook may claim 800 million members, it is difficult to pronounce the society is even remotely well-liked by 799 million of them. Thinking people feeling at Facebook, evening more than Google, as a company design on stealing whole the points of their lives in guild to sell things. I’ve yet to see Facebook do anything to dispel this notion and the 12-18 month gestation of the BuffyPhone is slew of time for the legal tables to bit on Zuckerberg & Co.
The same kind of hubris that makes Facebook conceive the world is clamoring for it to exist in the smartphone business will eventually exist its downfall. Facebook has more corporate ego than Microsoft could ever ideate and it will got back to haunt the fellowship in the forge of big legal challenges.
If consumers or regulators should come to a decision that privacy matters, Facebook will exist in cryptical trouble. The BuffyPhone may gone the prime example of what privacy tradeoffs Facebook thinks its customers are willing to accept, specially it comes with larger subsidies than near smartphones in club to keep the price low. How will Facebook construct the money back?
2. Cipher wants a Facebook phone — There experience already been Facebook phones, at least phones with especial Facebook features. One is the HTC Status, which AT&T has late commenced bighearted away. Others, including Inq Mobile, Orange and Motorola receive touted particular Facebook functionality. Therefore far, the world hasn’t been buying.