Buzz, which will work through the popular Gmail service, will allow users to post status updates, photos and links to members of their network — as well as pull in their activity on other sites like Twitter, Flickr and Picasa.

Google spokesman Bradley Horowitz said the service, which was rolling out to some Gmail users Tuesday afternoon and should be available to all in the next couple of days, aims to weed out what he called the clutter of other networking sites.

With networking sites, “there’s obviously value there,” he said. “It’s a phenomenon that’s real, but it’s increasingly becoming harder and harder to make sense and find the signal in the noise.”

By letting users post photos, links and updates openly, the tool would mimic Twitter’s micro-blogging format. But users also will be able to make their content available to “friends only,” more closely following the Facebook model.

At an event at the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, Google also seemed poised to take a poke at the AOL Instant Messenger service, saying Buzz will be offered to companies as a tool for interoffice communication.

“It will change the way businesses communicate around the world,” Horowitz said.

Despite the inevitable comparisons, Google spokesmen said they didn’t set out to tread on anyone else’s turf.

“We try not to pay too much attention to competitors,” Gmail product manager Todd Jackson said. “We try to listen to users.”

Horowitz said Google Buzz will automatically make “friends” out of the people a user e-mails or chats with the most on Gmail.

Comments on posts will appear in real time. And comments by other users will be weighted, similar to how Google’s search engine weighs results, to “collapse bad buzz and recommend the good buzz,” Jackson said.

The hands-down leader in the search engine world, Google has been branching out on projects that include its Nexus One smartphone, the company’s first foray into hardware marketing.

Late last month, Google announced that people could tweak their accounts to make results related to friends, co-workers and other members of their social networks appear above all other results.

The Social Search feature was introduced to a limited number of Google users last year and was made available to everyone in beta status on January 28.

The change came with a hint of more things to come.

“This is just a first step in our ongoing effort to ensure that Google Web search is always as social as the Web itself,” the company said in an instructional video posted to its official blog.

Google Buzz probably won’t be able to bring in status updates and other materials from Facebook for the same reason that Social Search doesn’t.

Because most Facebook users set their information to be viewed only by friends, Google’s search engine can’t collect that information in the same way it can from Twitter and, obviously, Google-owned sites like YouTube.

Buzz also will have a mobile component, operating on most major wireless operating systems with features that include voice-recognition posting and a GPS-enabled ability to attach the user’s location to posts.

The Web-based mobile application, which can be used by iPhones despite not going through Apple’s online store, can also be set to pick up posts to Buzz being made near the user’s location.

Changes to the tool could be coming quickly, too. Google officials say they’re already studying possible expansions. They include allowing Buzz updates by phone, letting users post to their Twitter account through the tool and linking Buzz with the still-emerging Google Wave system.

“We’re just getting started,” Horowitz said. “We’re not launching this today because we think we’re done. We don’t think that’s how a product like this is built.”

(CNN)

You can also choose to follow other Twitter community members’ posts, either by navigating directly to the Twitter site, subscribing to that particular Twitter RSS feed, or getting Twitter posts sent to your mobile device (text messaging fees will apply for this option; check with your provider).

What do people use Twitter for?

There are many different uses for Twitter. Some of the most common are:

• Instant updates. For instance, the Los Angeles Fire Department uses Twitter to keep the community apprised of fire emergences (LAFD).
• News. You can get up to the minute news updates from many news agencies; for instance, Sky News (SkyNews).
• Friends and family. The majority of Twitter users use it to keep friends and family apprised of what they’re doing at any given moment. It’s a great way to fire off a quick jolt of news if you don’t have a lot of time to write anything more substantial (you can see my Twitter feed at gachiejosphat).

Why should I use Twitter?

Personally, I use Twitter as a quick journal of what I’m doing day to day. For instance, looking back at the last couple weeks of my Twitter feed, I noticed that I had a lot of baseball games, lots of talking to my cat (don’t ask), and interactions with my kids. People are finding new uses for Twitter all the time – what will you use it for?

If you don’t know what Twitter is, then you really have been in the dark. Sorry to be so blunt however, if you are new to Social Media, this is one of the first networks I would sign up to. Some refer to it as their Social Networking Virtual Water Cooler… and then there is Twitters version:

Twitter is a micro-blogging service where you have only 140 characters to express yourself and share online in a creative way

I have been using Twitter now for over a year which has enabled me to meet some really cool people online who are in marketing, business, blogging, networking, and it has brought me traffic and exposure to my sites, enabling me to build my Personal Brand all the while.

As an Internet Marketer, Twitter is my source of never ending news and resources to help me with my online research into Social Media, what works, what doesn’t work and ultimately, it is up to each one of us to test and measure what works best for our own unique situations.

There are many sites offering Twitter tips on how to use this service and they all share some great advice. Personally, I use it to keep up with fellow tweeters and see what’s going on in the world and with Social Networking.

I type in what I am doing (as Twitter asks), whether it be reading, watching or listening to something on the web and providing the link – and occasionally I have a little back and forth conversation with other tweeters. I also tweet when I have updated my blogs with a link to the post. A little of everything.

Getting Started with Twitter

Twitter quite simply asks: What are you doing now?

The homepage of Twitter is where you sign up and create your profile. It’s a simple process of providing a few details like your name, email address and choosing a username for your profile. Remember, this will be your Personal Brand so choose wisely.

Once in, go into settings where you can upload your avatar, add a short bio and change your design if you wish, to the colour and style you like. Use your creativity and show the Twitterverse who you are as an individual or business.

How To Use Twitter

Twitter is a great tool for keeping up with family and friends as well as building an online presence for Internet Marketers.

Keeping up with family and friends is pretty straight forward however, when establishing relationships online, it’s great to provide value to the conversation.

You will notice once you start tweeting that Twitter has a language all of it’s own which you can explore at Twittonary.

The Twitter Dictionary aka Twittonary provides explanations of various Twitter related words.

You can select a letter of the alphabet and it will provide a list of words which are commonly abbreviated into Twitter language.

Tweeting Effectively

A few things to note when you are using twitter. You may see an @reply with your username in it. This means one of your followers (or not) has tweeted something to you. You can choose whether to @reply back to them remembering of course when you use the @ symbol, it makes the link to their profile live which is a good thing for anyone wanting to have a look at that users profile. It also shows up on the user’s timeline you sent it too making them aware of your @reply.

You can also send a DM (direct message) to anyone who is following you. A DM is a private message which can only be viewed by the recipient. Go to their profile and over to the right, you will see a message link. Click on it and type your message and send. The same applies here with the 140 characters.

If you want to provide a link and it’s simply too long to fit into the 140 characters space with your comment, you can shorten it by going to Tinyurl to shorten it for example, this

http://socialnetworkingnewsdaily.com/twitter/twitter-helped-fight-spam-comments/

can be turned into this

http://tinyurl.com/5cb9vj

As you can see, the Tinyurl has a much better chance of fitting into the 140 character space you have leaving room to add your comment.

So there you have a few basic tips to get you started on Twitter for Social Networking. Let me know how you get on in the comments here and/or follow me on Twitter @gachiejosphat .

1. Claim your Twitter handle

Prime domain names, especially those ending in “.com,” have long been desirable, hard to find and extremely expensive. By not reserving your domain name, your business or personal brand is at risk and you may never be able to reclaim it once you’ve lost it. With Twitter continuing its meteoric rise in popularity, it’s no surprise that Twitter account names are starting to be treated like domain names.

What happens when you don’t claim your Twitter handle:

• Exxon Mobil failed to claim their name on Twitter and was forced to deal with reputation management problems, when an imposter started tweeting using @ExxonMobilCorp.

• Jack Canfield, founder and CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises, had to take a different user name because he didn’t act quickly enough to secure his full name (he has @J_Canfield, not @JackCanfield).

• The same thing happened to web developer community and book publisher SitePoint, which was forced to settle for @sitepointdotcom, rather than @sitepoint.

Twitter handles have become so important, that there is now even an aftermarket for them, Tweexchange, where user names are bought and sold.

Stop what you’re doing right now and claim the Twitter handle for your full name, as well as any products and/or companies that you currently own or you have plans to create in the future. You can’t truly own your personal brand if you don’t even own your Twitter handle.

2. Decide how you want to brand yourself

Before you start actively using Twitter, you need a strategy, and the first step in developing that strategy is to completely fill out your user profile. One of the goals of having a Twitter account is to gain followers and few people want to follow an account that doesn’t look legitimate (i.e. the profile hasn’t been filled out and there’s no avatar).

Take a good look at your other websites and profiles and draft a Twitter bio to match the rest of your online branding. This is how people will find you and recognize you now and in the future, so be honest. Don’t brand yourself as an expert unless you already are one. Do brand yourself based on your passions and skill set.

Once you have everything filled out, you should spend some time focusing on your Twitter background, which gives you an opportunity to extend your brand image onto Twitter and create a more cohesive experience for your followers. There are many sites that you can use to help you develop a custom background, such as Twitpaper ( and Twitterimage.

I recommend creating a Twitter background that resembles the colors, format and logo from your personal or corporate website. When you create your background, add in additional information that isn’t covered in your Twitter profile, such as pointers to more websites, contact information, or information about products or services you sell.

Three techniques for branding yourself on Twitter:

1. Lead with your company: Pete Cashmore puts his company (Mashable) ahead of himself on Twitter by using @Mashable as the account name, but uses his personal avatar and bio. This is a smart approach for Pete because he wants to build his company’s brand, while associating his own name with this successful property. This also gives Mashable a face and a personality to go with it.

2. Mutual branding: More and more companies are realizing that their employees are on Twitter and that they can be tapped to help promote their initiatives. Some of these Twitter accounts are mutually branded, so that the avatar has the person’s picture and the corporate logo. Two examples are Kodak’s Jennifer Cisney (@kodakCB) and Allison and Mike from CareerBuilder’s PR team (@CareerBuilderPR).

3. 100% personal branding: If you’re trying to build a strong personal brand, then focus your Twitter handle, avatar and bio information 100% on you, instead of your company.

3. Become known as an expert or resource

Essentially, Twitter is a shorter and more viral form of blogging, so the same rules actually still apply, and by constantly writing or tweeting about your expertise on a specific topic, you’ll become known for it and people will gravitate to you and follow you. If you already have a blog, then I recommend using Twitterfeed, so you can syndicate your posts on Twitter automatically.

For many people, Twitter has become a filter. Trusted experts are relied upon to send their followers interesting and relevant links. You can subscribe to blogs and keywords using Google.com/alerts, and then act as an arbiter for your topic, constantly pushing out the best content. Do you want to become known as a personal finance enthusiast? What about a search engine marketing consultant? The best thing you can do for your brand on Twitter is to take your current interests and activities and establish a feed on Twitter to deliver that content to your audience again and again.

If you are an expert in your field, then have Q & A sessions, where you answer questions from your followers. The more you tweet about the topic you want to be known for, the more people will remember you and when they need your expertise, they will contact you. It’s that simple!

4. Establish a Twitter marketing plan

Just like with any other website or blog, just because you build it, doesn’t necessarily mean people will come. You should have a marketing plan in place to acquire new followers.

Elements of a Twitter marketing plan:

• Email signature: You probably already place your blog or website URL and contact information in your email signature, so why not add your Twitter handle? It’s free promotion and every email you send can turn into a new follower.

• Personal/corporate website: If you already have a website for you and/or your company, then you have a platform on which you can promote your Twitter address to people who will probably be interested in following you.

• Blog homepage + posts: Your blog is a great place to promote your Twitter account because most people who read blogs know what Twitter is. You should take a two pronged approach. First, put your Twitter address in one of your sidebars and second, promote it discretely in posts every once in a while.

• Email newsletter: If you have an email newsletter, you can write about Twitter and link to your profile or put it at the bottom of your template, so that each email has a link to your account.

• Presentations: Do you do any public speaking? Why not include your Twitter account on the last slide of your presentation and tell people that they can follow you on Twitter?

• Business Card: Try including your Twitter handle on your business card. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, did this with his card.

• Article writing / guest blog posting: Whenever you write an article for a magazine, news website or guest post on a blog, try to include your Twitter handle in your byline.

• Networking on Twitter: By using the “@” symbol and either retweeting or communicating with other people, you’ll have some of them responding to you, thus promoting your Twitter account to many of their followers.

• Promotional products: Some people take Twitter promotion to the next level: Ted Murphy, for example, created custom Twitter shirts that have your Twitter handle.

Just like with any social network or blog, the more people who follow you, the easier it is to grow your already existing community. Retweets and following other people are two essential ways to get new followers. However, content is king on Twitter, so it is vital to make sure you produce consistent, quality tweets.

5. Utilize third-party applications

There are literally thousands of Twitter applications out there, but only a few that can really help you build your personal brand. The apps below will help you stay in touch with your industry, find people you can network with, save you precious time, and push out your content.

Note: If you have additional Twitter applications that aid in personal brand building to recommend, please tell us about them in the comment section.

• Twellow : Find people in your industry to follow and connect with using this Twitter yellow pages guide.

• Tweetbeep: Keep track of your brand reputation by getting alerts through email when your brand is mentioned on Twitter.

• Tweetmeme: Put a button on your blog that allows your readers to more easily retweet your posts.

• Hashdictionary: Keep track of conversations that include hashtags on Twitter.

• Ping.fm: Save time by sending messages to all of your social networks at once.

• Twitter Grader: A site that ranks your influence in the Twitter world based on an algorithm. You can see where you stand in your town, city, state or country, as well.

• Tweetlater: Schedule tweets so that they are published automatically in the future. It’s a real time saver.

6. Form a Twitter “Mastermind Group”

As you may suspect, certain groups of people on Twitter constantly promote and retweet each other. Some of them are in what are called “mastermind groups” — groups of individuals who are committed to helping each other and sharing knowledge amongst themselves. They are communities of supportive colleagues who seek to mutually help each other become more successful. On Twitter, by finding people who share your interests, you’re able to help each other out and cross-promote. There are a few Twitter applications that help you form these special interest groups.

Group applications:

• Grouptweet: This app lets users create groups and broadcast messages to each other via direct messages sent to the group’s Twitter account.

• Twitter Groups: This site allows you to tag your followers and place them into different groups. You can then send messages to those groups without needing to send them to each person individually.

In fact, the answer may surprise you. There are business-to-business companies that are utilizing the social web to find customers, to build up a reputation, and to get the upper hand on landing the big deal. There’s a great deal that social media offers to the non-consumer business. Here are four of the best ways to use social media when you’re in enterprise:

Step 1. Build a reputation of expertise

What use is a company blog if you only have 10,000 customers, rather than 10 million? While it may be true that a B2B’s blog or Twitter is not going to be followed by as many people, it doesn’t change the fact that it will affect the decisions of your customers. Say a potential customer becomes aware of your software solution, and goes to your website to find out more about you. How can you stand out from the crowd? By building a blog with your expertise in focus.

If a potential customer comes to your company’s website and sees an active blog with insightful posts on how your company’s product helps customers, reads detailed posts demonstrating your company’s knowledge, and comes across a few case studies, they’re going to be far more inclined to come to you for their needs.

Social media provides an outlet for displaying who you and your company are. Talking about your industry in an intelligent way via Twitter and a regularly-updated blog can raise your company’s profile and brand it as a thought leader and expert in its specific business area.

37Signals, the maker of Software-as-a-service business collaboration products, is a prime example of this philosophy in action. Their blog is regularly read by thousands of people, shared among businesses, and has even opened up another revenue stream in the form of a popular job board. Social media builds reputations.

2. Research your customers

Everyone thinks of social media as a communication tool, but not enough people think of it as a research tool. With the ridiculous amount of data produced every day on social networks, blogs, and in conversations, it should be apparent that you can learn tidbits or spot major trends by tracking the social universe.

Know what your customers are saying: If you’re trying to secure a contract from a big business, then they are probably talking to their customers via Twitter, Facebook, and more. Learn what they’re saying to their customers and read the blogs of decision makers to learn what they value and how they think.

Know what your customers’ customers are saying: Your customers don’t care about you – they care about their customers and their bottom line. If you can find behavior patterns in their customers that your product can address, your pitch will resonate more. Driving the point that their current solution doesn’t work, and then proving that with social chatter is even better.

Track industry trends: Think about the keywords that define your industry, and then track them so you know what’s changing in it. If you’re a medical company creating devices for spine fusion surgery, then you’re going to want to track any developments in spinal fusion technology. Use Twilerts and Google Alerts to track keywords by email, or create an RSS feed of new information via the Content Keyword RSS Yahoo Pipe.

Step 3. Ramp up your networking

If you are competing with another company to land a big deal, it always helps to have connections and friendships within the company you’re trying to woo. You should always be networking, because you never know when a contact can become your advocate or even the decision-maker. And that’s where social media can help.

There are a lot of things you can do to get started on the networking front. They key, though, is that you have to reach out. Otherwise, how will people know to listen? While there are literally hundreds of ways to network with potential partners, vendors, clients, businesses, customers, and decision-makers, the truth is it doesn’t matter which tool you use as long as it is one that the other person values. LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo, etc. are always great places to start, but if you can network with him or her on niche social sites, you’ll stand out just a bit more.

Step 4. Learn from others

In the end, you want to come out sharper, more knowledgeable, and better prepared than your competitors. It doesn’t matter if you have 60 or 600,000 customers, and it does not matter whether or not you sell to general consumers or Fortune 500 companies. Almost everyone is using or tracking social media and it provides you a prime opportunity to make you and your business a leader rather than a follower.

- Seek out blogs and publications in your industry and subscribe via RSS
- Network with relevant experts, including those who may only be partially related
- Follow the insights of business leaders on Twitter
- Connect with commenters on your own blog
- Make yourself very easy to find on the web – if people search for your name or your business, you should be at the top of Google’s results. Building a blog, using a Twitter, and creating a decent corporate website always helps
- Keep an open mind

Don’t underestimate how much information is on the web. It’s stunning what you can learn just by reaching out. If you and your business have a strong social presence, it’s simply easier for potential partners, customers, employers, and businesses to find you. In enterprise, it’s about closing the deal and standing out; social media’s one of the easiest ways to achieve this goal.

Facebook, after all, has 300 million active users compared to about 44 million for LinkedIn, and even though the atmosphere is clearly not as focused on business, there are still a ton of opportunities for professional networking that business users would be remiss to pass up. Once you look beyond the obvious social features like sharing pictures and poking friends, there are plenty of ways to tap into the professional community on the world’s largest social network.

In this post we’ll talk about how to setup your Facebook for professional use, how to find others to network with, Facebook features that work for professional networking, and ways to maximize the value from those features.

Setting up your Facebook for business networking

If you’re like most people, your personal and professional lives have already blended. You share your personal stories and pictures with your work colleagues, you discuss both work and your personal life on your blog and Twitter, and you’ve probably let go of the notion that professional and personal must be kept completely separate.

But even with that blurring of our work and social lives, most of us still want some separation, and I would recommend actually splitting the two on Facebook. Once split, you can continue to reap the social benefits of Facebook with your friends and family while simultaneously connecting with your professional colleagues.

Here’s how to split the two.

– Go to your friends list by clicking on the Friends tab at the top of your Facebook page.

– Click the “Create a New List” button and create one called Professional.

– You can now go through your entire friend list and add all of your professional contacts into this new and separate business list.

– Once you’re done, navigate to your profile privacy settings by clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner of your Facebook; then click on privacy; then click on profile.

On the profile privacy settings page you can begin slicing and dicing your Facebook world into personal and professional segments by restricting access to various parts of your profile using your newly created friend list. For example, if you don’t want your professional friends to see any of your pictures, click on “edit photo album privacy settings.” In the “who can see this” drop down, click on “customize” and then in the “except these people” field type in your newly formed professional friends list. Now only your personal friends will be able to see your pictures.

Though these settings can get fairly complicated because of their granularity, you can control your entire Facebook experience from this area of the site and decide what parts of your personal life you would like your professional friends to be able to see. Bear in mind that there are no best practices here. Meaning, if you don’t want your professional friends to see your wall comments, don’t let them. If you don’t want your professional friends to see your pictures, don’t let them. It’s your world and you can set it up exactly how you like.

Using Facebook groups for networking

One way to professionally benefit from Facebook’s enormous user base and to grow your professional network is to participate in Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups is a feature that allows Facebook users to connect, discuss and network with each other within the context of a common interest or topic.

Finding groups

There are groups on Facebook representing just about every topic under the sun. To find the right group for your professional aspiration, think of topics that will motivate you, allow you to connect with others of professional interest, and will allow you to gain insight into your industry/skill set – groups around these topics are the ones where you’ll find professionals you can network with.

Now that you have a direction in mind, enter your keyword into the search box on Facebook, and click on the “Groups” filter to the left of the results. You can also filter down the displayed groups by drilling into a number of sub categories, including business (a good bet for many professional groups), common interest, geography, Internet and technology, and organizations.

There are, of course, other ways to find Facebook Groups. Here are a few techniques that should give you plenty of groups to get started with.

– If you have friends whose professional advancements you respect, go to their profile page and click on their info tab. Towards the bottom of the page, you’ll see links to all of the groups to which they belong.

– On the main page of any Facebook Group, there are links to several other similar or related groups.

– Conduct an Internet search for “popular Facebook Groups” coupled with some of the keywords that interest you. You’ll often uncover blog posts, articles and people tweeting about a variety of groups, some of which may interest you.

Once you find a group that interests you, it’s a good idea to evaluate whether or not it will be a good fit before joining and pouring too much time into it.

What to look for in a professional group

There are millions of groups on Facebook, so how many should you join and which ones? Joining too many might prove to be unmanageable, so it’s a good idea to only join the ones that you can actually see yourself participating in.

Below is a list of the features you’ll find in each Facebook Group and what to look for in each to determine whether a group is quality enough to be worth joining.

Recent News – This section contains news from group administrators that is either about the group itself or is about a topic that might interest the group. Is it up to date? Is it useful information or just self-promotion?

Member Listings – Lists all group members including their profile photos, location and link to their profile page. This is an easy access way to send a message to a specific group member OR to request them as a friend. You can also use this tool to evaluate the group before joining. Does the group attract people with similar backgrounds and interests to yours? Can you see yourself giving information to and appreciating information from these other members? Do they seem like people you would value interacting with?

Discussion Board – The group’s discussion board allows members to engage in a discussion about topics listed by other group members. Before joining, use the discussion board to measure group activity and member engagement. Are discussions recent? How many are there? Are they interesting and on-topic? You should contribute to an existing discussion or start your own, once you’ve joined.

Wall Posting – This section is usually for member introductions or job postings. This is a great way to introduce yourself and your interest in this group. How recent are the latest postings? If there is any spam, how quickly is it cleaned up?

Groups also often have photos, videos, links sections, and event listings. You should evaluate these areas for recency and quality of information, as well.

Group participation

Once you’ve joined a group, it’s time to start participating. This is where the real fun begins and the true business value will happen. Below is an example workflow I would recommend following upon joining a group for professional purposes. It’s a great way to show your presence in the group and get some professional networking activity under your belt.

Post an introduction on the Group’s Wall stating your interest in the group. If you’re looking to network, say so. If you’re looking for a job, say so. If you can offer advice, say so. The key here is to make this a simple introduction so the group knows who you are – not an advertisement for yourself or services, which may come across as spam.

Add links to interesting events, pieces of news or blog posts. Anybody who reads them will know you posted them, which will add to your professional branding efforts.

Go to the discussion board and comment on a few topics; don’t be generic. Find a discussion where you could truly add value and help some fellow members with their questions or contribute to some discussions with your thoughts.

Post a topic for discussion. Ask a question or propose a thought-provoking topic of discussion and share your thoughts — the object is to engage your fellow group members. Check back on this discussion often so you can participate and remain an active part of it.

Add friends. Because Facebook was intended to be an online extension of your offline social graph, it is proper etiquette to know somebody before adding them as a friend. While being in the same group might satisfy that requirement for some people, I think it’s a good idea to have some sort of further engagement with a member before requesting them as a friend. Once you’ve engaged someone (such as in a discussion board topic), request them as a friend but include a personal note letting them know you appreciated the interaction. That way, they will have some context for the request and will be more likely to accept. Once you’re friends, make sure to add them to your professional friend list so that you are able to maintain that line between social and professional.

Now that you’ve gone through this workflow for each group you’ve joined, you can now consider yourself to be an active member. So what’s next? Networking! Come back to each group often to post new links and videos, engage in discussions or start your own. You should also invite other existing contacts to join the group as a way to help spread the word and keep the group active. Also remember to befriend those with whom you’ve been active and take your professional relationship to the next level.

Once you have the basics down, professional networking on Facebook is very similar to professional networking in real life. The same rules and etiquette apply. As you build your professional network on Facebook you’ll be able to use those contacts for job hunting, business development, and more.

Conclusion

Although Facebook was built as a social network and most people treat it as such – there is a tremendous amount of professional value that can be gained there. Once you’re a member of a few groups and have completed the introductory workflow for each one, the professional value of Facebook should be evident and ready to be fully realized. Be creative, have fun, and remember: What you put into things is what you get out of them, so always try to stay active!

If you have any other tips for professional networking on Facebook, please share them in the comments.

Boris Epstein AskBinc.com.

But what can be done? It’s not like you can just quit Facebook, right? No – and you don’t have to either. You just need to take a few precautions.

Unbeknownst to most mainstream Facebook users, the social network actually offers a slew of privacy controls and security features which can help you batten down the hatches, so to speak. If used properly, you’ll never have to worry about whether you should friend the boss and your mom. You can friend anyone you want while comfortable in the knowledge that not everyone gets to see everything you post.

The problem in implementing these privacy options is that they’re just too confusing for most non-tech savvy people to handle. And often, folks don’t want to bother to take the time to learn. To simplify the process, we’re offering five easy steps you can take today to help make your Facebook experience safer, more secure, and more private.

Step 1: Make Friend Lists

Yes, it will take some time, especially if you’re connected to a couple hundred friends already. But this step, while not the quickest, is fairly simple. And it will be one of the most useful things you can do on Facebook.

Friend lists, like they sound, are lists for categorizing your friends into various groups. The nice thing about this feature is that once you set these lists up, you won’t have to do it again. We suggest that you put your work colleagues and professional acquaintances into a friend list designated “work,” personal friends you’re not very close with into a list called “Acquaintances,” and people you’re related to into a list called “Family.” Those three main categories will separate out the groups of “friends” who you may want to hide some information from.

To create a friend list, click on “Friends” at the top of the Facebook homepage. In the left-hand column, click “Friends” again under the “Lists” section. Now you’ll see a button at the top that says “Create New List”. Click it. In the pop-up that appears, you can name your list and pick members. If you’ve ever shared an application with your friends, the process of doing this will be very familiar.

When you’ve finished making lists, you’ll be able to use them when selecting who can see what (or who can’t!) when configuring the security settings described below.

Step 2: Who Can See What on Your Profile

At the top right of Facebook, there’s a menu that many people probably ignore: “Settings.” But this menu is now going to become your best friend. To get started, hover you mouse over the Settings menu and click “Privacy Settings” from the list that appears. On the next page, click “Profile.” This takes you to a page where you can configure who gets to see certain information on your profile.

Before making changes, think carefully about the sorts of things you want public and the things you want private. Should “everyone” get to see photos you’re tagged in? Or would you like to limit this only to those you’ve specifically chosen as Facebook friends?

Underneath each section on this page (basic info, personal info, status, etc.), you can designate who gets to see that particular bit of information. For anyone not using custom lists (see step 1), the best thing to enter here is “Only Friends.” Anything else opens up your profile information to people you may or may not know. For example, choosing “Everyone” makes that info public, “Friends of Friends” lets your friends’ friends see it, “My Networks and Friends” opens up your info to anyone in your networks – that means anyone in your city, your high school, your college, a professional organization you listed, etc.

You can also block certain groups from seeing these sections, too. On any item that offers an “Edit Custom Settings” option, you can click that link to display a pop-up box where you can choose people or lists to block (see where it says “Except these people”). If you haven’t made custom lists as explained in step 1 above, you can enter individual names here instead. (Sorry, mom, dad, boss – this is where you get blocked.)

Step 3: Who Can See Your Address and Phone Number

Did you list your address and phone number on Facebook? While that’s a handy feature, you may not want everyone you friended to have this information. To access this configuration page, you follow the same steps as above in step 2 to display the Profile Privacy page. You’ll notice that the page has two tabs at the top – click on the one that reads “Contact information.”

As previously described above, you can again use the drop-down lists provided to designate who gets to see what and/or block certain people or lists from viewing this information. The sections on this page include “IM Screen Name,” “Mobile Phone,” “Other Phone,” “Current Address,” “Website,” and your email.

Step 4: Change Who Can Find You on Facebook via Search

Sick of getting friend requests from old high school pals? While for some the beauty of Facebook is that it lets you reconnect with everyone you ever knew throughout your life, others find this intrusive and annoying. You’re not friends with any of these people anymore for a reason, right?

As it turns out, you can still enjoy Facebook without some folks ever knowing or finding you thanks to the search privacy settings.

Click on the “Settings” menu on Facebook’s homepage and then click “Search” on the following page. You’ll be taken to a Search Privacy page where you can specify who gets to find you on Facebook. Want to be wide open? Change the “Search Visibility” drop-down box to “Everyone.” Want to keep it a little more limited? Select “My Networks and Friends,” “Friends of Friends,” or “My Networks and Friends of Friends” instead. Don’t want anyone finding you on Facebook? Change it to “Only Friends.” That means only the people who you’ve already friended can find you in a Facebook search.

On this page, you can also configure what information displays when your info is returned as a search result (e.g. your profile picture, your friend list, etc.). In addition, you can check and uncheck the boxes for network-based searches too. For example, if you don’t want anyone from high school to find you, uncheck the box next to “people in high school networks.”

Step 5: Stop Sharing Personal Info with Unknown Applications

Remember when we told you about what Facebook quizzes know about you? Using Facebook’s default settings, you’re unknowingly sharing a plethora of personal information (and your friends’ info too!) with various Facebook applications and the developers who created them. The problem is so bad that the ACLU recently created their own Facebook Quiz to demonstrate how much information an app has access to.

It’s time to take back control! From the Facebook homepage, hover your mouse over the “Settings” menu and choose “Privacy Settings” from the drop-down list. On the next page, click “Applications” then click the tab that reads “Settings” which is next to the “Overview” tab. (Oh, and if you want to really be freaked out, read that overview!)

On this page, you can check and uncheck boxes next to your personal information (picture, education history, wall, religious views, etc.). This controls what applications your friends are using can see about you. Yes, your friends’ apps can see your personal info if you don’t make this change! Believe it or not, you don’t have the same control over your own apps. The best you can do is head over to the Applications page and delete the apps you’re not using anymore. (Use the “X” to remove them.) You see, once you authorize an application, you’re telling it that it’s OK to access any information associated with your account that it requires to work. While some developers may only pull what’s actually required, many others just pull in everything they can. Scary, isn’t it?

Conclusion

While this is by no means a comprehensive guide to Facebook security and privacy, these five steps can help you get started in creating a safer, more secure, and more private environment on the social network.

However, if you choose not to take any precautions, then you’ll only have yourself to blame when an errant wall post or naughty photo makes its way online and straight into Grandma’s News Feed, or worse, your boss’s. These days, it’s better be safe than sorry, so go ahead and delve into those settings!

Social networking sites like iborian.com, MySpace, Facebook.com and mashada.com now offer users chance for individuals to create own content and share favourite websites with other forum members.

Search engine organisations like Google take notice of links attached to a content.

However, when using a social forum to promote a site, take time and analyse the site to be promoted trying to match it with the available forum. Check if the two are related in business or content. A related forum if used would make sense and hit the right audience.

Your website needs to match some aspect of a selected forum. For instance for MySpace.com users, when you need a work-out tips, try Health & Fitness section .

Instead of just posting a thread where you ask if people know about your website, you could post articles frequently in relevant sections of the forum. Posts unrelated to their topic are subject to deletion at a Moderator wish.

Create a well-written and researched content for your site and keep and do this repeatedly for popularity. A content would help pre-sell a venture as it demonstrates one’s expertise, and it confirms that visitors are in the right place to do what they always want to do online.

A content providing education to a potential client on why he or she needs a product or service may influence ones perception on a business. A site may become popular due to the content it provides,

Relevant topic

Local forums like iborian.com have a provision for blogs, under the blog spot a user can drop a comment about a given relevant topics in the form of an article.

Alternatively, one can use the blog feature to write an in-depth description of the site on promotion, convince the audience to visit and always include many links to the site throughout the text.

Invite more people to be your friends on a forum and send regular bulletins to announce any news, always including a link to your Web site says Mr Kennedy Kachwanya, iborian.com founder.

Other ways of web promotion is by getting other organisation to link to your site. Links could either be one way or reciprocal. Remember to link with a quality website experiencing like a lot of traffic. Commenting on popular blogs and leaving a link back to a specific page on your website is always a great help.

Published on 30/03/2009 The standard

By Fredrick Obura

The challenge of dealing with such a huge number of users has been highlighted by hiccups suffered by some other social-networking sites. Twitter was beleaguered with scaling problems for some time and became infamous for its “Fail Whale”–the image that appears when the microblogging site’s services are unavailable.

In contrast, Facebook’s efforts to scale have gone remarkably smoothly. The site handles about a billion chat messages each day and, at peak times, serves about 1.2 million photos every second.

Facebook vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer will appear on Wednesday at Technology Review’s EmTech@MIT conference in Cambridge, MA. He spoke with assistant editor Erica Naone about how the company has handled a constant flow of new users and new features.

Technology Review: What makes scaling a social network different from, say, scaling a news website?

Mike Schroepfer: Almost every view on the site is a logged-in, customized page view, and that’s not true for most sites. So what you see is very different than what I see, and is also different than what your sister sees. This is true not just on the home page, but on everything you look at throughout the site. Your view of the site is modified by who you are and who’s in your social graph, and it means we have to do a lot more computation to get these things done.

TR: What happens when I start taking actions on the site? It seems like that would make things even more complex.

MS: If you’re a friend of mine and you become a fan of the Green Day page, for example, that’s going to show up in my homepage, maybe in the highlights, maybe in the “stream.” If it shows me that, it’ll also say three of [my] other friends are fans. Just rendering that home page requires us to query this really rich interconnected dataset–we call it the graph–in real time and serve it up to the users in just a few seconds or hopefully under a second. We do that several billion times a day.

TR: How do you handle that? Most sites deal with having lots of users by caching–calculating a page once and storing it to show many times. It doesn’t seem like that would work for you.

MS: Your best weapon in most computer science problems is caching. But if, like the Facebook home page, it’s basically updating every minute or less than a minute, then pretty much every time I load it, it’s a new page, or at least has new content. That kind of throws the whole caching idea out the window. Doing things in or near real time puts a lot of pressure on the system because the live-ness or freshness of the data requires you to query more in real time.

We’ve built a couple systems behind that. One of them is a custom in-memory database that keeps track of what’s happening in your friends network and is able to return the core set of results very quickly, much more quickly than having to go and touch a database, for example. And then we have a lot of novel system architecture around how to shard and split out all of this data. There’s too much data updated too fast to stick it in a big central database. That doesn’t work. So we have to separate it out, split it out, to thousands of databases, and then be able to query those databases at high speed.

TR: What happens when you add new features to the site?

MS: Adding or changing a feature can pretty dramatically affect the behavior of the user, which has pretty dramatic implications on the system architecture. I’ll give a very simple example. We added the “Like” feature in February of this year. It’s a single-button thumbs up so the user can say, “I like this thing.” There was a long debate internally about whether the “Like” feature was going to cannibalize commenting. It turned out to be additive; the commenting rate stayed the same and “Like” became one of the most common actions in the system.

This sounds really trivial, but one of the challenges of building complex, scalable systems is always that [it's easier to retrieve data from a database than to store it there]. Every time I click on that “Like” button, we have to record that somewhere persistently. If [we built the system assuming that we'd be mostly retrieving data], we just blew that assumption by changing the features of the product. I think we try pretty hard to not be too set on any of those assumptions and be ready to revisit them as we change the core product. That’s pretty critical.

TR: And how about hooking these new features into the existing architecture?

MS: I think one of the most interesting things is that we can turn a feature on. Going from zero users to 300 million users in an afternoon for a brand-new feature is pretty crazy. And we can do that because, generally speaking, we share all of the infrastructure. You can turn it on and have it go from 1 percent adoption to 100 percent adoption in a day without much or any perceived downtime.

TR: But you don’t just have a problem with change and complexity–there’s also the issue of storage. Facebook serves tons of photos. Was that system always built to scale?

MS: Now especially–with camera phones and direct integration via [smartphone applications]–there’s just a tremendous wealth of photos being uploaded and shared on the site. We built the first version of our photo storage using off-the-shelf network-attached storage devices with Web servers in front of them. That was functional but not functional enough, and it was also expensive. We did some tuning on that system to improve the performance and got it five or six times faster than the original version. Then we went and built our own storage system called Haystack that’s completely built on top of commodity hardware. It’s all sata drives and an Intel box with a custom stack on top of it that allows us to store and then serve the photos from the storage tier. That’s significantly faster than the off-the-shelf solutions and also significantly cheaper. We’ve invested a lot of energy in storing photos because the scale is just astounding.

TR: Do you always know that you’re going to be able to pull off the changes you try to make to the architecture?

MS: There’s been a couple cases where we’ve taken on a project where we weren’t actually sure we could do it–there’s one I can’t talk about because we’ll announce it later in the year. There are cases where we’re going to try to do something that lots of other people have tried before, but we think we can do it better. I think the courage and the willingness to make the investment are actually the most critical parts of this, because without that, all the great planning in the world isn’t going to get you there.

There are more than 350,000 applications on Facebook. The company says it disables any that violate its terms.

Sure, it’s nice to be noticed. But security experts are skeptical about whether sharing information, such as birthdays, with a broad audience is a bright idea.

“It’s all about providing the bad guy with intelligence,” said Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDtheftsecurity.com. “Back in the day, spy organizations planted someone on the inside to get proprietary data. Social media is the man on the inside. We’re giving away all the intelligence for free.”

Many people use their birthdate in passwords and personal identification numbers, and security questions often ask for it to resend a lost password. So broadcasting a birthdate could help cybercriminals pose as others as they log on to various Web sites, experts warned.

The same goes for pet names and the names of children. If your mother is a Facebook friend, her maiden name (a popular security question) is within reach of an identity thief.

The bad guys’ tactics

Malicious actors have different goals. Some are people who want Web surfers to click on links where they get paid to send people. Others hope computer users will enter passwords or Social Security numbers they can use to steal identities or money. And others would like to take over computers or Facebook identities.

One of the online attackers’ favorite tricks is to send a post to a Facebook wall or Twitter account that looks like it came from a friend. The post contains a link, supposedly to a third-party application. If you take the bait, the scammers can collect your sign-on information and use malicious software to send that link to your friends.

“They are so viral,” said Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief at Mashable.com, a site that follows social media. “It becomes something that can affect thousands of people.”

The hackers then try the same username and password for other sites to see whether they can break in to your accounts.

Once a user’s account has been compromised, it creates opportunities for new scams. In one, a cybercriminal takes over a Facebook member’s account and pretends to be stranded in another country. The scammer then asks the user’s friends to wire money to them.

This scam has been happening with increasing frequency, wrote Facebook software engineer Alok Menghrajani Tuesday on one of the site’s blogs. Facebook is working with Western Union to identify these schemes and has “improved a number of our automated systems to better handle this unique class of scam,” he wrote.

Another popular ability of Facebook and Twitter, the status update of your current location, could also lead to trouble, Ostrow said. Mashable reported in June that one man in Arizona had tweeted he was going on vacation and came home to find his house burglarized.

Although authorities could not directly link the crime to the Twitter message, experts say it’s clear that someone who tells his online community he is out of town has left himself exposed to criminals.

Who can see your quiz answers?

The American Civil Liberties Union is concerned about the amount of information visible by Facebook quiz makers and other third-party applications.

“They’ll have access to all that information, so they can sell it; they can share it; they can do an awful lot with it,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy-related issues with the ACLU.

He said it is not clear that Facebook can do much about it, but the social media site disputed that assertion.

“We require that applications only ask for the data they need to run the application,” Facebook spokesman Simon Axten wrote in an e-mail interview with CNN.com. “We enforce this policy through spot checks and have disabled apps that we’ve found to be in violation. No app can access the most sensitive information like contact info.”

There are more than 350,000 applications active on Facebook, and more than 70 percent of its members use one each month, according to the site.

In August, Facebook announced it would make changes to the site, including “technical changes designed to give people more transparency and control over the information they provide to third-party applications.”

“That doesn’t get to the heart of the question,” Calabrese said, “which is, do you want and should your friends have the ability to share your personal information with third parties?”

His organization hopes to meet with Facebook officials, he said.

Protecting your privacy

Mashable’s Ostrow recommended using the “lists” feature on Facebook and having different privacy settings for each group. For family or close friends, it would be OK to show an address and phone numbers. But consider restricting information access for acquaintances.

Ostrow also said Facebook users should carefully consider friend requests in the first place, a sentiment echoed by Michael Kaiser, the executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance.

“People don’t think about what their goal is in using social media before they start,” Kaiser said. If you want to use it on a personal level, limit the number of people in your network to close friends and family whom you trust.

But, he said, if used as a professional tool with a wide network, reveal less about yourself.

Information on LinkedIn, a professional networking site, is intended for public viewing.

Still, “we really encourage users to connect to users they know and trust,” said Kay Luo, a spokeswoman for the company. “LinkedIn should be the version of yourself that you feel comfortable sharing.”

People often post on the site where they have worked and when, business groups they belong to and when they went to college.

“The real issue that comes to mind is listing past contacts and affiliations that someone could use to dig up data to be used in whatever ways imaginable,” Siciliano said. — (CNN)

Facebook now has 300 million users — almost as many as the population of the United States.

That was the double-barreled announcement from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who thanked the site’s users for helping its online community cross the 300 million threshold. There are about 307 million people living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone,” Zuckerberg wrote on the company’s blog.

“Because we want to make it as easy and fast as possible for the world to connect, one of the things we think a lot about is how to make Facebook perform even faster and more efficiently as we grow,” he wrote. “We face a lot of fun and important challenges that require rethinking the current systems for enabling information flow across the Web.”

The social networking site, while popular with its exploding user base, has struggled to turn a profit.

But Zuckerberg said the company became profitable last quarter, beating its goal of getting out of the red by the end of 2010.

“This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term,” he wrote.

In July, the California startup company announced it had hit the 250 million-user mark, which indicates it has grown by 50 million users in two months. That’s more than 800,000 new users per day.

About 70 percent of Facebook’s users are outside the U.S., according to statistics posted by the company. The site started out as a portal for college students but has attracted the attention of baby boomers and older generations in recent years. Facebook says its fastest-growing demographic is people older than 35.

Over the past year, the social network has seen a challenge from Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site. Many bloggers see recent updates to Facebook’s interface as copied from Twitter’s stripped-down design.

As Facebook has grown, it also has drawn criticism from privacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which says people on Facebook unwillingly give up personal information to advertisers and Facebook application developers.

In an interview with Fortune, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said Facebook gives its users robust privacy controls.

She also told Fortune that a new approach to online advertising has helped Facebook’s revenue grow throughout the recession.

“Our advertisements are very much part of the user experience,” she said. “So the same way you can RSVP for an event on Facebook — you know, a party your friend might throw — you can RSVP for a movie premiere. And that’s really a movie advertisement saying, ‘Our movie is opening this weekend. Do you want to go?’ ”

After Zuckerberg’s blog post went up Tuesday, more than 500 Facebook users commented, largely cheering him on.

“i [heart] facebook. mark, you are my hero!” one user wrote.

“Today the Internet, tomorrow the world,” said another.

MG Siegler at the blog TechCrunch wrote that it was inevitable that Facebook would pass the 300 million mark but that its finance news was more significant.

New technologies probably are helping Facebook keep its computer server costs down, which is important because Facebook stores a lot of data, he wrote. The site is effectively the largest photo-sharing site online, he said.

John Paczkowski, a writer for the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD blog, said Facebook’s financial announcement indicates the startup isn’t thinking about selling out.

“It would seem then that Facebook has no interest whatsoever in selling itself off to Google or anyone else,” he wrote. “It would much rather go public.” — (CNN)