Don't Stick Cotton Swabs in Your Ears, Delete Facebook!

Sometimes during your life, someone will give you good advice. You have choices, you can hear the advice or investigate the situation, or you can take the advice. This article is about some opinions, some facts, and some advice. You read in the title about cotton swabs but the article has not much to do with the swabs. This article is about Facebook and about the control that Facebook has over your free account.

What do cotton swabs and Facebook have in common? Control. The key is control. Facebook gives you hardly any control over your profile and the rest of your account. And when you stick cotton swabs in your ears, you lose control of your common sense. Every since the beginning of time, moms have been telling kids to keep away from the cotton swabs. Now this mom is telling you to stay away from Facebook unless you are going to alter your pages on Facebook.

Just recently I was reading about Facebook, their privacy report and how hard it is to delete your account. Being a skeptic, I tried to delete my own account also. It is harder to crochet a full size quilt. Facebook does not want yor account deleted. And one has to ask oneself why one single website needs that much control over a person's account First, a little background, you open a Facebook account and you believe that it is a social networking account, a place where you and your friends can get together, share stories, share book reviews and view each others' pictures while meeting other friends and business workers. It appears that way when you first open your account. Then, BOOM! Then you get to know what Facebook is really all about.

You receive messages from your friends that seem like friendly gestures and these messages say join or sign up with a different application. There are warnings all over the account (red flag number one) that these applications have nothing to do with facebook. Then there are warnings that you can block these applications. If you opt to join the application to your Facebook account, you are then told you need to send the same application to about twenty (Yes twenty!) of your friends or networkers). Seems that almost everyone on Facebook is sending out these applications and almost every send demands that you send that to twenty friends. Can you imagine the email list that this corporation is forming with all fo these lists of friends? You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Facebook and their affiliates are collecting emails for some reason or other.

Friends: This article is not about the friends. The friends that I had on Facebook are wonderful. This article is about privacy policy at Facebook, and it is about the nonsensical way that the applications insist that they obtain all of your friends email addresses to add a small application. This article is about the myths of Facebook and the truths that are really happening all over Facebook.

Tricks: Then you get the smart application that one of your friends send to you. This application boasts that you do NOT have to send this to twenty friends! Wow! You think, what a relief. So you press the button to check out this application and you ad to have it added, thinking that you do not have to send this to twenty friends. Then you hear the catch. You do not have to send this to twenty friends ONLY if you choose to participate in the endlist list of surveys that they send you. So there is the catch, participate in the surveys or send the application to twenty of your friends. (Does that sound like you are right back where you started from?).

Delete the Account: Ah, so you think that you can just delete your account when you want to? Better start now, and you will have your account deleted in a few years, maybe. Yes, I said years, and I said maybe. Under the pretext of making things easier for you in case you want to join Facebook again, Facebook insists that you delete each and every thing in your account FIRST and MANUALLY before they consider deleting your account. I have tried to do that in the past. It is like this, you delete something and you think it is deleted, yet in small print, Facebook tells you that somewhere else on Facebook that must be deleted again. Can you imagine going through this process if you have years of entries?

To finish their process, you might have to click tens of hundreds of thousands of times to finally clear out one Facebook account. Look at your friends list, look at your applications list, the wall, the other itmes connected to facebook! If you are the average Facebook member, you will take weeks or months to manually delete it all . And then Facebook can begin to delete your account.

Where is the Delete Button? It is not there. There is no listing in any of their sections to just delete the account. Finally after days of searching, you find the questions, How do I delete my account. The Facebook form letters give you more form answers, telling you you to manually delete all of your items, that means news sources, mini-feeds, news, messages, wall , and more. (If you have already delete these, you go back and send another message to Facebook stating that you have deleted all these. You wait, and you wait and wait some more.

Here is something from the tornado of privacy information that Facebook offers: They offer you the information that they are not responsible for ANYTHING at all that happens to you from your Facebook pages. Their privacy and contract instructions and information state that you are totally responsible for everything and anything that happens to you so they are not liable for ANY damages at all ever to anyone. (That is my wording but that is exactly what Facebook wants. They want out of any responsibility. In other words they have so protected themselves if you have any losses through Facebook, so much that they even put a dollar amount on it stating that you can't claim any more losses than $1,000. (This figure is as of this date of writing. Friday, March 14, 2008

More Tricks: When you try to delete some items, Facebook tells you that you can HIDE the items, but not delete them. Who ever heard of such a thing in any website? You go to delete and it tells you to HIDE it? Last time we looked, delete means to completely delete it and hide means something totally different. Hide means that these applications might be visible to facebook employees and others . (And probaly Facebook has hundreds of employees if not thousands. Do you really want all your personal information hidden rather than deleted? So, unwillingly , you hide all your personal information or whatever is not allowed to be deleted. And then you go back and email them again to say you ant you account permanently deleted. Still with me? The point I am making is that Facebook makes it almost impossible to permanently delete your account. They want you as a permanent customer. They figure at least one or two or more of your friends will convince you to stay with Facebook. If you have gone through this process, you have probably figured out by now that nothing will convince you to go back to Facebook.

Compare Other Websites: If you stop and compare other networking sites (there are plenty of them), you will see that other sites offer you more privacy and they offer a way to delete information and a way to easily delete your account. That is the way that it should be. There are many other sites that permit you to have more control over content.

Facebook is safe? Lots of the people we know, like Facebook because they think (That is THINK) Facebook is safer than other sites. And that could not be further than the truth. Facebook is a website and it is just as unsafe as any other ordinary webiste. They give it the impression, the look as if it is more busines-like (compare it to myspace.com) But what members do not realize is that Facebooks' business is collecting information and denying they have any responsibility to protect you or your friends. No one can or has proven that Facebook is any safer than any other site. So, be cautious on Facebook. Do not believe or think that this site is any safer than any other website. Any information that you type into that site can be obtained by any number of people, including by hackers.

Do You Want to Delete Your Facebook Account? If you want to do this, begin today by manually deleting each and every post,, picture, fun wall applications and any other thing connected to the Facebook account. Do not plan to delete it all in one day if you have hundreds of messages, but begin today.

Tricks for You: Here is a suggestion that you might or might not want to take. Have you thought of deleting all the messages and then posting a message on your fun wall, stating , I am deleting my account due to privacy policies of Facebook and due to the fact that Facebook makes it very difficult to delete items permanently. I am deleting my account on Facebook because I do not like an account that gives me little or no control over my privacy). You can write whatever anti-Fcebook statemnts that you like in your facebook account -as long as it is legal. , to express your opinion of Facebook. Now that might even help you get your account deleted, who knows? I can not imagine that Facebook would want all your negative publicity on your site. Remember type in there only what is legal. If you do this remember not to add any friends and not to add any other applications , gifts, or pictures.

Write and tell me if you are successful in deleting your Facebook - if that is what you want.

The author of this article has had many works published in the USA. She has traveled extensively throughout the East Coast and through the South while observing people and writing about life and everything that is in it. She writes about various topics that interest readers across the nation and all over the world.

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5 Ideas For Making Money With Facebook

How to make money with Facebook? Is it really possible to make money with Facebook? It seems like making money with Facebook is on everybody's mind these days. If you are one of those people who want to know how to make money with Facebook, here are some ideas to help you get started in making money on Facebook.

These methods don't require you to buy anything or pay someone to tell you the "secrets". As a matter of fact you can start making money with your Facebook right now without having to spend any money at all. These are no "secrets" for making money on Facebook. Simply some very basic methods that people use to make money elsewhere, but with a little work and patience you can apply the same methods to make money on Facebook.

Of course, like any other method to make money, you need a market for it. In this case the market would be Facebook friends. The more Facebook friends you have, the more chance you have of making (more) money. What if you don't have much Facebook friends? Fortunately it's very easy to create a massive market (friends for Facebook) simply by searching and inviting others to be your friend. But, if you want to take it to the next level and automate the finding and adding friends process, there are some software that can do just that.

Ok, lets get to the point and see how you can make money on Facebook. Here are some proven ways you can use to make money on Facebook.

Showing ads on Facebook

With all the Facebook applications that make it easy and a snap to start showing ads on your Facebook, there is no excuse for not taking advantage of this method, specially if you are popular amongst your Facebook friends, and have a big audience to show your ads to. Using AdSense, chitika and other PPC advertising companies you can easily setup your ads and customize it to your liking. Make sure to set it somehow that it serves ads related to product and services that you know your Facebook audience is interested in.

Writing a Facebook book (How To...)

Facebook is attracting more and more members everyday. And lets face it, not all of these people are Facebook savvy. And even though getting started with Facebook for you and I might be simple and quick, many people have problem with the basic things. Write a small and to the point e-book about Facebook and how to use it. Maybe a simple step by step instruction for getting started with Facebook. Or an e-book about how to use different application to make Facebook experience a better one. There are many possibilities. With the huge amount of Facebook apps and all the new ones that are added daily, this can be quite big. You don't even have to pay to promote your e-book, simply use your own Facebook or better yet create one for your e-book and start promoting it.

Affiliate marketing on Facebook

It's the same idea as showing ads, but in a more direct way. Register for free with affiliate networking sites such as ClickBank, Maxbounty and etc, and pick a product relevant to your Facebook audience interest to promote. You will be provided a simple code which is a link with your affiliate id embedded in it. Whenever someone clicks on that link and buys the product or service, you make money by getting a commission.

You can create an entirely new Facebook for that product and start promoting it there. A friend of mine is actually doing it for 4/5 different weight loss product. He created a Facebook page for each product and started adding friends to his Facebook. He writes short posts about the product and posts it on his Facebook with his affiliate link in it. Hi is making a couple of hundred dollars a month doing this. I know it's not much, but for something that doesn't cost you a dime and takes about 30 minuets to setup, and takes about 20 minutes or so a day to run, I don't think it's a bad deal.

Blogging about Facebook

There are already some people doing it. But there is always room for new voices. Get a free blog over at blogger and use Google AdSense (which is already integrated in blogger, so even if you don't know how to show ads on your blog, you can set it up with couple clicks) to show ads on your blog and make money that way.

When you established yourself as an authority and a trusted person for anything related to Facebook, you can get some sponsor and maybe use affiliate networking sites to find and promote Facebook related product.

Create and sell a Facebook application

If you are savvy enough and know your way around, why not use your skills to make a Facebook app of your own and sell it to Facebook users? Again, once you made it, you can use the same strategies mentioned above (blog or a Facebook page for the app) to promote your app.

There you have it, 5 ideas you can use to make money not only on Facebook, but you can also apply the same ideas to MySpace, Twitter and other social networking platforms to make money.

Satrap is the founder and author of controversial blog, blogstash.com. A blog full of great how-tos and information about making money online. Visit blogstash today to get your share of this valuable information and learn how to make money online.

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Promoting Your Business With Facebook

In the past few years, websites have become increasingly essential for achieving success on the internet. Facebook is one of the most widely used social websites on the internet and as such presents businesses with an opportunity to enhance its profile.

Facebook is an important tool for promoting your business or blog. Facebook pages is dedicated for business use and offers a cost effective opportunity for small as well larger businesses. Over the years the popularity of Face Book has continued to grow at a phenomenal rate. It has been growing faster than many of its rivals such as MySpace.  Facebook now has over 200,000,000 active users all over the world.

The large user base of Facebook has made it attractive for businesses to use it as medium to connect with customers.  It offers a business with an opportunity to acquire new customers and drive traffic to its website. Facebook can be used to promote a business in many ways.

Listed below are some ways a business can use Face Book:

Business profile on face book pages

As discussed earlier, Facebook pages is a section dedicated purely for promoting business. A business can create a page on Facebook pages in order to tap its full potential. A Facebook page is more than simply a blog page. There are many applications and built-in tools to make the page interactive and interactive for your users.

The Facebook page of your company is accessible to Facebook's vast user base as well as being available publicly on the internet and search engines like Google. A Facebook page can be a powerful tool to help your business to acquire new customers.

Creating your profile is only the first step that can then be used to invite new and expand your company's network.

Create and expand your business network on Facebook

After you have successfully created your business profile on Facebook, you can build your network and start expanding it. As with other professional networks on the internet, the main benefit depends on how established your network is on Facebook and its popularity among users. A large network for your company is important to leverage the maximum benefits for your company.

A good place to start expanding your network is to invite colleagues and customers to join your business network on Facebook. They can do so by adding your network to their favourites or joining as fans.  Any posts you make on your Facebook page will automatically appear on the news feeds of all those who have added your profile to their friends list on Facebook. This provides opportunities for posting information such as latest news, special offers and so on. You can use the search feature of Facebook to find your contacts and invite them to join your group or network or add your company to their friends list on face book.

Promote Your Business

Your Facebook profile and business page offers opportunities to promote your company and enhance your profile. The default info tab on face book pages can be used to provide information about your company and also includes a link to your company's website.

Promote your Website and Blog

You can also use Facebook to promote your website and blog. Many businesses operate a blog these days. You can promote articles of your blog on Facebook. You can easily import blog posts from your blog to your Facebook page. Your posts will be available on your profile as well as in the news feeds of your fans and subscribers.  The amount of traffic you can generate to your company's website from Facebook will also depend on how active you are on Facebook.

Sell Products in Facebook Marketplace

You can also use Facebook to sell products or services. Facebook Marketplace is dedicated specifically for listing items for sale. Facebook market place is free to use and offers a method to promote products and services you would like to sell to others. You can use the market place to promote existing products from your website. 

Advertise on Facebook

In addition to promoting your content on Facebook via your profile or business page, you can also use facebook to advertise your business.  There are paid advertising options for promoting your business or products on Facebook. You can easily create advertisements for your business in few simple steps. The charge is based on pay per click or per thousand impressions. The high website traffic of Facebook can help acquire new customers as well as drive traffic to your website.

Author K.Singh is an experienced Internet marketing and Web development consultant in London. He is the director of a Web Design Company in London, and is the Editor of a Search engine marketing Blog.

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The Basics of Building Facebook Applications

The ubiquity of Facebook is hard to ignore. It started as a local service that helped college students connect and has expanded into a worldwide phenomenon with millions of users accessing Facebook and associated applications every day. The size of the Facebook audience makes it a compelling platform for developers as does the versatility of the site. There are a wide range of applications already being used on Facebook and the possibilities for new applications are limited only to the developer's imagination. So let's discuss some of the basics when it comes to building Facebook applications.

In the Beginning

Any developer who is hoping to write or install Facebook applications must first have his or her own Facebook account and then must install the developer application. Facebook's developer application allows you to create, monitor, and configure applications. In addition, you'll need to secure yourself a server as Facebook applications run form the developer's server. The benefit of this is that you can write the application in whichever language you know best. For the sake of simplicity, examples in this article will use PHP but the process is the same regardless of the language you use.

Once you have your Facebook account, have downloaded the developer application, and have your server ready to go, you'll be ready to start developing your own applications. Still, having a bit of understanding of the Facebook platform will help you during the creative process. First and foremost, the fundamental components of Facebook are clearly outlined on their developer site. Essentially, the platform is made up of three parts: API, FBML, and FQL. Of course, APIs determine the ways in which you can connect to and interact with Facebook. FBML is the custom Facebook markup language which has basically be modeled around HTML. While similar to Coldfusion or ASP.NET and associated tag-based syntax, FBML helps you to define the pages of your application specifically for the Facebook Platform. And finally, FQL is the Facebook Query Language which is also a customized developer language for Facebook that is based on SQL. FQL is especially useful when there are no helper methods in the API but can also be used for tags in FBML giving developers an incredible amount of control over the details of their application.

Facebook Development Tools and Resources

Like any development applications, Facebook features a range of tools and resources that can help developers in a number of ways. Apart from the core documentation, tools can also help you debug raw API calls or tweak the FQL. With Facebook resources you'll find a collection of libraries for PHP and Java as well as links to other libraries like ActionScript, Cocoa, Coldfusion,.NET, Perl, Python, and Ruby. In addition, Facebook has an ever-expanding community wiki that can help answer any questions you may have about the details of developing Facebook applications. Because Facebook is a fairly complicated social media network, pages often feature layers upon layers of detailed information and it is certainly in the best interests of the developer to become familiar with FBML and API. Indeed, FBML and API allow you to manipulate a lot of this information so a more in-depth understanding of these tools and the terminology used on the site. Experienced Facebook users, for example, will know the difference between the News Feed and your Profile page and so should developers.

Step-by-Step Guidelines for Creating an Application

At this point, let's discuss briefly the stages involved in building a Facebook application. Of course you'll need to get the Facebook Developer Application to begin but from here there are some basic principles that should help guide you through the process.

1. To begin setting up a new application select the "Set Up New Application" option in the developer application. You'll want to name your application and you'll also need to accept the Terms of Service. Your API key is used so that Facebook can recognize your application and your application secret are used so that Facebook can authenticate your requests. Choose a secret that is easy to remember and also difficult to hack as you would with any online password.

2. The next step involves configuring a number of settings before starting to write code. Under the "Edit Settings" section you can enter support and contact information, including your email address.

3. A callback URL is required and this would need to be the address where your application is stored on the server.

4. A canvas page URL is also required and this tells us where your application is stored on Facebook. Developers usually want to match their canvas page URL with their application name so that it's easy to remember for users. This URL must be a minimum of 7 characters long and can include only letters, dashes, and underscores.

5. Next, Facebook will ask you whether your application can be added on Facebook, obviously you'll want to say "Yes."

6. To continue developing your application click "Save and Continue."

While these are the most basic steps for creating a simple application, configuring your application to your host still needs to be completed. Nevertheless, experienced developers will find it an extremely straight forward exercise to develop Facebook applications. The process is streamlined and simple so as to encourage the addition of new, interesting, and interactive applications from a broad developer community. Regardless of culture, language, or location applications can be easily uploaded for the enjoyment of the massive Facebook audience.

Moonrise Productions is a full services San Francisco web design company. They offer complete design services, social network web development, ecommerce development, social network hosting and more. With New York, San Diego, San Francisco and a Los Angeles presence no matter where you are, we've got people to serve you.

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The Future Business Model of Facebook

The one thing Facebook has not figured out yet is how to utilize their fabulous product to make the most money, consistently and on an ongoing basis - i.e. finding the right business model. A really intriguing topic to write my very first blog about, because, in my opinion, finding the right business model for Facebook cannot be accomplished using conventional thinking, like, solely looking at Google and their search engine ad revenue, for example. Facebook is unique, so you need to find unique solutions. Actually, there is not one single best business model for this site, rather a multitude of potential revenue streams from very different sources. It is not only "how do we generate revenue", but equally important "when do we start with which one". This might sound strange now, but it will get clear, when reading this. Summarized, it is basically taking your assets and what made you successful in the first place and finding new ways to use them effectively.

Business Network / Business Profile

I thinking about this since beginning of February. Wouldn't it be great, if you'd only need to login once and have your private and professional network in one view, although strictly separated from each other, depending on your settings? Wouldn't it also be great for companies to have a business network with about 7 times more users than LinkedIn, that can offer people having every kind of skills and experience imaginable as well as offering any kind of services and products among their 500 million users? Wouldn't it be great for Facebook to be able to get into companies blocking the site so far, generating new streams of ad and other revenue from recruitment companies and others? But most importantly, Business Network market leaders LinkedIn and Xing charge their users, meaning Facebook would have an absolute legitimate case to do so as well for their business network users. This means, that the crucial, and psychological, hurdle of charging end-users can be overcome via a sideway, so to speak, without having to expect a massive backlash or a mass exodus of users. Of course, they can only start to charge the active business network users, but when the door is open once...needless to say, this has the highest potential impact on the bottom line of Facebook.

All this would happen, if Facebook offered a Business Network, too. This is not even a huge undertaking for them really, just leveraging their existing functionality.

It can be set-up rather easily via automatic transfer of the existing (fitting) data of the user profiles into their new professional profiles, giving the users the choice to opt-in into this service and let them enter more business-related data to be able to activate their professional profile (which also means more key data available within Facebook). The professional profile can be, e.g. on a separate tab right next to the private one or just as another wall and info page next to the main profile, allowing for it to be within the Facebook site, but with the possibility to completely block the private section, when accessed from certain locations, while also allowing the user to keep both profiles and their connections separated via respective privacy settings. To grow rapidly, at least initially the service should be offered for free. Ads can be displayed to help offset part of the launching and initial running costs. Existing Facebook functionality should be incorporated, examples are, the news feed with real-time updates, posting pictures (e.g. from corporate events), the Like button, the option to easily post relevant news, etc., enabling the user to do the same things they like to do on the social network also in a business environment and in a simple and already known way. This would make the Facebook Business Network that much more alive than the mostly static existing ones, allowing users to be active or passive, enjoying ever-changing new content, keeping them on the site, just like it's happening on the current social network. At the same time, the previously mentioned benefits for Facebook are enormous, while the development time and costs for this are comparatively small as already proven and existing layout and functionality can be used. In my opinion, if set up properly, the other existing professional networks will be marginalized within about 9-12 months after the launch (depending on the roll-out plan), just like the other existing social networks.

In short, just take what successfully works, put it in a business context and reap the huge rewards.

Job Market

A job market, integrated with the business net as well as the rest of the site could be the next step. Same procedure as above, at the push of a button, the relevant data from the other profiles, private and professional gets transferred to a job search profile(again, if agreed to by the user) and additional data is added by the users to fill out the respective profile, alternatively, if a business network already exists the professional profile can also act as the job search profile, saving the users valuable time and enabling them to easily get out on the job market, without needing to fill out a long new form, updating their CVs, etc.. The first option, a new profile, would enable Facebook to gather more data and place more ads; the second one keeps the number of profiles from expanding, meaning less complexity and maintenance. Why Monster.com - Facebook has the equivalent of the third largest country in the world as talent base, available at the push of a button. This enables Facebook to pretty quickly become a major player selling job ads and e.g. earning additional money from HR companies for special search functions, etc. and also generating more ad money with the existing ads on the side of the screen.

Marketplace

Facebook has a marketplace actually, but it's safe to say, that it never took off in the way other parts of the site did. So I suggest a relaunch. Advantages are that no additional login is needed and the pretty convenient account access, also via Facebook's pretty well done mobile apps. Now the business network profile of (at least) the sellers should be integrated with the marketplace with the users accepting that Facebook can use their data for security reasons (e.g. to eliminate users with fake profiles from the start) while having them also add more data to be able to act as a seller (more key data within Facebook). This wealth of data enables Facebook to have a sufficiently lower fraud rate and even better fitting custom offerings for every single user than e.g. Ebay, huge competitive advantages. Special promotions for goods on Facebook will also make it easier for many users to accept letting Facebook use their existing data strictly for security reasons.

Now some examples for things currently totally out of Facebook's scope,

Facebook Apparel

Why they haven't done this already is beyond me. It's a great brand, simple logo, people like it. White and blue T-shirts, each with the alternatively colored Facebook logo, and matching caps, maybe some sweaters, that's enough for starters. Then advertise these products via their ad system, which simultaneously generates a great case study to show to ad buying prospects. For sure not their potentially largest income stream, but pretty quick to launch and profitable nevertheless, with options galore, like the ability to build the biggest clothing online store on the web via own offerings and the integration of other brands and retailers in an open way, similar to what Facebook has already done with applications on their site (use what works). Tailor-made offers (no pun intended) for 500 million users every time they log in, is quite a powerful thing here, too. Even opening Facebook brick & mortar stores in the future could be a viable option, also not necessarily limited to clothing.

Comprehensive Event & Event pictures database

Neat little features with great user benefits while pretty quick and rather inexpensive to launch are always fun. A comprehensive event database where every event manager will enter their own events and every Facebook user can search the listed events, concerts, etc. in his or any other region. If you travel abroad, for example, you know where to look for events and e.g. can also contact the event management or other Facebook users attending an event you are interested in easily and immediately with tools you are already familiar with. Additionally, the option to link pictures to the respective events should be implemented. Again, integrating all the successful Facebook features e.g. allowing people to tag themselves or be tagged (for privacy reasons, only the person her-/himself can tag themselves if they want; to tag others, the user needs to give permission to be tagged in this more public environment), Comment, Like button, etc., also allowing users to upload their own pictures from the events and link them to the event (when authorized by the event manager), makes it that much more interesting and definitely increases the number of user interactions on Facebook. Needless to say, all this is non- existent with the usual event/photo sites, where you often need to register, again, then get flooded with ads and only have partial overview over one region, and basically none of the other options described above. A centralized database is so much more convenient. By using already existing functionality for a new application, Facebook will save resources in developing these features while gaining speed to launch them (a familiar theme by now). Existing sites will have no chance against a comprehensive, worldwide, but localized database within the offering of a 500 million user juggernaut. This is certainly not difficult to set up from a technical standpoint and will render the existing party sites meaningless within about 6 months after launch in the respective regions. Facebook would gain even more new users, more user-generated content and user interaction as well as more ad revenue (e.g. the ad money flowing to the party sites will go to Facebook) out of this.

Banking functions

Microcredits

Facebook itself could offer a variation of a microcredit to its users (a microcredit is a very small loan originally designed for impoverished people in developing countries to engage in self-employment projects that allow them to generate an income - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit ). Where's the context, you will ask. The data of the users of Facebook is a credit rating specialist's dream as certain non-financial data is, when available, also highly valuable in today's loan approval process. No bank has anything close to this in terms of private data. To actually being able to use this data, Facebook would ask the applicants to sign a document that his Facebook user data can be used in the loan approval process. You can bet, somebody who wants money, will accept this. (Also, the applicants will be asked to provide their full financial information, of course, as this is currently not available on Facebook.) In this scenario, a credit officer will really have the total picture. This is an invaluable advantage in being able to calculate if an applicant should be denied or if someone will be able to pay back. This would result in a lower credit default rate for the Facebook loans, meaning in turn higher profitability, but also lower interest rates for the recipients of the loans, as Facebook would need to price less into the issued loans for the expected defaults than normal banks. Facebook needs some experienced banking people for this, get a license (not as difficult as it sounds nowadays, I guess the government will be happy, if anybody else wants to offer quality loans), set up a process and the respective software or alternatively, have one bank or a consortium of banks in the background for this and only act as router (first option earns much more money, latter one can be set up more easily and bears less risks). In any case, the first step would then be to start a very small test balloon (they would be totally overrun, if they would even offer this "only" in their home state, let alone Facebook-wide). After some time gaining experience with the process, they can think about offering higher amounts and potentially becoming quite some competition to regular banks (again, think the potential customer base of 500 million+), while, importantly, also doing something good in supporting their users with more affordable loans. Later on, they could even expand to offer more banking functions, like an online account, e-brokerage...

Peer-to-Peer Lending platform

They could also offer a Peer-to-Peer lending platform, where users lend money to other users, like e.g. Zopa or Prosper, which would soon thereafter become the biggest one on the web, of course. The process would be the same as with microcredits, whoever wants a loan, needs to share his data with Facebook, so it can be checked, if the applicants qualify, which is what the P-to-P platforms do as a service for the lenders, charging a small fee for it (another revenue stream for Facebook). The advantages to other platforms are the same as to banks in regards to microcredits, the quantity and quality of the data at hand. Another advantage here would be that the number of social interactions between the users increases as lenders and takers interact quite a lot on these platforms and a rather safe guess is that they would do even more so on the familiar Facebook. This is also potentially a good way of gaining experience before offering microcredits themselves, if they choose to do so.

Credit information system

If Facebook decides to not go the route above or chooses to launch another business, they could easily become the largest and best credit information data provider. They have data nobody else has and banks would pay a lot to get this information. Here, the privacy problem becomes a bigger one as Facebook cannot just transfer the data. From Facebook's point of view, the best thing would be to let the banks negotiate the access with each bank client, who is a Facebook user.

I have more examples, but this was just to show, that the possibilities are endless.

As I have stated initially, it is basically taking your assets and what made you successful in the first place and finding new ways to use them effectively.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, there are many ways for Facebook to haul in boatloads of money and Mark Zuckerberg be all smiles. It is not only "how do we generate revenue", but equally important "when do we start with which one". That's tricky, and a distinct timeline can only be set by the company itself, of course. My suggestion would be to start the Event/Pictures point in parallel with the business network. The latter has the most impact, the first can be set up the easiest and they don't interfere with each other. I have no affiliation with Facebook or any insight or access, so these are just my humble suggestions and assumptions. Whatever is going to happen, it is definitely exciting to see, where Facebook is actually going and what is possible for them.

Next up: How Google can prevent Facebook from taking over

My name is Matthias Karim Rahmatian, I am holding a master degree in business administration from the Vienna University with the focus on Leadership, Human Resources and Psychology in a business environment. My half Austrian, half Persian descent helps me tremendously in understanding and effectively communicating in cross-cultural environments. Having held several leadership positions in the IT industry and being stakeholder and board member of a software company, I have a tech background, too. My main interests are in personal development, strategy, thinking about how to make things better and international business & politics and foremost - how to help others achieve extraordinary results!
1) How to set goals and create outcome- and purpose-driven massive action plans
2) How to stay dedicated and driven
3) The tools you need to achieve your goals
4) How to ENJOY not only the outcome but the process itself!
Check out my website:makara-coaching

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Facebook, Privacy and the Wild Wild Web

Facebook recently unveiled several changes to its service that give users more sharing options, but in the process the company demonstrated what many have come to believe is its intentional disregard for user privacy.

This mistake feels a lot like Facebook's February 2009 debacle when the company changed its user agreement in an "all take, no give" arrangement that gave the company the right to use, in perpetuity, all information shared by its users on the site. Users rebelled and Facebook backed down immediately.

But this time it's different. With these recent updates, Facebook has given users two important things: Easier ways to share and participate among communities of interest within the network and more privacy and protection settings to accommodate this new structure.

Facebook's mistake is two-fold. First, the default privacy settings for the new Facebook are not Friends, Friends of Friends, or all of Facebook, but the entire Internet. Second, Facebook has provided no easy road map for just how to navigate to the 50 privacy settings in order to choose from among the more than 170 privacy options.

Users' confusion over the default settings and how to change them, along with lackluster explanations of the benefits of the new changes, has created the usual uproar we've come to expect each time Facebook tweaks our home away from home.

Unfortunately for Facebook, this update has also created what analysts suspect is an increase in the number of users wanting to delete their Facebook accounts. The number of searches for "how do i delete my facebook account [sic]" have increased dramatically since the changes were announced, and a mass exodus from Facebook has been scheduled for May 31.

Nothing On the Web Is Free

Facebook has over 400 million users, and after the mass exodus, the site will have over 400 million users.

The changes Facebook has made are part of Facebook's inevitable monetizing strategy. And that's the point. Nothing about Facebook is free. Facebook has never been in the game not to make money. And it's finally doing so. This year the company is expected to have revenues of between $1.2 and $2 billion. And yes, some of that will be profit.

Facebook will ultimately strike the necessary balance between its bottom line and its users. They always do. But what users have to realize is that one fact will remain: Facebook will make money off of the information users share on its site.

To those for whom this is a bad thing, Facebook is not the place to be. Profile information is the most valuable information for marketers on the Web, and no single Web service has more of this type of information than Facebook. Facebook will continue along its path to use this information to make money in order to stay in business and to continue to give users the services they sign up for in droves.

The critics are right: Facebook wants to make mountains of cash. But they can only do it if its users are happy.

The Wild Wild Web

A lot of the information you share on Facebook - your email address, phone number, physical address - is already public on the web and would remain so if Facebook went away tomorrow. This information was there before Facebook and exists online independently of Facebook.

Take a look at Pipl.com. Type in your name or the name of your best friend, or your worst enemy, and see what pops up. A recent search on this writer's name produced the following information:

Contact details from Whitepages.com, Spokeo.com, and two others
Background reports from Intelius.com
Personal profiles from MySpace, Spokeo, LinkedIn, Members-Base, Bebo and Flickr
Email addresses from Inelius that are so old I caught myself wanting to say they pre-date the Web
Public records including birth records from BirthDetails.com and Intelius
Videos from YouTube
Web pages
Blog posts
Documents

Many sites like this have emerged over the years. Pipl, Spokeo and Zillow.com, to name a few, all publish information many users feel is private. But in fact, it is not. It's quite public, and sites like these aggregate this information from public sources.

Which leads to a not-so-recent trend in social media, but one that is about to see the roof blow off because of yet another new initiative by Facebook.

The trend is social media aggregation, where information from different social media sites is pulled together in one location so that it can be more easily digested. Many aggregation services, like Gist, FriendFeed and NetVibes, offer tools and widgets that let users combine messages, search multiple social media sites at once, track friends, and even access their profile data all from one place, all in an attempt to simplify an individual's social media participation.

With the recent introduction of Open Graph, Facebook will attempt to take social aggregation into the stratosphere. In fact, Facebook wants to turn the entire Web into your personal aggregator.

Currently, different social media sites contribute to some part of the social graph. Yelp is mapping out the part of the graph that connects people to local businesses. Pandora is mapping out the part related to music. With Open Graph, Facebook plans to bring these graphs together.

"If we can take these separate maps of the graph and pull them all together," says Zuckerberg, as reported by CNET.com, "then we can create a Web that's smarter, more social, more personalized, and more semantically aware."

He goes on to say, "These connections aren't just happening on Facebook, they're happening all over the Web, and today with the Open Graph we're bringing all these things together."

If you use Facebook, you might be surprised to find you're already participating in its new social graph. Go to Account > Privacy Settings and click on Applications and Websites. There you'll see Instant Personalization Pilot Program. Click on it to see the beginnings of a monumental change on the Web.

Good Rules of Thumb

Just consider that anything you say on Facebook is public, and don't say anything that you would have to whisper to anyone whom you're dining with at an outdoor cafe.

Each time you allow a Facebook app to access your profile information, read the Terms and Conditions for that app. Apps are bound by neither Facebook's Privacy Policy nor its Terms and Conditions. They are third-party relationships, and when you share your Facebook information with them you do so independently of Facebook. Apps are how a lot of profile info leaks out of Facebook. Facebook should be clearer about this and should be more concerned for users' privacy when it comes to third-party apps, and it wouldn't be surprising if their approach to apps changes sometime soon.

Other sites offering FacebookConnect are safe. FacebookConnect is a service that lets users enjoy their Facebook relationships on other websites. Users can sign in with their Facebook username and password and discover what their friends find interesting on a particular site. The third-party website does not have access to your Facebook profile information.

Ian Huckabee is a writer and web marketing strategist. He creates social media marketing programs and solutions for organizations and individuals, and he specializes in integrating social media marketing with search engine marketing. He's an avid tweeter and enjoys creating short bursts of fiction 140-characters at a time.

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Facebook - The New Internet Marketing Frontier

It takes getting eyeballs to see your product or service, millions of eyeballs, and Facebook is an untapped marketing resource. Only a handful of Internet wise guys know how to use it. Here are some tips.

Facebook, Inc., runs a leading social networking web site, Facebook.com. Initially launched by undergraduates at Harvard University for college students, the site was soon expanded to include alumni in the corporate world as well as high school students. Membership was opened to anyone with a valid e-mail address in 2006 and it has grown into the millions since.

The key to marketing on Facebook is this: A members full profile information is available only to other members who are somehow connected. The resulting "connections" is what makes Facebook a billion-dollar idea that offers fat bank accounts to marketers who know how to be one of "them".

A news feed feature, controversial at first, allows sponsors to push ads to highly targeted audiences in ways never before imagined. The value of these online connections that imitate those in real life is also reflected in classified advertising and that is where marketing is done, for free, among those connected "friends".

Forget about trying to spam the system. Friends tell their friends about spammers and global searches of all registered users are not possible, limiting the possibilities for SPAM and other abuses.

Facebook has features to stay relevant in the Web 2.0 world. It leads the generation of interactive web sites designed to make it easy for users to share video, music, and other multimedia content. And, for marketers to reach those people in this sharing model.

Facebook ranked as the sixth or seventh largest social networking site. It was on top in some key metrics, according to ComScore Media Metrix statistics quoted in Fast Company. It led the country in photo sharing, a capability at the heart of the Web 2.0 challenge. In 2007 the company signed up with Comcast to produce a webcast called the "Facebook Diaries," based on video contributed by users. Opening membership to the general public swelled the membership rolls and shifted the demographics away from the college age crowd. Interestingly, more than one-quarter of users were outside the United States.

Some marketers saw this shift to an older, more affluent, user base and moved in to make Facebook a steady source of steady income.

Some of the site features these marketers are using include:

........ The Wall

The Wall is a space on each user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see. One user's wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see their full profile, and different users' wall posts show up in an individual's News Feed. Many marketers use their friend's walls for leaving short, temporal notes. More private discourse is saved for Messages, which are sent to a person's Inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the Message, much like email.

Facebook users are allowed to post attachments to the wall, whereas previously the wall was limited to textual content only. Marketers are wisely using this feature.

........ TheMarketplace

In May 2007, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace allowing users to post free classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Housing, Jobs, and Other. The market place is available for all Facebook users and is currently free. You can guess how valuable this feature is to marketers.

........ Pokes

Facebook includes a "poke" feature which allows one user to send a "poke" to another. Facebook defines it as - "a poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings."

In principle this is intended to serve as a "nudge" to attract the attention of the other user. Friends often engage in what is known as a "poke war," where the poke is exchanged back and forth continuously between two users by using the "poke back" feature.

There are several new applications such as "X Me" and "SuperPoke!", that allow users to put any action in place of the word "poke." Again, smart marketers have found ways of using this feature as well.

........ Status

The "status" feature allows users to inform their friends and the Facebook community of what they are up to. Facebook prompts the status update with "(User name) is..." and Facebook users fill in the rest. Status updates are noted in the "Recently updated" section of a users' friend list. How about "Mr. blue is working on a new ebook."?

........ Events

Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming events in their community and to organize social gatherings. This can be used for seminars, meeting, courses, podcasts, etc., but, used very carefully to avoid being tagged as a spammer.

........ Applications

The "Facebook Platform" provides a framework for developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features.

Among the most popular applications are "Top Friends", which allows users to select and display their favorite friends; "Graffiti", which gives users a visual version of Facebook's wall; and "iLike", a social music discovery service that features concert information and a music trivia game, similar to the one featured on the iPod. Even games such as chess and Scrabble are available.

........ Facebook Video

Users can add their videos with the service by uploading video, adding video through Facebook Mobile, and using a webcam recording feature. Additionally, users can "tag" their friends in videos they add much like the way users can tag their friends in photos. This feature was expected to increase competition with MySpace. However, the Facebook Video Application does not allow sharing videos outside of Facebook.

Users are not supposed to be able to export or download videos from Facebook. I say "not supposed to" because a Greasemonkey Userscript was posted on Userscripts.org which allows both the downloading of Facebook Videos and the embedding of Videos on sites outside of Facebook's website. Another marketers dream tool.

Get educated about FaceBook marketing today. Jim DeSantis is an Internet Publisher and former TV News Editor who provides information about FaceBooking for experienced and newbie Internet Marketers at http://www.answersplus.info - AnswersPlusInfo. Check the sidebar for "FaceBook Advanced" and FaceBook for Newbies."

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