Facebook’s new policy changes allow it to read your face, use it for ads

Facebook’s proposed changes to its Data Use and Privacy policies give the platform more control and knowledge of a user’s image and likeness.

Facebook is making big changes to the language in its Data Use and Privacy Policy that will allow the company to use information already on the platform in new ways that might frustrate some users. While some of the changes may raise some red flags for those concerned about giving up even more private data, at least the company is telling us ahead of time.

The list of proposed changes are available via the Facebook Site Governance page for review, although the exact language is obscured from users. The most important changes have to do with how Facebook can recognize and manage a user’s image to create a better experience on the platform and create Sponsored Stories without legal reproach.

The changes come at the order of a judge, now Facebook has finally ended the class-action lawsuit against its use of user information for ads and sponsored stories with a$20 million settlement. The lawsuit put Facebook in the hot seat for using the images and content of users for ad content without consent or compensation — even, at times, featuring users who were under 18.  The company is trying to ensure that it won’t surprise users again, and is using plenty of plain language to protect itself.

“We rewrote the entire advertising section to better explain what we thought was important for people to know about how we use the information we receive to provide relevant ads to people on and off Facebook,” Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan wrote to users.

That new advertising section essentially covers the thorny issues in Facebook’s recent lawsuit. When the changes go into effect after a week-long comment period, simply using Facebook will allow the company to use the name, likeness and language of a user for ads or “Sponsored Stories” without any compensation. That issue now extends to minors, which was the biggest sticking point of the class-action law suit, as users under 18 consent to testify that an adult has given permission for this to happen.

The second is a tiny, easily-overlooked change in the way that Facebook manages facial recognition for photo tags. With the new updates, Facebook could match faces in friends’ photos by reading and analyzing features in a user’s profile photo. Egan told All Things that this feature is directed to encourage tagging more photos and prevent “unsavory” photos from reaching the public forum.

However, if the idea that Facebook knows your face is unsettling, the feature can be disabled via the platform’s labyrinthian Privacy Settings dashboard.

15 Facebook Tips and Tricks

If you surf Facebook on daily basis or occasionally, chances are you’re already familiar with regular stuffs like add/delete friends, update statuses, walls and profile, add and explore pages & applications, etc, but there’s more..

In this post we share with you some interesting things you can do on (or with) Facebook; inclusive of tricks that are not documented or unknown to many, as well as tips to stay connected better with your friends. Without further ado, here’s 15 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know. If you have interesting tips/tricks related to Facebook, please feel free to share in the comment box below.

1. How To Download Facebook Photo Albums

   FacePAD: Facebook Photo Album Downloader allows you to download your friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, with the click of a button.
   

2. How To Share Flickr Photos To Facebook

   Flickr2Facebook is an unofficial Flickr to Facebook uploader(bookmarklet) which allows you upload photos to Facebook from Flickr.
   

3. How To Update Facebook Without Using Facebook

   hellotxt and Ping.fm both introduced features that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages.
   

4. How To Schedule Facebook Messages

   Sendible lets you schedule Facebook messages ahead of time so you can send messages to your friends, customers or colleagues in the future.
   

5. How To "Friend" Someone On Facebook & Hide It From Your Status Updates

   A short tutorial on Makeuseof to guide you how to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to your closer friends.
   

6. How To Create A Photo Collage Using Pictures Of Your Facebook Friends

   Click on Friends tab. Proceed to More tab. From "Choose an option" dropdown, choose any of the dashes "—" . Your Facebook friends collage is right on your computer screen.
   

7. How To Know When Facebook Friends Secretly Delete Or Block You

   This service has been discontinued. X-Friends is a unique tool for tracking friends that disappear from Facebook.
   

8. How To Display Selected Pictures Only On Your Facebook Profile Page

   A little-known feature in Facebook that lets you decide who shows up in that Friends box. Click that "edit" pencil in your Friends box and type the names of your best friends in the box that says "Always show these friends"
   

9. How To Remove Facebook Advertisements

   This Greasemonkey script – Facebook: Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages.
   

10. How To Access Facebook Chat On Desktop

    Gabtastik and digsby let you keep Facebook chat sessions open on your Windows desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.
    

11. How To Create Quiz On Facebook Easily

    LOLapps provides quiz creator that can be employed to conjure up these popular personality quizzes that are so widespread in Facebook.
    

12. How To Get Facebook Updates On Email

    NutshellMail consolidates your Facebook accounts through the inbox you use the most.
    

13. How To Update Facebook Status From Firefox

    FireStatus is a status update utility for multiple social networks, including FaceBook.
    

14. How To Get Facebook On Your Desktop

    Seesmic Desktop, Facebooker, Xobni, Facebook Sidebar Gadget, Scrapboy and Facebook AIR application are desktop applications that allows you interact with your stream just as you would on Facebook, but without the browser.
    

15. How To Delete, Cancel And Terminate Facebook Account And Profile

    A simple guide to terminate, delete or cancel Facebook account, together with the Facebook profile easily.
    
    
    

Five Ways Securing Your Facebook Account

Facebook users are now able to secure the identity of the account. Anything? Here are five tips for your Facebook account more secure. 

1. Enable HTTPS 

Although it’s not a default configuration, you can adjust your privacy settings. To change this setting go to Account> Account Settings. And find the Account Security. Make sure the Secure browsing box is checked.. 

2. Disable the Public Search 

These settings define your visibility on search engines like Google. If you do not want others to know about your profile, then this option should be disabled. To change this setting go to Account> Privacy Settings> APPS and Websites> Public Search> Edit Settings. Preventing the profile appears in Google to anyone who is looking for your name, Enable Public Search box. 

3. Disable Facebook Search 

Way to go to Account> Privacy Settings> Connecting on Facebok> View Settings. Then change the settings for the Find me on Facebook to friends only, or if you want to have visibility of some friends become Friends of Friends. 

4. Control Applications 

Apply to Account> Privacy Settings> Apps and Websites> Edit Your Settings. Then make sure all applications the OFF button is pressed, thus blocking any applications that use personal data. 

5. Remove Personal Information 

You have to go to Account> Privacy Settings> Sharing on Facebook. Change the data in the profile to combat identity theft.

Some Easy Ways to Use Pinterest to Boost your SEO

Pinterest, in the recent times, has earned huge popularity among internet users. This social media platform is effectively used for brand promotion and business marketing. Establishing online visibility through Pinterest has become the trend of the competitive generation these days. This social networking site has ranked the top amongst the other sites. It is ahead of Facebook even! Pinterest is really a potential site where sharing of contents and reaching out to the audience is pretty easy.

The best part is that Pinterest can also be used for boosting your SEO apart from enhancing the online presence.

How can you upheaval your SEO through this social platform?

• Firstly, fill the “about” section of your Pinterest account.

This is not as interesting as pinning images in your board but let me tell you this is a crucial task for SEO that all users should perform. The text you enter into this field should be keyword-rich so that search engine can easily track you and group up your pins, boards and profiles according to the correct search result.

• Secondly, fill up SEO hot spots

Like all other social networking sites, Pinterest too have some areas which search engine scans. By optimizing these key areas, you can improve your visibility on the search engines. When you are using the Pinterest platform, you should fill up the SEO title and give the individual boards a name. All these should have the appropriate keywords.

• Your next task will be to link up your different platforms through this social platform.

On visiting the one of your Pinterest pages, the visitor might like to explore some other offerings made by you online. Hence, you should give them that chance so that they can move to your social media platforms, websites and blogs through the Pinterest profile. Using the call of action comments is also a good choice for you.

• Then, create and categorize your different Pinterest boards.

Search engine spiders can notice more, if you have multiple pinboards. You should create boards dealing with diverse topics. The titles of these boards should be strong enough and must be keyword-rich. People of all genres and all groups of interests can find something or the other. When you have different pinboards in your profile, it is necessary to categorize them. Categorizing the boards will help the visitors to find you while browsing your site by categories.

Follows these steps and you can use Pinterest for expanding your exposure across the web world.

4 Powerful Social Media Tools Used For Branding

Branding plays an important role in advertisement as it becomes the name tag of the business that you are dealing in. Hence several online tools are there to be used as this is more of the technological era and there are improved tools that can be used for the advertisement and branding of your business, service or product through social media. It is entirely up to you to know which tool you should apply for the branding and the publicity of your business. You must use the tools in an effective manner so that it gives the best meaning to your message and the image you want to portray to users.  Before using any of such sites you must look at the others using these tools for the same purpose so that you gain an idea about how to deal with the sites and how to effectively put them into use.

Here are the 4 social media tools that you can use for the branding purpose:

1.      TweetDeck:

This is the social media tool that allows you to manage several accounts all in a row like Facebook, Twitter. You can stay in touch with all the posts that you have been doing in the past and the comments or the views that are shared by the public on your posts. This is the best tool that can be used for the analysis of your social media success. It will also help you in overcoming the flaws and using the tool in an effective manner can make a lot of difference.

2.      HootSuite:

This is one of the great tools that enables you to manage the multiple social media sites at a time. It caters for most renowned and reliable websites that are used for the social linkage like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, WordPress, Mixi and MySpace. It helps you to see all the relevant post that you have been published for the business or the product you are working with. This is an advanced level tool used for the analyzing all these sites at the same hour of the clock.

3.      AddThis:

This tool used for bookmarking of websites and it’s very widely used with millions of users actively utilizing it. A user can bookmark any of the items of choice by using Facebook, Google Bookmarks, Pinterest or Twitter. It helps in the promotion of the punch lines that you have used for the advertisement purpose.

4.      Instagram:

This is the tool used for visual promotion. Using this tool you can update pictures and images of your choice relevant to your followers or just to keep them engaged. It’s been said that Instagram would support video by June 20th and this is only to make it more poerful than it already is. It gives professional touch to all the images that you want to post to Twitter or the Facebook via Instagram.

These were few of the tools that can be used for the branding and advertisement purpose with the best use of the social media sites; there are lots more than these.

How Social Networking Can Help Grow Your Business

Social media has become one of the most commonly used marketing tools by most businesses. If you happen to own a business, then you should also consider using social media as a marketing tool for your business. The best thing about joining any of the social media  platform is the fact that they help to increase traffic to your site. It is very effective considering the fact that you get instant results and it is also quite cheap as compared to other marketing tools. There quite a number of social media that you can choose to use but it is important that you choose willing depending on the nature of your business as well as your target market.

Social Networking Sites

One of the most common social networking sites that you can use is Facebook. Over the year Facebook has gained popularity all over the world and the fact that it has billions of users makes it the best platform to market your business from. Joining Facebook is free and you can open a page for your business and invite as many people as you would like.

Another social networking network that you can consider joining is Twitter. Twitter is also a good platform to advertise your business and ensure that you keep your customer’s informed and updated about your business. Just like Facebook, with Twitter you get to see your clients’ feedback the moment they post them on your wall. The fact that you get feedback from your clients or the target market makes it easy for you to improve on your business as well as service.

How Cellphones Come in

What has made the use of social networking sites very effective is the use of cell phones. Most people are able to browse through the internet through their cell phones which makes it very cheap and the best part is that you can browse from anywhere for example: you could be at the bus stop waiting for a bus. Considering that almost everyone owns a phone, it is quite easy for one to browse the internet or even join the social networking sites. Other than then social networking sites, you can also send emails to your customers or everyone that is recorded in your database. With cell phones, it becomes very easy for people to access their emails as well.

The use of Android Phones has also helped business owners as most people are not only able to access the internet but download, buy online and perform other functions online. If you are using an Android phone then it becomes quite easy for you to access the internet.