Do you like privacy? Well, now you can “Like” it officially — with Facebook’s newly launched Facebook and Privacy Page.

Today, the social networking site announced on its blog that it has created a page all about everyone’s favorite topic: Facebook privacy.

A few weeks ago, tensions came to a head with regard to Facebook — people were sick and tired of changing privacy settings, confused by the Open Graph and shocked by allegedly leaked IMs from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s college days, in which he scoffed at users for trusting him with their info. A (failed) movement calling for folks to quit the site grew, alternative versions of Facebook began popping up, and Time magazine even put privacy on its cover. Finally, Facebook launched new, simplified privacy settings in an attempt to make good.

Now, users have an official venue in which to get info on changes such as these, as well as to ask questions and (most likely) vent frustrations. Currently, there are a few video tutorials explaining the new privacy settings up on the page, as well as a series of articles on privacy from various publications.

Will you “Like” Facebook Privacy? Let us know in the comments.

[img credit: Darwin Bell]

Tags: facebook, privacy

Do you like privacy? Well, now you can “Like” it officially — with Facebook’s newly launched Facebook and Privacy Page.

Today, the social networking site announced on its blog that it has created a page all about everyone’s favorite topic: Facebook privacy.

A few weeks ago, tensions came to a head with regard to Facebook — people were sick and tired of changing privacy settings, confused by the Open Graph and shocked by allegedly leaked IMs from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s college days, in which he scoffed at users for trusting him with their info. A (failed) movement calling for folks to quit the site grew, alternative versions of Facebook began popping up, and Time magazine even put privacy on its cover. Finally, Facebook launched new, simplified privacy settings in an attempt to make good.

Now, users have an official venue in which to get info on changes such as these, as well as to ask questions and (most likely) vent frustrations. Currently, there are a few video tutorials explaining the new privacy settings up on the page, as well as a series of articles on privacy from various publications.

Will you “Like” Facebook Privacy? Let us know in the comments.

[img credit: Darwin Bell]

Tags: facebook, privacy

Dan Schawbel, recognized as “Personal Branding Guru” by The New York Times, is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, the #1 international bestselling author of Me 2.0, and owner of the Personal Branding Blog.

Managing your online network is critical, whether you’re looking for a job, trying to advance in your career, or you’re starting a business. Think of the Internet as a global talent pool that has more contact information than the White Pages. In fact, 80 percent of available jobs are never even advertised, with more than half of all employees finding their jobs through networking, according to BH Careers International.

Social networks have connected and exposed us to more people than ever before. With all the online friends and followers you’ve accumulated, it’s become increasingly complicated to make sense of your social graph and use it to your advantage. It’s also never been more important to build your contact database, organize it, and then put it to work for you. The old adage “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” is true, so consider your rolodex more valuable than your wallet when it comes to achieving success in business.

Here is how to create a basic contact management strategy, stay connected and organized from your desktop to your phone, and give you some insight onto how to expand your network.

Your Contact Management Strategy

You will always have different tiers of relationships, from family, to friends, to associates, to acquaintances and everyone in between. In order to organize your database, you need to have specific categories in mind. Consider things like the strength of your relationship, how important the relationship is to you, the last time you connected with them, three things about them, what company they work for, their location, and their contact information (e-mail, phone, address, LinkedIn). You can use a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, an Access Database, Act!, or another similar software package to help manage your contacts, using these columns. Aside from these software packages, there are other applications listed below that can help you. By organizing your contacts under these main categories, it will allow you to reconnect with the right people, and expand your relationships.

1. From Your Social Graph to Your Desktop

It’s very important that you have physical copies of your contact database as a backup. Although, you may participate in a handful of social networks, that data resides in the cloud, and not on your desktop. Backing up your social graph means that if, for some reason, your social media profile disappears, is removed entirely, or the social network collapses and you lose everything, you’ll be protected regardless. Try to get in the habit of exporting your contacts so that you have a copy on your desktop in an Excel file.

Here is how to save your social friends, contacts, and followers on your desktop:

Facebook: Although Facebook might appear as a wall garden, there’s actually a trick to capturing your friends’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Create or use your existing Yahoo! e-mail account and import your Facebook friends right into your address book. Then download the .CSV file to your desktop.

LinkedIn: After logging into LinkedIn, go straight to the “connections” link in the global navigation area. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see “export connections.” From the next screen, you can download the .CSV file to your desktop.

Twitter: You don’t have the ability to view email addresses or phone numbers of your Twitter followers. You can, however, download a .CSV file of 100 of your followers to your desktop by using Twitter Export. The information in the spreadsheet will be the name, user name, follower and following count, and their bios.

2. From the Cloud

Gist (Free): Use this tool to make sense of your social connections. After creating an account, you can immediately import your contacts from Outlook, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail, Lotus Notes, as well as .CSV files and vCards. After you have established your network, you can view the last time you’ve reached out to each of your contacts, how many emails you’ve sent and received from them, and what companies they work for.

JibberJobber (Free to $9.95/month): This tool allows you to organize and manage your job search, track relationships, target companies, and track the jobs you apply to. With a free basic account, you can manage up to 75 contacts. There is no limit to the amount of contacts you can store with a premium account.

Xobni for Microsoft Outlook (Free): Microsoft Outlook can help you manage your address book, but with the Xobni add-on, you can integrate the social media profiles of your contacts. This means you’ll receive additional contact information that wouldn’t normally be included in your address book.

Disclosure: Gist is a sponsor of Mashable.

3. From Your Phone

The strongest relationships are created in the real world, not the virtual world. If you’re on a plane, train, car, or just at a networking event, you’ll want to capture contact information from the people you meet. A paper business card is still extremely important for exchanging information with people, but the following tools will help store information virtually on the go.

Groups 2 ($5.99): The fastest way to manage your contacts on your iPhone with a drag and drop interface. You can create your own groups, send a mass e-mail to members of each group, and attach vCards to share information with others. Aside from sending e-mails, you can make quick calls, and send text messages. An additional benefit with this application is that is syncs with your Windows address book.

WorldCard Mobile ($5.99): You can scan business cards onto your iPhone by taking a photo, and it instantly recognizes data from business cards and sorts the fields into a contact list. You can save a lot of information into each contact profile, including an image, e-mail, website address, phone number, SMS, and maps.

Bump (Free): If you want to save precious time, and want to have a little fun with your in-person networking, then this application is for you. With Bump, all you have to do is hold your iPhone next to a fellow iPhone user and “bump” them together. You can share photos and contacts with other people who have iPhones and the Bump application.

Growing Your Network

There is a lot of value in a contact management system. It saves you time from researching information about people you’ve already met, and can act as a reference sheet. It also allows you to keep organized and aware of which contacts you haven’t spoken to in a while, and who works at companies that you either want to collaborate with, or work for. The payoff of investing time in a contact management system is that you will be able to keep track of the people you meet, refer back to it, and grow it throughout the course of your life.

In order to expand your network, you need to target people who are in your industry, and those who share the same interests and passions that you have. Once you connect with them in-person, through e-mail or phone, put them into your contact management system.

More business resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Ways For Small Companies To Better Engage Reporters
- How One Small Biz Turned Their Company Retreat Into Social Media Success
- Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Foursquare
- 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tiridifilm

Tags: business, contact management, contacts, facebook, how to, linkedin, networking, organize, twitter

Facebook has launched a page devoted to U.S. politics, located at Facebook.com/USpolitics.

Rolled out at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, the page monitors how U.S. politicians, elected officials and political campaigns use Facebook to connect with citizens.

Facebook is an important part of U.S. politics today. Barack Obama has an incredibly popular page, with more than 8.6 million fans; recently, U.S. President George W. Bush started his own Facebook page, amassing over 70,000 fans in a very short timespan.

Facebook also has a similar page devoted to sports, as well as all of the celebrities who use Facebook.

Tags: facebook, social media, social networking, US politics

At the D8 Conference outside of Los Angeles, another well-known tech CEO was grilled on stage: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Yesterday, Steve Jobs took the stage and was hit hard with questions on Adobe Flash, the lost next-generation iPhone and Facebook’s increasing competition with Google.

AllThingsD producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher definitely didn’t let up on the 26-year-old founder. They questioned him on the recent privacy fiasco, instant personalization, his past at Harvard and his future as CEO of one of the web’s most important companies.

The Privacy Backlash

Swisher and Mossberg wasted no time digging into the big issue: Facebook and privacy. Zuckerberg started by making it clear that “privacy is very important to us.” He says that Facebook isn’t out to make all of its users information public — that’s a misconception. In fact, he drilled deeper, saying that Facebook never changed people’s privacy settings, it just suggested settings where some information is left public.

It didn’t take long for Mossberg and Swisher to turn up the heat, though. Mossberg asked Facebook’s CEO why he’s making people take extra steps to protect their information. Zuckerberg eventually responded that people still have control over their Facebook information, and more than half of the userbase has changed privacy settings at one point, demonstrating that most users understand the privacy tools.

That wasn’t the end of the privacy discussion, though. Much of the conversation became Mossberg and Swisher trying to get answers to one question, but Zuckerberg finding ways to dodge. There was no straight answer from Zuckerberg about why Facebook Instant Personalization was opt-out instead of opt-in. Most likely, we’ll never get one.

Zuckerberg the Kid, Zuckerberg the CEO

There was a lot of focus on Zuckerberg himself during his time on stage. Swisher asked Facebook’s CEO how he felt about the backlash against him and whether he has been accurately portrayed to the rest of the world. His response began with his telling Swisher that he “did a lot of stupid things” when he was in college, and that he doesn’t intend to make excuses for it. He was likely referring to IMs that recently surfaced that took a less-than-serious attitude towards privacy.

More of the focus was on Zuckerberg as the 26-year-old CEO of Facebook. He discussed how it is his job not to make the same mistakes of his competitors, although he once again dodged the actual question (“Who are your competitors in this space?”). He reiterated that he intends to be CEO of Facebook when it goes public, although he wouldn’t reveal when that would happen. Given his tight control over the Facebook Board of Directors, it’s tough to find a scenario where he would be forced out.

As with many of his interviews, Zuckerberg focused less on himself and more on generalities, such as his focus on building a great team and having a clear direction for the company. He didn’t seem to think of himself as the CEO of one of the world’s most important companies, but just the leader of a team that shares his values.

Overall, Zuckerberg likes to talk about the topics that interest him — the social graph, building great products, etc. — and he avoids answering the uncomfortable questions about privacy, controversies and IPOs. Still, we give him credit for going on the stage of D8 at all.

Tags: ceo, D8, facebook, mark zuckerberg

Earlier this week, we reported on a new Facebook clickjacking scheme that takes advantage of the service’s “Like” buttons; today a variation of that attack is starting to appear, this time using Justin Bieber as bait.

While the baited links in the last attack were focused on sensational, if generic, titles like, “LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE,” the new vector takes advantage of the popularity of YouTube star Bieber, as well as Paramore lead singer Hayley Williams.

The targeted links display text that says either, “Paramore n-a-k-ed photo leaked” or “Justin Biebers Phone Number Leaked!” In the case of the Paramore clickjack, users are then taken to a page that says “Click here to continue if you are 18 years of age of above.” Clicking anywhere on the site then launches an invisible iframe which contains a Facebook Like button, thus spreading the link to more and more users.

The Justin Bieber vector is actually even more clever. First, it takes you to a page that says “Click here to continue” — this is the invisible Facebook Like button — however, after clicking on the page, users are then given what is purported to be Bieber’s phone number and address.

Unlike the previous attack, it doesn’t appear that this clickjacking — or “likejacking” as some are calling it — attack has any malware or worms embedded on the serving websites. Still, if you or someone you know falls victim to these fake links, you should remove the links from your “Likes and Interests” section on your Facebook profile page.

As far as clickjacking techniques are concerned, the use of the Facebook Like button iframe is one of the more clever methods we’ve seen. We hope Facebook can address this issue and better control how the controls work, lest we all become inundated with spammy “Likes” across our news feeds.

[img credit: Sophos]

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Antagain

Tags: clickjacking, facebook, justin bieber, likejacking, security

Yesterday was Quit Facebook Day, and for all intents and purposes, it was a bust. According to the group’s homepage, only 34,000 users vowed to “quit Facebook” and remember, committing to quit and actually quitting aren’t the same thing.

While the debate over Facebook and privacy is far from over, those concerns are trumped by the utility of the actual service. At least for now.

Yesterday, we asked readers if they were going to quit Facebook. After more than 10,000 votes, nearly 63.73% of readers (6,593 combined votes) said that they would not be quitting Facebook. 25.57% (2,645 votes) said that they were going to quit Facebook and 10.7% (1,107 votes) said that they didn’t even have a Facebook account.

Now, our poll was far from scientific, but it does offer some anecdotal food for thought. What we’ve been hearing from readers over the last few months isn’t that privacy concerns or fears are unwarranted — Facebook users do seem to be uneasy with some of the changes to the service and its growing reach — but that the service itself is ultimately too important as a way of communication to give up.

The long-term impact of the latest privacy control updates remain to be seen but it looks Facebook has emerged from this round of privacy warfare relatively unscathed — at least for now.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, malerapaso

Tags: facebook, privacy, quit facebook day

Facebook is testing an upgrade to its popular Facebook Photos application called “Related Photos” with select users.

Related photos appear in a right-hand sidebar adjacent to the photo the user is viewing. The product shows additional photos of friends tagged in the displayed photo, as well as photos from other albums by the Facebook user, according to reports from Inside Facebook.

“This is a feature we’re currently testing with a small percentage of users,” a Faceboook representative confirmed in a message to Mashable.

The application feature addition is designed to drive users to explore additional photos that may be of interest based on the photo they’re currently viewing, thereby further personalizing the experience (and increasing page views). Inside Facebook also explains that “when it displays additional photos by the same author, the title line above the photo only shows the photo-owner’s first name, giving the feature an intimate feel.”

Photos of friends and family members tend to demand attention and suck people in, hence the popularity of Facebook Photos. We can certainly understand why Facebook would be experimenting with “Related Photos” as a way to increase user interaction time with photos on Facebook.

[img credit: Fati.m.a. Maria, Inside Facebook]

Tags: facebook, facebook photos

Facebook added another acquisition to its belt today: Sharegrove, a small service that provides private online spaces where family and close friends can share content in real-time.

Sharegrove uses Facebook Connect to knit together a cross between e-mail, group chat and Facebook wall-type postings.

The purpose of the buyout is to bring the engineering talent behind Sharegrove to the Facebook team. We suspect it also may have everything to do with the backlash the company is experiencing around privacy issues, considering that Sharegrove’s product is focused on content sharing in much smaller and more intimate circles, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s own admission that Facebook has been making blunders in that regard. It makes sense for the company to pull in some fresh expertise from a startup infused with ideas about how to handle user-generated content within tighter social graphs.

Sharegrove itself will be no more as of June 1, less than a week away. New user registrations have already been disabled, and as of the first of the month the entire service will be shut down and all user data deleted “for security purposes.” It’s cold comfort to the userbase of Sharegrove, but could be promising news for Facebook denizens still seething about the company’s rather forceful overtures toward killing privacy.

What do you think Facebook’s most recent acquisition could mean for the social network’s future strategy?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Yuri_Arcurs

[via VentureBeat]

Tags: acquisitions, business, facebook, privacy, sharegrove

Following weeks of debate over Facebook and privacy, the company is announcing new features to address the criticism that has emerged since the launch of the Open Graph and Instant Personalization.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who penned an op-ed in The Washington Post on Sunday promising new privacy options — is doing the presenting at a live event at the company’s headquarters.

After opening his presentation with a brief history of how Facebook and its privacy features have evolved, Zuckerberg described a number of upcoming changes to the social network.

Facebook isn’t going to remove the dozens of privacy controls that let you customize settings for very specific elements of your profile. However, the company is rolling out:

• One simple control for changing content viewing permissions to friends-only, friends-of-friends, or everyone — it applies to everything you’ve published on Facebook in the past. This setting will also apply to everything you publish in the future.
• A simple way for determining how people can find you on Facebook, and what users that aren’t your friend can see.
• A simple way for turning off the Facebook Platform, specifically, being able to opt-out of Facebook’s new instant personalization features and providing third-party sites with information.
• A way to opt-out of sharing your friends list and the Pages that you like.

The theme here is clearly “simple” — an easier way to stop sharing information with people, websites and applications that you don’t want to have access. That said, it looks like instant personalization instant personalization will remain on by default.

The new privacy controls will go live in the next few weeks, and Facebook will be inserting a message on user homepages alerting them to the new options. Stay tuned to Mashable for more news and analysis on Facebook’s latest privacy moves.

See Also: How Facebook’s New Privacy Controls Work

[img credit: Darwin Bell]

Tags: facebook, trending