ExecTweets is a new social networking service from Federated Media and Microsoft that allows users to find and follow top business executives and CEOs on Twitter.

ExecTweets is a social network search that aggregates the tweets of the top business executives and allows people to follow the most high-powered business tweets.

You can check out the ExecTweets web site at Exectweets.com

Some of the executives that can be found on ExecTweets.com are:

Adam Brown, Coca-Cola
Barry Judge, BestBuy
Brad Smith, Microsoft
Craig Newmark, Craigslist
Evan Williams, Twitter
Jay Adelson, Digg
John Battelle, Federated Media Publishing
Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks, HDNet
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
Pete Cashmore, Mashable
Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com
Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media

In what may be a historic first for both the legal profession and online social networking, lawyers in Australia convinced a judge to allow them to serve legal documents on a couple using the social network Facebook after failing to serve the documents in person.

The Australian couple had defaulted on their mortgage and have now been served legally binding court papers through the Facebook social network.

Attorney Mark McCormack thought up the Facebook plan after it became obvious that the couple was intentionally avoiding being served with the legal papers.

The couple had failed to respond to numerous emails from McCormack’s law firm and missed a court appearance on Oct 3.

McCormack stated that the couple had basically “vanished”, so he looked to Facebook as a viable alternative to traditional process serving methods.

McCormack said: “It’s somewhat novel. We don’t know of any other lawyer who has used Facebook in this way.”

McCormack also said that he believes there was no other way to find the couple, noting: “They weren’t available at their residence. They no longer worked at the place given in some documents as the last place of their employment.”

The Facebook profiles showed the couples’ birth dates, email addresses and friend lists.

The personal information found on their Facebook profiles was enough to convince the court that Facebook was a legally viable method for contacting the defendants.

However, in giving permission to use the Facebook site, the judge required that the legal documents be sent via private email so that other Facebook users could not read the contents of the papers.

Courts have previously allowed judgements to be sent by email, but it is not known if Facebook or any other social networks have been used for this type of process serving.

The Facebook social network currently has more than 140 million users.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

A recent military intelligence report draft from the U.S. Army’s 304 Military Intelligence Battalion Open Source Intelligence Team warns that the Twitter social network could be used as a communication tool for terrorists planning an attack.

The report outlines three possible scenarios where terrorists could use the Twitter social networking tool, citing the use of Twitter by activists during the Republican National Convention to update each other on police activity as well as Hezbollah-organized Twitter feeds as examples of how the popular social network has already been used by radical groups for communication.

The three possible Twitter terrorist scenarios listed in the report include:

1. The use of cell phones with a Google maps/Twitter mash-up to plot where they are, terrorists could use the Twitter social network to communicate in near-real time with updatea about troop locations and movements.

2. One terrorist has two cell phones — one for Twitter updates and another which is connected to an explosive device or a “suicide vest.” A second terrorist also has two cell phones — one for Twitter updates and the other to detonate the bomb. They could communicate using Twitter to synchronize the “exact” time for an attack.

3. A terrorist uses the Twitter account of a member of the US military. The terrorist gets information out of the target and uses it for identity theft, hacking or physical attacks.

You can read the report below:

Source: WashingtonPost.com

Today IBM launched it’s business social network service called Bluehouse. Bluehouse will offer business professionals the best of both social networking services and business-collaboration tools.

Bluehouse is a software-as-a-service site. Bluehouse will be free during its public beta release. Once the beta testing is over, in a few months, subscription prices will start.

Bluehouse will feature a set of online collaboration tools, including instant messaging, networked conferencing, file sharing, profiles, directory and tools to build business social networks.

Linkedin.com and Facebook.com are two of the top social network sites that are currently used by some companies for business collaboration and networking. Like Facebook, Bluehouse will allow people to quickly collaborate with one another. However, Bluehouse has special management options to ensure that privacy and other security controls are in place for businesses.

For more information on the Bluehouse social network, visit bluehouse.lotus.com.

Source: ComputerWorld

Almost 25 percent of companies restrict employee access to Facebook.com, MySpace.com and other social network sites. The statistic comes from a survey of 200 HR professionals.

The number of Americans using social networks has tripled in the past few years and the use of these sites has grown during business hours. People 35 and older are using Facebook.com and MySpace.com in large and growing numbers.

Some companies overlook the use of social networking during work hours but others view social networks as “productivity killers”.

Around 8 percent of businesses reportedly encourage workers to use social networks, and 10% of companies surveyed say that social networks are valuable sites for marketing, networking and sales efforts. In addition, some companies say that banning the use of social networks like Linkedin.com and Facebook.com could make it difficult to recruit young employees.

The majority of businesses aren’t formally dealing with the issue of social networks. Fifty-nine percent of companies do not have a formal corporate policy on using social networks during work hours. Almost 50 percent of companies reported that social networks aren’t an issue as long as employees complete their work. So far, formal company policies on social networks are minimal because social networking is such a new phenomenon.

A recent study from a U.K. network security firm Global Secure System showed that employees are using 30 minutes or more per work day on social networks. Lost productivity is not the only reason that some companies ban the use of social networks at work. Computer viruses and the exposure of private company information are some of the dangers raised by too much social network usage.

More than two out of three information technology employees surveyed by Network World in 2007 reported that they use social networks. IT employees are more likely to use the professional social networks like LinkedIn.com, but Facebook.com and MySpace.com are used as well.

Source: Network World