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Facebook Now Allows Friends To Promote Posts, But Privacy Concerns Arise

By Ian Kar | February 16, 2013 8:27 AM EST On average, Facebook posts are seen by approximately 16 percent of your friends; with Facebook’s newest feature, however, more of your friends may start seeing your best moments on the social network more often, because users can now pay to promote their friend’s posts.

Facebook hopes that with this new service, quality content supported by you and your friends will  be featured at the top of your News Feed. Some users have already received the new feature, but the gradual rollout will continue with Facebook users with fewer than 5,000 total friends and subscribers. 

Why I'm quitting Facebook By Douglas Rushkoff, CNN February 25, 2013 -- Updated 1502 GMT (2302 HKT)

(CNN) -- I used to be able to justify using Facebook as a cost of doing business. As a writer and sometime activist who needs to promote my books and articles and occasionally rally people to one cause or another, I found Facebook fast and convenient. Though I never really used it to socialize, I figured it was OK to let other people do that, and I benefited from their behavior. I can no longer justify this arrangement.

Today, I am surrendering my Facebook account, because my participation on the site is simply too inconsistent with the values I espouse in my work. In my upcoming book "Present Shock," I chronicle some of what happens when we can no longer manage our many online presences. I have always argued for engaging with technology as conscious human beings and dispensing with technologies that take that agency away.

At the moment, the four leading monsters are Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. Yet 18 years ago, Apple was weeks away from extinction, Amazon had just launched, Google was still three years away from incorporation and Facebook lay nine years into the future.

We understand pretty well the factors that determine the fortunes of companies that make things people buy – which is why, for example, one can predict thatApple won't be able indefinitely to sustain its huge profit margins on its iDevices.

This leaves Facebook, a company that has one billion products (called users) and earns its living by selling information about them to advertisers.

Google is not only the world's largest search engine, it's one of the top three email providers, a social network, and owner of the Blogger platform and the world's largest video site, YouTube. Facebook has the social contacts, messages, wallposts and photos of more than 750 million people.

The site also lists my most recent sent and received emails (in both cases a "no subject" conversation thread with a colleague).

The big relief comes when I note Google isn't tracking the internet searches I've made on my work account

Facebook

safer

Woodrow Wilson

When it comes to developers working with Facebook, "share and share alike" is the new policy.

No one rides the Facebook express for free.

"If you use any Facebook APIs to build personalized or social experiences, you must also enable people to easily share their experiences back with people on Facebook," Facebook said in a blog post announcing the change.

A new version of the Facebook News Feed will be unveiled

major overhauls of the News Feed, like the one coming this evening, are not that regula

the News Feed is for: it's there to tell you what your friends have been up to.

When I joined, five years ago, it was because I wanted an easy way to check on whether my journalism students were correctly spelling the names of classmates they were quoting in their news stories. To this day, that's pretty much my peak Facebook experience.

Founded by Zuckerberg and several other Harvard students in 2003, the site laboured for several years behind MySpace, the social-networking phenomenon of mid-decade

Indeed, Zuckerberg himself gave away the game back in January, telling a live audience that if he had it to do over again, he never would have allowed users to keep their information private.

ou're not paying for your presence on the web, then you're

just a product being used by an organisation bigger than you

When you use a free web service you're the underclass. At best you're a guest. At worst you're a beggar, couchsurfing the web and scavenging for crumbs. It's a cliché but worth repeating: if you're not paying for it, you're aren't the customer, you're the product.

Teachers believe social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are to blame for pupils' poor grades, a study has concluded.

Seven in 10 British teachers believe children are becoming more and more obsessed with websites such as Facebook  By Andy Bloxham 10:38AM GMT 18 Nov 2010

This research clearly demonstrates that students up and down the country are spending more and more time using social media.

Google Buzz aims to crack the social web

Google Buzz

share messages, web links and photos with friends and colleagues directly within Gmail

Indeed, most users of Facebook (or Google+, or countless other social networking sites) seem unaware of just how much they are sharing.

it is ultimately the responsibility of the user to understand his or her settings and know what, precisely, is being shared.

users must educate themselves about the privacy policies and tools available to them on Facebook or any other given site. Using available tools, users can reasonably protect their content from the public view.

irst, research shows that social-networking sites are a serious risk when accessed at work.

Facebook at work". It may sound ridiculous, but the purpose is to ensure that employees are not putting their personal and corporate data out to tender.

The second reason is that once uploaded, personal details can become public possession - and not just for now but, effectively, forever. News Corp bought MySpace to exploit what previously had been unthinkable to advertisers: customers telling you what they want without you even asking.

Adults must impose the necessary checks and balances to keep children safe online, says the children's commissioner for Wales.

"All children and young people don't seem much of a distinction between their online and offline lives,"

Mr Towler told BBC Radio Wales. "It's all just one thing and they get really excited by the opportunities the internet affords and sometimes parents get a little scared about that and worried about what their children are accessing." 'Crossing the road' Continue reading the main story “Start Quote They're all running around with handheld computers these days, they're not just on phones ” End Quote Keith Towler Children's commissioner Mr Towler said he talks to children in lots of different settings and they "still enjoy playing outside as much as they ever did". He said we need to recognise that the internet provides fantastic opportunities for education and learning and its making sure that children access that safely. He said that was a real challenge for parents and carers. "It's a bit like crossing the road, you try to teach your children the best way of crossing the road well. We need to teach our children the best way of using this fantastic resource. "I think too many parents are very very scared of the internet and because they're so scared they will say 'Oh I don't understand it'". Handheld computers The commissioner also praised Hwb, the virtual learning environment, which he said provides protection for children using the web in schools. Mr Towler said: "We've got to get parents and carers to recognise that children do operate in the digital world. They're all running around with handheld computers these days, they're not just on phones. "They can access whatever they want whenever they want and parents need to engage on that. " "We need to remember that children and young people are much more savvy than sometimes we think they are, and they are much more responsible than sometimes adults think they are so its not all doom and gloom. "What we need to do is put the right checks and balances in place and what children always want from parents and carers is to understand what the boundaries are, and that's our job to do that." Sangeet Bhullar, executive director of Wise Kids, added that the digital landscape was "evolving rapidly" and up-to-date data was needed on how children and young people in Wales related to it. More on This Story .related-links-list li { position: relative; } .related-links-list .gvl3-icon { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; } Related Stories Web safety lessons urged for infants 05 FEBRUARY 2013, EDUCATION &amp; FAMILY Online chat 'should be monitored' 22 JANUARY 2013, TECHNOLOGY Body to promote digital teaching 22 JUNE 2012, WALES $render("page-see-also","ID"); $render("page-newstracker","ID"); Related Internet links Children's Commissioner for Wales The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites $render("page-related-items","ID"); Share this pageShare this pageShareFacebookTwitter Email Print In association with $render("advert","advert-sponsor-module","page-bookmark-links"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); More Wales stories RSS Army base shuts in defence shake-up An Army base in Pembrokeshire is to close with 600 troops transferred to St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan. Soldiers' conman jailed three years Wales recall Warburton and Jones <!--