Cyber Imprints

Facebook is continuously adding new things on its interface and features. The most popular feature that was added lately was the VideoChat. A friend of mine already used the Video Chat feature of Facebook to chat with her friends abroad.

Now, I noticed another new thing when I made my usual visit to my Facebook account. Here is what I saw:

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Please click on the photo to see a better view of the image.

Facebook added a widget to the right side of my Facebook "Home" page. The widget shows the latest updates from my contacts in Facebook. The widget is being updated in real-time.

If you click on one of your friend's updates on the widget, you will see this:

The status update will expand to show you the whole thread. Using this feature, you can easily comment on the thread without the to look for it one your FB Home page.

This new feature of Facebook is pretty neat because you can see the updates from your friends in real-time. It will also be helpful for the FB users to see friend's updates that were already buried by loads of other FB statuses and updates on your FB page.

Their is only something that makes me think with this new feature of Facebook. It looks very similar with Twitter.

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Visit Before the Eastern Sunset and read about the State of the Soul of the Nation Address.

Social Media sites are websites that allows the subscribers or members of that website to socialize with one another through the sharing of comments, pictures, videos, and other online interactive activities. There are numerous social media websites that are present in the World Wide Web. Each of these websites caters to various groups and has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some of social media websites that I encountered through the years are Friendster, Facebook, Twitter, Multiply, Yahoo 360, and Plurk.

Social Media Optimization, or SMO, is the process of creating awareness of your blog through the use of social media websites. It is opposed to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that focuses more on increasing the rank of a blog in search engines. Because of the continued prominence of social media websites, successful bloggers utilized them to promote their blogs and reach out to more readers.

I also use SMO to promote my blog posts. The social media websites that I currently use for my SMO are Facebook, Twitter, and Friendster. Prominent bloggers already attested the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as SMO tool. I have not seen any review for Friendster.

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Friendster is one of the leading social websites in the Philippines and it still boasts of thousands of active Filipino users. Though, many of its veteran members shifted to Facebook. I observed that very few bloggers use Friendster as a blogging tool. 

The main page that is fronted to other Friendster users is the Profile page. This page contains the self-description of the Friendster user and the comments made by his/her friends. The profile page is the main page where a blogger can leave links leading to his/her blog. Bloggers could also use the Friendster bulletin for blog promotion.

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Facebook picked up the comment elements of Friendster and expanded it. Interactivity in Facebook is through posts that are posted by the Facebook user and is visible to all of his/her friend’s Facebook main page. His/her post can be commented by his/her friends and the comments are showed in a nested form. This ingenious mode in Facebook promotes online conversation because commenters reply to one another.

Facebook is more blogger friendly because it is easy to post links that lead to your blogs. An added bonus is the use of Networked Blogs that automatically pull your blog post and is ready to be posted on Facebook.

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Twitter is almost similar with Facebook in that it also uses the posting system that could be found in Facebook. The main difference is that you are limited to 140 characters (space included) for your posts or more popularly known as tweets. This limitation is not a disadvantage though because many people subscribed for this websites and that includes successful bloggers. Leaving a tweet could even be made through SMS messaging of mobile phones.

Of the three social media websites that I used, Friendster is the least effective, which is followed by Twitter. The most effective is Facebook. Friendster contributed 17% of the readers coming from social media sites, while Twitter contributed 33%. Facebook, meanwhile, contributed 50% of the visitors.

This simple statistics only shows that Friendster is not a good platform for social media optimization. The possible cause of this is that the facilities where I place links to my blogs is usually ignored by Friendster users. Whatever the reason, it only means that Friendster has to redefine itself to be more blogger friendly.

For better social media optimization, I suggest that you both use Facebook and Twitter. These two websites were somehow compatible with one another. An example of this compatibility is a Facebook application that posts your tweets on your Facebook wall. 

You can stay away from Friendster when doing social media optimization and you will not be missing anything.

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For more information on how to use Friendster as a blogging tool please read “How to Get Inbound Links to our Blog.”

Further comparison of Facebook and Friendster could be found at my article “Facebook vs Friendster.”

Logos of Facebook, Friendster, and witter are under the copyright of their respective owners.

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That statement surprised me because even simple people in the Philippines are already hooked up with Facebook. Now, the trend is the continuous rise on the number of Filipinos opening an account on Facebook and it is estimated that the trend will continue in the coming years. In the Internet shops in my village, I noticed that people are giving more time to the Internet (specifically Facebook) than the popular online games.

The rise of the number of Filipino Facebook users also lead to an increase of identity theft and account hacking. I have seen many news items about it and many people are unaware how to protect their Facebook accounts.

Keeping your Facebook account from being hacked is easy and there are simple ways that you could do to prevent it.

A small check box (with the label “Keep me logged in”) could be found below the “email” field. Make sure that you had it unchecked before logging in to your account. You must do this precautionary measure whenever you are using other people’s computer, or a shared computer, or when you are surfing in an Internet café.

If you keep the box checked, then your account will not be logged off even if you close the browser or even if you turn the computer off.

Aside from unchecking the box, you must also make sure that your browser is not saving your login information.

Hackers can do many things when they know some of your personal information, specifically your email address. By default, Facebook displays most of your personal information on your Facebook profile publicly. Everyone, even those who are not on your friends’ list, can see your e-mail address.

To restrict people from seeing your personal information, you must heighten your privacy settings. You could do this by clicking on the “Privacy Settings” link, which could be found on the “Account” tab on the upper right corner of your Facebook page.

The “Privacy Settings” link will take you to a page that lets you control what information you want to be shared publicly, to your friends only, or just known only to you.

Aside from auto-saving, browsers also store the history of the pages you viewed while surfing the Internet. So, when using Facebook, it is advisable that you clear browsing history and private data before leaving the computer shop.

For Firefox, click Tools >> Clear Private Data. A window will pop up and will ask you what information you want to be cleared. For Internet Explorer, you should click Tools >> Delete Browsing History. For Google Chrome, click the wrench symbol found on the upper right corner of the Google Chrome Window and then click Options. A window will pop out on which you should click the Under the Hood Tab and click on “Clear browsing data...” button.

I have a friend on Facebook who wants to give her password to me so that I could manage her account whenever she is not online. I did not accede to what she wants and told her not to give her login information to anyone.

Your Facebook account is your personal page and you should be the only one who could access it.

This is the most obvious way of preventing your Facebook account from being hacked. However, I have encountered in many Internet cafes that some people forget to log off their accounts.

Remember that turning off the browser is not an assurance that your Facebook account will be logged out. Always make sure that you log off your Facebook account.

When creating a password for your Facebook account, it is better that you use both numbers and letters; and capital and non-capital letters. This will make your password hard to be guessed by would be hackers. 

Also, create different passwords for your different accounts. Use different passwords for your Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, etc. so that if one of your accounts was compromised then your other accounts will be safe.

If you doubt that your Facebook account was compromised, then you should change your password immediately. It is better to be sure that your Facebook account was safe than otherwise.

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So there you have it, some of the tips that you could use to protect your Facebook account. If you have more tips, then please leave a comment.

I also wrote an article related to this in Ahab Reviews and Tips, which give tips on how to prevent identity theft when surfing in an Internet cafe.