Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News via kwout

The draft design uses a tabbed layout for the wide column with the initial set of tabs for a Wall, an About page and Photos. Applications can also be set up in custom tabs, but these are configured and controlled by the user.

The design changes are intended to “align the goals of application developers with the principles of the Platform ecosystem”. This, combined with the earlier introduction of “allocations” to ration the features available to unruly applications illustrate Facebook’s strategy of ecological platform development; changing an environment in which desirable behaviours are easier and more profitable than undesirable ones.

Facebook can ruin your life. And so can MySpace, Bebo… – News, Gadgets & Tech – Independent.co.uk via kwout

Whilst those who brag about engaging in criminal activities on social networks can legitimately expect to have the information they’ve shared come back to haunt them; should employers, recruiters and educators assume the same rights as the police or the security services?

The terms and conditions of social networks often restrict activity to personal use only.

“You understand that except for advertising programs offered by us on the Site (e.g., Facebook Flyers, Facebook Marketplace), the Service and the Site are available for your personal, non-commercial use only.”

Facebook | Terms of Use

Any employer using these networks to gather intelligence about an employee will be violating the terms of service by gathering personal data for commercial use.

Ownership of content is generally retained by the users of social networks.

“You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

Google Terms of Service (covering Orkut)

In many cases media displayed in social networks are stored on separate hosting services with their own conditions and requirements, and have the additional protection of declaring Creative Commons licenses that explicitly state the media are for non-commercial use.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States via kwout

Employers who include text and images from social networks as evidence at an industrial tribunal will be violating the copyright of the very employees they are in conflict with.  Employees who are unlikely to waive the unnegotiated (and presumably quite high) fees for the prejudicial use of their intellectual property.

Even where an image is marked as available for commercial use issues of privacy and model consent remain.

On the Texas suit against Virgin and Creative Commons (Lessig Blog) via kwout

Employers and educators who violate privacy should be aware that they may also be violating contract law and copyright law. They should be unsurprised if they face legal consequences as a result, and should budget accordingly.

The question is, who will sue first:

• individuals protecting their privacy

• content owners protecting their intellectual property rights

• service providers protecting their users and their market share

• the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, because that’s what they do

Privacy | Electronic Frontier Foundation via kwout

This change will alter the application ecology, making it more likely that applications aligning themselves with users aims and goals will have more generous allocations and spread more effectively than applications that spam their users’ friends.

Application Developers will have access to User Response Metrics that indicate how their applications are perceived, which in turn influences how allocations are assigned to different functions.

Though not directly related to the current change, FaberNovel’s presentation contains an interesting, if slightly out of date, overview of Facebook. In particular slide 28 highlights the need for new metrics in social media sites.

orkut Blog: Create a Private Community via kwout

This follows on from recent functional refinements and awareness raising activities relating to individuals’ privacy settings.

The change opens up the possibility of using Orkut for applications that require greater trust and security e.g. maintaining family contacts, supporting distance learning activities or organizing local clubs and societies. Its also reflects an increasing level of activity and discussion around broad issues of online privacy and ownership of social graph data.

Techdirt: Is There A Conflict Between Open Social Graphs And Your Privacy? via kwout

The whole issue is made more complex when some users’ desires for data portability conflict with other’s needs for discretion.

Facebook privacy chief: Data portability dangers overlooked | InfoWorld | News | 2008-02-08 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via kwout

Trust relationships are becoming more entangled as platforms grow in power and flexibility.

TouchGraph | Products: Facebook Browser via kwout

Facebook and Open Social applications are able to access their installer’s social graph. So, when I trust you as a friend I’m also entrusting some of my data to your applications. There are fine and evolving balances to be drawn between convenience and security that should give us a more granular choice than simply whether to be exposed or anonymous.

These Are My Kids

These Are My Kids | Facebook via kwout

This is a Facebook application through which families can keep in touch, sharing news and photographs in a safe secure on-line environment. Family members who are offline will kept in the loop via a printing service that regularly sends books of annotated photographs to them.

LiveVote (N.B. only available in Canada)

This is a little more immediate. Free SMS text message polls and surveys can be set up using the LiveVote web site. The poll questions, options and instructions can then be:

• embedded in a blog
• printed in a newspaper
• broadcast in a radio or TV show

Results are instantly available and can be displayed in a widget like the one above.

Though “These are My Kids” and “LiveVote” involve different processes and are targeted at different demographics they both show that the junctions between different channels of communication can be bridges instead of barriers.

Miss604’s Vancouver Blog » Blog Archive » Facebook Awards: Developer and Design Garage Live Blog Tonight via kwout

A restaurant discovery and rating application written in Python with a mySQL database, the application’s smooth and responsive interface shows the quality that can be expected from a dedicated, experienced team devoting months of focussed effort. Equally impressive is the commitment to a development philosophy that makes comparison testing an integral part of the design process.

Some notable quotes from the presentation are:

“People like to interact where no response is necessary, but a response is possible.”

“The most important thing is to deliver real value to the person using the application. Then impart additional value to their friends.”

Details of the other applications presented are on Miss 604′s blog, which amazingly was produced live during the event.

Issuu – You Publish via kwout

issuu documents are hosted free of charge and can be embedded in any web page or blog, or shared on social networks.

The embed gives a thumbnailed view of the entire document from which the publication can be opened for more comfortable reading. This in turn allows you to open a full screen view that is an absolute pleasure to use. In full screen the interface fades into the background leaving the viewer to enjoy the publication design with no distractions.

This is an ideal solution for presenting work where the fidelity of the graphical composition and typography is important.

It has limitations:

• Text is not exposed to search engines and cannot be copied to the clipboard.
• The hosted publications can be embedded by anyone, on any site; which means you must be very conscious of copyright issues.
• Comments can only be made on the publication as a whole, which can be a little coarse-grained for larger documents.

Other than that, issuu is an excellent technology that will be as useful in the publication of brochures, books and portfolios as it is in magazine publication and photography.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News via kwout

The introduction of a Javascript client levels the playing field for developers who can now make Facebook API calls purely from static html files, significantly reducing the load on the server. There are some limitations; the photo upload api won’t work and only the current users profile page can be written to, but the remainder of the api still functions.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News via kwout

What’s changing is that now developers will be able to add other content; movies, videos, flash animations, rss feeds etc. Possibilities for marketing and support include:

• screencasts of the application in action
• rss feeds from the developers
• photo or video posts from users

It would even, I think, be possible to place a live instance of the profile view of an application in its own About page.

User’s involvement with the applications can also change as they can now be fans of an application as well as, or instead of being users. I opens up the possibility of an application having an enormous fan base, but no users, if it delivers a service that doesn’t require user information or user preferences. Perhaps a calculator, a conversion utility or the front end of a library OPAC.

It’ll be interesting to watch how this change will affect peoples relationships with and take-up of the applications.

But how do you get your feeds to spread to audiences in social networks? Wiliam has an answer, at least for Facebook. It’s Blog RSS Feed Reader has the fitting, professional design you’d expect from one of Australia’s leading web design, strategy and marketing firms. This free application does more than the title suggests. As well as reading RSS feeds it can also handle ATOM and RDF data.

Blog RSS Feed Reader | Facebook via kwout

The application encourages the viral spread of information within Facebook with share buttons on each feed item as well as on the feed itself. It can also alert friends through Facebook News Feeds and Mini Feeds when there are incoming RSS updates.

An important feature for businesses is the ability to embed the feed on a Facebook Page. This is ideal for a business, product, service or celebrity wanting to set up an opt-in communication with their social network fans.

Treasuremytext: Save ur SMS Online | Facebook via kwout