written by: Amani Liggett

A Tumblr Dashboard

Facebook’s glory days are fading. Yes, it’s true. The giant of social media has gotten, well, crowded. Parents are on it, grandparents are on it, and employers use it to decide whether to hire someone.

For the rest of us, it’s time to find a new playground. Many have found this in Tumblr, a blogging and picture based social media website. Tumblr is much more informal, and one can be as secretive or as intimate as you may desire. There is no pressure here to add all of your family members, the kid from math class, or your dentist.

And unfortunately for Facebook, Tumblr is more fun. Users are rarely bombarded by ads, or asked to join groups or play any sort of Farmville-type games.

Members of the Tumblr community often poke fun at each other and themselves, which helps make the website feel nonthreatening. Users often lament their exaggerated bad habit of staying online all day and all night, making anyone who reads the post feel a little better about their own over-use of the computer. You stay up until 4am watching re-runs on Hulu too?

And of course, they make fun of Facebook, mainly for the previously mentioned reasons. Its too boring, too old, too frumpy, too packed-full of a million different things happening on the sidebar.

Tumblr is also full of rants on every topic available. Users write essay-length comments and responses on topics ranging from the seriousness of abortion to the silliness of different Hogwarts house characteristics. It certainly is a fun and easy way to find other fans of books, movies, and TV shows. Finding someone on Facebook who also happens to like Green Day, Shakespeare jokes, and Sherlock Holmes would be far more challenging than on Tumblr.

There is a sense of community on Tumblr that Facebook does not have and probably will never be able to attain at this point. Facebook got very big, very fast, so there is no sense of a unique space because everyone is already there. Tumblr is the new alternative.

That is the way of social media, for a while, Myspace was king, and then fell to Facebook, which itself is now going downhill. Facebook is clearly going to have to step-up its game to stay on top. With the uprising of Tumblr and other less-well-knowns, as well as dissenters complaining of Facebook’s frequent changes (the new Timeline feature is not going over well) and controversial privacy rules, the giant is in trouble.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Social Media News, Tumblr

Written By: Jessica Mangiameli

While there are many mixed emotions toward the new Facebook Timeline feature, one thing is certain, everyone’s Facebook will soon be switched over to the new timeline whether one wants it or not.

It does take a while getting used to the new Facebook timeline which was launched on October 6, 2011.  Even if one hasn’t switched to the new timeline, they can still see the new timeline if their friends have it, which may scare and worry some Facebookers about what they’re getting themselves into.

The New Facebook Timeline

The new design is laid out like an actual timeline with every year since the year you were born, displayed on the right hand side of the timeline.  One can click on any year and it will go back to that year on that person’s wall, bringing up previous posts from the past.  This feature worries many Facebookers because of old, embarrassing posts that might appear from when you were say, 16 years old. Some Facebookers say it is taking away any sort of privacy control there was for Facebook and ideally makes it easier for friends and family to “creep” through Facebook.

A new feature that some Facebookers like is the new cover photo displayed at the top of the timeline. It’s almost like a banner.  Facebookers can display their favorite pictures or a cool pattern or design that they found online as their cover photo.

If you’re ready for change and want to switch to the new timeline on Facebook it is very simple. Visit the facebook timeline page at http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline and click the “Get Timeline” link located at the bottom of the page.

Once a user decides they want the timeline, there is a seven day review period in which the user can edit their timeline and set it up the way they want before it goes public. During this seven day period, a user is able to launch their timeline so it goes live at any point. If the user waits, it will automatically go public in one week.

While this new change may have some users concerned, Facebook will always contain privacy settings where a user can set an option to “Only Me” meaning that you’re the only one who can see that specific content.

A lot of Facebookers really enjoy the new timeline and its organization. Facebook has come a long way since its debut in 2004. It’s mind boggling to try and think of what Mark Zuckerberg is going to change next.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Facebook Timeline, Features, Mark Zuckerberg, Social Networking, Timeline

Written by: Michael Arnold

In late September of 2011, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the website’s most significant change since its inception – the Timeline. In a press release Zuckerberg defined Facebook’s new layout as “the story of your life, and it has three pieces, all your stories, all your apps, in a new way to express who you are.”

Sounds intriguing. However, Facebook’s new layout has received some terrible reviews by users. On a Mashable Social Media Poll posted in mid-December, roughly half of the 3,000 Facebook users polled expressed their discontentment with the Timeline. Many users are resisting the change from the original profile all together after seeing the confusing and cumbersome Timeline page.

So what’s with all of the feet dragging?

The Los Angeles Times likens the Timeline to “an obsessive compulsive’s digital scrapbook, collecting every detail, no matter how trivial, in chronological order.” Sound creepy? That’s because it is.

Timeline tracks your “birth” – or rather your first time using Facebook – to the present moment. It incessantly surfaces photos, likes, tags, places you’ve been and notes to effectively capture  the essence of any given Facebook user on one page.

Zuckerberg’s move to Timeline drifts from the website’s initial purpose: to help people connect and share with the people in their lives. Instead, the focus of Facebook will become the chronological “life story” of the person whose page it is.

Not only are Timeline pages revealing more about people’s pasts, they’re promoting constant moment-by-moment updates every day. Facebook’s new partnerships with Spotify and Hulu have already begun allowing users to bombard news feeds with interminable and automatic updates on songs that they’re listening to and shows that they’re watching.  Clearly this change is much less about communication, and more about voyeurism.

Timeline makes it easier than ever to get complete access to a person’s photos and interests. And with the page’s built-in archive, it is simple and easy to see what a person was doing at any particular point in her life on Facebook.

Since the change took effect Facebook has been encouraging users, in a multitude of ways, to add more information to their profile’s. Zuckerberg has not shied away from this. In fact, upon unveiling the Timeline at Facebook’s F8 Conference, he concluded that “life’s biggest moments” should be made more public since this is the overall purpose of the new layout.

Perhaps Facebook’s dramatic changes will deter some of its 800 million members from using the site as often. As this is unlikely, Facebook users should prepare to get to know a whole lot more about their “friends” in the coming months.

The Facebook logo

Technorati Tags: Dissappointing, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Social Media, Social Networking, Timeline

Facebook Timelines offers a new look-- and possibly less privacy.

Written by: Vanessa Formato

We’ve all done it: one minute, we’re looking at an acquaintance’s Facebook status, the next we’ve perused 500 photographs of said acquaintance dating back to the early 2000s. “Facebook stalking”—secretly viewing large amounts of a person’s online profile—is relatively common in this age of connectivity, but that isn’t to say it’s exactly desirable. With some major changes coming to Facebook in the form of Timeline, the biggest question on users’ minds may be how the new layout will effect stalking—and with good reason.

Facebook Timeline is a new kind of profile that not only displays personal information and mementos, but displays nearly all types of updates—from status to photographs to “likes”— chronologically on users’ main profiles. The idea is to create a profile that will allow you to “tell your life story” according to Timeline’s Facebook page.

As Sarah Love wrote for March Communications, Timeline is “complete repositioning of the purpose of Facebook,” which may be the most significant aspect of the change that could manage to fly under the radar at first. Love, like many users, starting using Facebook as a method to connect with her peers, but with Timeline the focus is shifted away from connection to observation: it turns profiles into “scrapbook[s],” more suited to online stalking than ever before.

The traditional Facebook set-up required potential stalkers to work for their information: photos and certain updates were hidden in separate tabs, but Timeline sets everything out in the open. One can click to view updates from certain time periods (even one labeled “born”) as well as access important “life events” and personal information with unprecedented ease, and this is what has some users concerned.

All things considered, Timeline so far seems almost less invasive than some of the other features Facebook rolled out late in 2011. The live news ticker that now appears on the homepage shows activity between one’s friends and non-mutual friends with surprising thoroughness. Couple the ability to see complete strangers’ activities at any time with the new profile set-up and you have a stage set perfectly for invading others’ privacy.

Thankfully, Timeline does include potential solutions to the Facebook stalking problem, the most important of which may be that it allows users to sift through their profiles before they go live. Currently, users are given seven days to edit their Timeline—more than enough time to delete drunken status updates or unflattering duck-faced photos from high school. Plus, privacy settings can always be altered to keep strangers and co-workers from knowing too much.

Timeline is a lesson in managing one’s online presence: will users be willing to take the time and suffer the potential embarrassment of engaging in enough navel-gazing to make their Timelines secure? Only time will tell.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Facebook Timeline, Mark Zuckerberg, privacy, Social Media, stalking, Timeline

Facebook is a wonderful tool for keeping track of your friends and family. It can also be helpful in developing professional and social contacts. But did you know that Facebook makes it easy to create and manage groups?

Folks manage groups on FB for all kinds of reasons, from social to political to work-related. Being a group administrator is not a difficult task, and the time committment depends on the level of  involvement you decide on. Here’s how you create a group:

1) On the left side of your homepage, find the link that says “Groups” and click on it.

2) On your groups page, you’ll see a grey box that says “Create a Group”. Click that box!

3) Now you should be on a page that asks for your group information. Fill in as much as you want to. The big decision is whether you want the group to be available to everyone on Facebook, or only people in your local network.

4) Once you’ve filled in all the blanks, click the “Create Group” button at the bottom of the screen.

5) This next page is about security and access options. Now is the time to figure out how much approval people will need to access your group.

6) After you save that, Facebook will take you to the Invites page. Congratulations! You’re ready to invite your friends to join your group and let the fun (or work) begin!

The best part? If at any point you feel overwhelmed and need to stop being administrator of the group, just tell Facebook. FB will pick a new administrator  from among your group members. You can walk away without worrying about your group dying!

Technorati Tags: access, coalition, create, Facebook, friends, fun, group, job, link, play, work

Human Resources

Social media can be used by Human Resources professionals to increase the quality of candidates and to stretch out further in to the available community of workers. While sites like LinkedIn naturally gravitate towards hiring and job searching, other sites also offer possibilities to increasing H.R. effectiveness.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Human Resources Social Media, Social Media in Workplace, Social Media News

Facebook page

Nielsen and Facebook have partnered up to increase the effectiveness of social media advertising. They also seek to prove the ability of social media to further advertising dollars and efforts.

Nielsen reports that it surveyed over 800,000 Facebook users and 125 advertising campaigns. The most successful ads were those featured on a homepage. When an ad was “liked” by a friend, teh success of that ad’s visibility and ability to be recalled by the viewer jumped to 16% and to 30% when the ad content appeared in a friend’s news feed.

Technorati Tags: Facebook advertising, Nielsen Facebook Social Media Advertising, social media advertising, Social Media News

Mouse

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that employees are on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It has become increasingly apparent that banning usage of these sites might not be simply futile, but may also be a lost marketing and networking opportunity.  NetProspex, a sales and marketing contact database, conducted a survey of corporations and ranked the top 50 for social media involvement. Microsoft’s employees ranked the highest for social media involvement.

Technorati Tags: Social Media, Social Media News, Social media survey Microsoft, social media workplace

Social Media

Travelers stranded by the Icelandic volcano spewing dangerous ash in to European airspace are finding comfort and resources via social media. The volcano has been erupting for nearly a week, completely grounding air travel in its wake. Ash contains tiny rock particles, which can be detrimental to the aircraft engines, thus causing what some have dubbed the worst flight delay since 9/11.
Social media has come to the rescue of these bedraggled travelers, and not just as forum to air grievances. Many are also finding rides and rooms vial Twitter and Facebook. Tod Brilliant, a California resident, created the Facebook group “When Volcanoes Erupt: A Survival Guide for Stranded Travellers,” after he and his 31-weeks-pregnant wife Andrea were stranded in London.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Social Media News, social media travel, Social media volcano, twitter

Facebook Safety

Facebook is taking steps to protect the safety of children. On Tuesday, it opened its newly redesigned Safety Center, which is a collaborative effort between Facebook and its Safety Advisory Board. The board, assembled four months ago, consists of these independent, global groups: Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International and The Family Online Safety Institute.

“Safety is Facebook’s top priority,” said Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan. “We’ve quadrupled the safety content available and we’ve created cleaner, more navigable interfaces to help you find answers to safety questions fast.”

After a frightening turn of events in Great Britain, where Facebook is accused as being complicit in a child abduction and murder case, the social media site has taken serious steps to address safety concerns. While Facebook has not acquiesed to every suggestion given by Britain’s authorities, it has created structures it hopes will not only waylay further abuse, but promote education, awareness and conversation on the part of children and their parents.

Facebook offers a Security page, with tips and information on avoiding hackers and scams, but the Safety Center is a more interactive effort which goes to greater lengths to protect users, namely children.

In the ever-changing world of social media, Facebook stands as the most popular site for users, and as such, bears the brunt of taking security further than its counterparts.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Facebook Safety, Facebook Safety Center Children, Social Media, Social Media Children, Social Media Safety