Scoble Facebook account disabled

Uberhacker Scoble has been chucked off Facebook. I picked this up on Mashable and nearly wet myself laughing. After all the old rascal is asking a fair question as to to who owns your social graph, you or FB? They offer us a free service and we offer them loads of free content and free information in return, but they don't seem to like it when someone tries to move their stuff elsewhere. All this happens just when I decided to add my sparkling new year mugshot (to your left) to my FB profile as I thought it looked shady enough for Zuikerberg's pot of gold. Ah well, nice one Scoble, and keep up the good work. Some of these issues are being adressed by dataportability.org a site well worth checking out. Somehow FB seems so last year these days, but the lemmings keep on signing up. I'd rather stick with blogging and work for myself, thanks. But first I need some coffee, fairtrade and organic as ever.

LinkedIn for business...

...This has to be my favourite quote of the day:
"LinkedIn is quite clear on one thing: they don’t want Facebook-style donut-throwing time wasters;" says Mashable . As LinkedIn is developing a business API they don't want to be squatted by vampires. Here at Fortune Cookie we are very optimistic at the moment in spite of all the early Christmas sales and the financial doom and gloom. The internet is going mobile and in a period of transition those who are serious and professional should survive and thrive. The shine has gone off Facebook for many reasons and we welcome LinkedIn's attempt to target a more businesslike audience. This app should also be cool for job hunting and finding people to work with on your projects.

Block Facebook Beacon...

...by enabling this Firefox plug-in. As more news comes out about how Facebook Beacon follows you around and collects data from other websites you visit perhaps it's time to think twice about clicking the "Remember me" button and to disable cookies on a regular basis. This is one Cookie that's getting tired and bored of Facebook. Hang on I just need to throw this sheep and bite that vampire. I'll be right back. Leighton is drinking green tea and eating chocolate (at this time of night too!) and the tea is organic. The chocolate is left over from my son's birthday and I've been listening to some classical music, and...ah! Get a life!
Update December 6: Mark Zuckerberg has now apologized for the way in which Beacon was launched and there is now a complete opt out option according to Macworld:
"Still, Zuckerberg's blog posting doesn't directly address the findings of a CA security researcher that have fueled the privacy controversy over Beacon in recent days.
Stefan Berteau found that Beacon tracks users even if they are logged off from the social-networking site and have declined having their activities broadcast to friends.
In this case, users aren't informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook or given the option to block that information from being transmitted, according to Berteau, senior research engineer at CA's Threat Research Group."

Knowledge is Power...Is Big Facebook Watching You?...

...I've been involved in a thread on Mashable titled Facebook asks Can we see your id? The post throws up a number of issues connected to our privacy and also the possibility of identity theft (BBC story) a topic in the news again this morning. I have contacted the Welsh office of the ICO for clarification of some the issues raised by the mass collection of personal data. The Wales network of Facebook alone already has 195,586 members and Wales is just a small country! It is perhaps important at this stage to make sure that all this data being collected is not breaking current data protection legislation and also to ask the question: Where do we draw the lines between the individual's right to privacy and the practical control and knowledge of all the data being collected. Facebook has a few spooky connections such as possible CIA links
and the now defunded Information Awareness Office whose motto was "Knowledge is Power." Some of the aims of the IAO were:
* Human Identification at a Distance (HumanID) to develop automated biometric identification technologies to detect, recognize and identify humans at great distances.

* Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment (WAE) focused on developing automated technology capable of identifying predictive indicators of terrorist activity or impending attacks by examining individual and group behavior in broad environmental context and examining the motivation of specific terrorists.

* Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) was intended to harness collective intelligence by researching market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events. The intent was to explore the feasibility of market-based trading mechanisms to predict political instability, threats to national security, and other major events in the near future.
All a lot of innocent fun to provide us all with useful suggestions as to what to buy for Christmas based on our known interests and purchasing habits? In view of recent deadwood press criticism of bloggers and the cult of the amateur (story/Rachel) why aren't our gatekeepers doing more to investigate these issues?
This is what the FT had to say this morning: "...allowing advertisers to exploit the deep connections between users on the Facebook site - a web of relationships known in the industry as the "social graph" - could backfire if the move ends up alienating the users themselves.

"What we've learned from the commercialisation of the web is that people are more than happy to exchange their privacy for free stuff and greater convenience as long as you allow them to maintain the fiction that their activities are not being monitored and recorded," writes Nicholas Carr, a prominent technology author, on his blog, Rough Type.

"In breaking that illusion, Facebook is taking a big risk. It may set off a rebellion among its users, who up until now have felt comfortable cavorting behind Facebook's walls." There is a perceived and real inequality between the rights and freedoms of the citizen and the power of large multinational corporations and an urgent need to make sure that advances in technology do not deprive us of our liberties.

Facebook and privacy...

...Social networking site Facebook is changing its privacy policy to allow public profiles and one month from now Google search listings of members information. Sensitive data such as date of birth could become a security issue as we all leave more digital tracks behind us. According to Gigaom "This move transforms Facebook from being a social network to being quasi-White Pages of the Web. Every time a non-Facebook user finds someone on Facebook after a “search,” they might feel compelled to sign-up and get more information. It is a virtuous cycle, meant to attract more people to the Facebook network." We have one month to change our personal security settings. This seems, as Gigaom points out, to be a move to increase traffic and boost Facebook's e-commerce potential and "yet another small step in the overall erosion of personal privacy, thanks to the ever growing popularity of the social networks. I don’t like the direction where all this is headed." I agree, Gigaom.