Danah M. Boyd of University of California-Berkeley and Nicole B. Ellison of Michigan State University have published a paper in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication summing up the scholarly research thus far on the online social networking phenomenon, and suggesting further lines of study. Continue reading
networks
Facebook’s Beacon tracks all users
An article in Computerworld explains that Facebook’s Beacon javascript, once incorporated in a partner site, collects information on activities of all users with a Facebook cookie, not just logged in Facebook members. A Facebook spokesman stated that data from opt-ed out Facebook members and others is automatically discarded. Continue reading
Facebook backpedals on Beacon
Under pressure from moveon.org and others Facebook has changed it’s controversial Beacon feature, where outside purchases were published in a user’s news feed, to ‘opt-in’ rather than ‘opt out’. Continue reading
How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook
In an Internet Week article columnist Cory Doctorow describes how Facebook and other social networks have built-in self-destructs: They make it easy for you to be found by the people you’re looking to avoid. Continue reading