Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable.com, has written an interesting opinion piece on social media and the death of privacy for CNN.com.

Cashmore lists and discusses numerous developments in social media that threaten to blow away the idea of personal privacy, including the SenseCam – a personal camera worn around your neck that will capture an image every 30 seconds to record “every moment of a person’s life”.

While the SenseCam has great potential for people with Alzheimer’s or Dementia, it brings with it significant privacy concerns.

Cashmore states –

“It’s easy to see the associated risks of a life-logging device. From stalkers to identity theft, recording such information (and to unlock its true value, posting it online) makes us vulnerable to all manner of bad actors.

But what about the cost of not sharing? In the online realm, that might mean you simply don’t exist. ”

This idea of Cashmore’s seems like a utopian reach. It is understandable that Cashmore might feel that not sharing every aspect of your life online could mean a virtual non-existence since he has built a respectable blog empire promoting the new era of social networks and social media, but what about the problem of billions of egos worldwide sharing every moment of their lives in blog posts, camera captures, profile feeds and tweets?

Several problems come to mind, including: 1) millions of individual real-time reality shows and, 2) a billion big brothers running around recording every moment of their lives and yours.

Not to mention the pathetic people who are already starting to miss out on living because they are too busy recording their lives with constant personal updates on social media sites. What is next, personal stage-management services for these social media addicts?

Cashmore goes on to make some very good observations about social media sites like Flickr, Twitter and Facebook, noting that all of this public photo sharing, tweeting and social networking is contributing to the growth of the real-time web and a whole new way of sharing, searching and finding information.

Another good observation by Cashmore is how social media has opened up mass communication outlets for people who would not have been given the time of day in the old media world, noting that “the more content we share, the more connections and opportunities open up.”

In addition, Cashmore notes that we are living in a time where attention is the new currency and privacy is obscurity and, by inference, a form of poverty.

However, if enough people start walking around with SenseCams, no one will be able to “opt out” of the brave new world of social media.

Source: CNN.com

Tech savvy crooks and criminals are increasingly using popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace as tools for their latest phishing schemes.

Cybercrooks realize that popular social networks contain a wealth of personal information contributed by their growing user base.

Over the past 3 years almost 3,200 account hijacking cases on social networks were reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The Internet Crime Complaint Center is a partnership between the FBI; the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Fake profile updates, emails, video and links are used to trick social network users into revealing personal information about themselves on scam sites, including logon IDs and passwords.

Once a person’s social network account is hacked, the criminals can trick their list of friends and repeat the crime on other people. Social networks provide plenty of opportunity to trick more people – the average Facebook user has 120 friends on their list.

The huge growth in social networks has created great tools for cybercriminals. Facebook alone has 300 million registered people.

Cybercriminals are experts at using social engineering to trick people. They can use a friend’s social network profile to trick you into thinking the said person is in trouble and needs financial help, causing some to give out personal and financial information.

A 2005 study from Indiana University showed that as much as 70% of social network phishing scams are successful.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 72,000 complaints about Internet fraud in 2008 that amounted to $264.6 million in financial loss, with each victim losing an average of $931 USD.

Social networks are responding to this new threat.

Facebook has created computer systems that detect phished user accounts. They can recognize and lock user accounts that send an unusually high amount of messages to friends.

MySpace compiles blacklists of phony user accounts to stop people from clicking on phishing links.

Source: CNN

The LinkedIn social network, popular among business people and professionals, has reportedly reached the 50 million member mark.

LinkedIn grew from 45 million registered people in August to 50 million by mid October.

According to recent traffic statistics from comScore , LinkedIn continues to grow consistently in unique visitors.

In September, LinkedIn attracted 9 million unique visitors in the U.S., up from 8.7 million unique visits in August.

However, LinkedIn’s growth is mostly due to increasing international users. LinkedIn grew from 18 million unique visits in July to 20 million unique visits in August – Worldwide.

Half of LinkedIn’s registered users are now international, including 11 million registered users in Europe and 3 million registered users in India. India is now the fastest growing user base for the LinkedIn social network.

Source: LinkedIn.com.

Bloomberg News recently interviewed Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable.com, on social media, web 2.0 and the rising success and profitability of the Mashable brand.

Some facts about Pete Cashmore and Mashable:

- Cashmore founded Mashable.com in 2005 at the age of 19.

- The Mashable blog is focused almost exclusively on Social Networks, Social Media and Web 2.0 news.

- Mashable.com gets over 10 million monthly pageviews.

- Pete Cashmore was named one of the Web’s top 25 celebrities by Forbes in 2009.

- Mashable.com is listed by Technorati as one of the top 10 blogs in the world.

- Mashable was ranked as one of the world’s most profitable blogs by BusinessWeek.

You can view the Pete Cashmore interview by Bloomberg News below:

Online dating site Gelato is fast becoming the Facebook & Twitter of singles sites.

Gelato mixes social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and others with real-time search into it’s online dating site to give people a new way to find a date.

The idea behind Gelato’s social dating 2.0 site is to give people insights into a potential date by allowing them to search for people based on their Facebook updates, Twitter tweets, Flickr pictures etc.

Gelato users simply sign up for an account and connect it to their Facebook or Twitter profiles, then users answer some typical demographic questions common on dating sites like: relationship status, relationship interests, ethnicity, religion, politics etc.

The interesting mix to this new online dating site is users can then link a number of their other social networking and Web 2.0 accounts to Gelato, including: Netflix, Hulu, Flickr, Amazon, Pandora, and Last.fm.

In addition, people can specify public or restricted access to their network activity and updates on Gelato. All of your profile updates on the linked sites will appear in your Gelato “lifestream”. This personal information and potential date bait is then searchable by other Gelato users – as long as you have approved your feeds for public viewing.

Gelato users can then search Gelato for recent profile updates on any topic from entertainment to politics to find a like-minded mate or ( since opposites attract ) someone with totally different views and interests.

However, the only people you will find through a Gelato search will be other Gelato members who have agreed to open their social network updates and Web 2.0 feeds to the public.

If you are comfortable with allowing Gelato’s online dating site access to your Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Hulu updates and feeds and other profile information, then Gelato may be a good option for finding your next date.

A real-time dating and love search. What will they think of next.

You can visit the Gelato online dating site @ ge.la.to

Source:Yahoo.com

Social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are blocked on over half ( 54% ) of corporate networks, according to a recent survey of Chief Information Officers that was conducted by Robert Half Technology.

Furthermore, this 54% represents the percentage of CIOs surveyed who say that their corporations do not allow use of popular social networks by employees for any reason while on the job.

The officers were asked the following question: “Which of the following most closely describes your company’s policy on visiting social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work?”

The CIOs’ responded to the social network question as follows:

- Prohibited completely – 54%
- Permitted for business purposes only – 19%
- Permitted for limited personal use – 16%
- Permitted for any type of personal use – 10%
- Don’t know/no answer – 1%

Source: Robert Half Technology

According to a recent survey conducted by CareerBuilder, 45% of employers reported using social networks to screen prospective job candidates. This is a significant jump from 22 percent last year. Approximately 11 percent stated that they plan to start using social networks to research potential employees in the future.

Over 2,600 hiring managers were included in the survey, which was completed in June.

Of the employers who do online searches, due diligence and background checks on job candidates, 29% use Facebook, 26% use LinkedIn and 21% use MySpace. About 11% search blog posts and 7% search Twitter profiles.

No suprisingly, the top industries that use social networks and search engines to research job candidates via social networking sites are those that specialize in technology and sensitive information, including IT employers at 63% and Professional and B2B Services at 53%.

Over one third of employers say they have found online content on social networks that caused them not to hire a job candidate.

14% of employers have passed on a potential employee because the job candidate sent an online message using an emoticon and 16% report excluding a job candidate for using shorthand text language such as LOL in an email or application.

In addition, 18% of employers say they have found content on social network profiles that caused them to hire a job candidate.

Rosemary Haefner is Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder and advises job seekers that: “Social networking is a great way to make connections with potential job opportunities and promote your personal brand across the Internet. Make sure you are using this resource to your advantage by conveying a professional image and underscoring your qualifications.”

Rosemary gives the following specific advice for people seeking jobs —–

1. Clean up digital dirt BEFORE you begin your job search. Remove any photos, content and links that can work against you in an employer’s eyes.

2. Consider creating your own professional group on sites like Facebook or BrightFuse.com to establish relationships with thought leaders, recruiters and potential referrals.

3. Keep gripes offline. Keep the content focused on the positive, whether that relates to professional or personal information. Makes sure to highlight specific accomplishments inside and outside of work.

4. Remember that other people can see your friends, so be selective about who you accept as friends. Monitor comments made by others. Consider using the “block comments” feature or setting your profile to “private” so only designated friends can view it.

5. Do not mention your job search if you’re still employed.

Source: MarketWatch.com

The snitch.name site let’s users search people profiles on multiple social networks and people search sites. Users can pick and choose which sites to search from a list of 39 of the top social networks and people search engines.

Some of the searches that snitch.name includes in their list are useless at best, but the site does include popular social network searches like Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, Netlog, Myspace and Linkedin.

The Snitch search engine also includes some good online people search engines like Pipl, 123People, Wink and Zoominfo.

You can try the Snitch social search for yourself at Snitch.

A recent study by a US marketing firm suggests that as much as 40% of tweets on Twitter are ‘pointless babble’.

Pear Analytics randomly sampled 2,000 tweets from Twitter’s public stream and divided them into six categories: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and pass-along value.

Pear found that 811 of the sampled tweets ( 40.55 percent ) fell into the “pointless babble” category.

About 751 ( 37.55 percent ) of the sampled messages were categorized as Conversational messages. Conversational messages are defined by Pear as tweets that go back and forth between Twitter users.

Pear found that only 8.70% of tweets had “pass-along value”. These were tweets that users “re-tweeted” or passed on to their followers.

Corporate self-promotion accounted for 5.85% of tweets, followed by blatant Twitter spam at 3.75%.

News from media outlets accounted for only 3.60 percent of all the tweets sampled.

Pear plans to run the study every quarter to identify Twitter trends.

Source: Breitbart.com

Here is how social networks can take dumb criminals and make them even dumber.

A thief who stole a computer and other items from a woman’s house logged into the the woman’s Facebook account and boasted about the theft, even going so far as to say that the Television in the her house wasn’t good enough to take.

The items were taken from Victoria Richardson, who resides in the UK. The thief took an iPhone, a Nintendo DS, a handbag, some cash and credit cards and a computer. After the crime had been committed Victoria logged into her Facebook account only to find that the bragging bandit had left messages on her profile, stating:

“on my new laptop”

“Listening to music on my new phone feels so good.”

“I have the laptop , phones ok but a bit scratched itll do, tv was rubbish so I left it, ds was a bonus, now to the porn shop, thankyou toshiba is my favourite make”.

“regards your night time burglar”.

Victoria Richardson stated: “I felt very spooked. I have never felt like that before. It felt like they were rubbing my nose in it.”

However, the social networking bandit shows that the criminal isn’t very bright. Publishing a record of their crime on Facebook can only help the police with their investigation. It wouldn’t even be surprising if the thief has a Facebook profile of their own, since they had no trouble figuring out what Facebook is and using it as a tool for their bravado.

Using Facebook’s social search, you could take the comments above as examples of the thief’s writing style and compare it to comments on other Facebook profiles whose geographic location is near the victim’s.

Source: Mashable