Yep, so naturally if social media can help criminals, so can it help law enforcement catch the same criminals. Here's an interesting story which also highlights criminal stupidity.
 
Apparently, the thief, listed the Garmin Forerunner watch he had stolen from a home for sale on Craigslist. A man who wanted to buy the watch went and bought the watch from the thief. But when he tried to connect the watch to his computer, the new buyer discovered that the watch was registered to another individual.

After finding out the owner details that were listed for the watch's registration, using Facebook, the new buyer contacted the original owner of the watch along with four other individuals who had the same name. The victim of the burglary responded to the new buyer and also contacted the police. Long story short, the criminal was arrested and placed behind bars.
 
So, here's adding one more use for Social Media websites; Catching Thieves!

So I finally got around to checking out Google's Buzz. It allows convenient sharing of pictures, videos, and full links. And Buzz is like Twitter without the 140 characters, YAY!

Not quite like a full blogging platform, Buzz also allows setting up of groups of followers to post to. The format for posting is very fluid. You can comment on a Buzz in the Buzz folder or via an email or chat if the user and you are both on GTalk. Interestingly, you can also edit your messages later on. So you may find posts changed at a later time. Buzz interface collapses multiple posts from the same user by default. If you use IMAP, buzzes will appear as regular emails in your inbox. If enabled, Buzz on mobile shares your location down to street level with other Buzz users.

But over and over again, users in the social networks continued to criticize the Buzz for features that were encroaching on user privacy.

And so over the weekend, Google apologized to its users for those privacy intruding features and announced product changes. Basically Buzz allows users a ready-made circle of friends which was based on a user's most frequent e-mail and chat contacts in Gmail. Google announced that in the future, it will merely suggest a group of people rather than make them immediately available to the new user.
 
By turning off the auto-follow, Google has been able to quieten down the uproar to some extent. Google also plans to make the following changes to Buzz:

• Creating a new Buzz tab in Gmail’s settings page to allow users to hide Buzz. This will allow users to disable Buzz.
• Disabling auto-connect to picasa albums and items shared on Google reader.

Oh and Google announced that within the first 48 hours of its launch, "tens of millions of people" had tried Buzz. I was one of them!!!

I am not sympathetic towards Paul Chambers one bit. You'd think EVERYONE would know that bombing is NO joking matter anywhere, anymore, anyhow. Not that we'd ever forget 911 but after the recent almost-bombing of an airline on way to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, you'd think people would know better than to say "bomb" and "airport" in the same breath in public, never mind on a worldwide platform like Twitter.

Here's what happened.  Paul Chambers tweeted his frustrations about his England to Ireland flight potentially getting canceled due to snow, by posting something to the effect of "Robin Hood airport is closed, you've got a week to get your act together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high".

What the heck was he thinking posting something SO inflammatory?  I read some blogs where people thought the punishment netted out to Paul was excessive. Paul has been suspended from his job indefinitely, he is banned from Robin Hood airport for life, and his phone, computer, etc. were taken away after he was arrested for conspiracy to create a bomb hoax.

Come on people, let's get real here! A bomb threat is a bomb threat is a bomb threat. After what we're going through across the globe as we fight terrorism, everyone is sensitive to anything that remotely makes us suspicious. And frankly if I had been at Robin Hood airport and had read the tweet myself, I'd be calling 911 and reporting Paul Chambers for sure.

And this reiterates what I always tell my clients and anyone who'll listen to me: THINK before you post something online for the world to read. IF it can lead to jail, unemployment, or trouble with your family, zip it right up errr take a break from your online writing.

Happy New Year to you!

In December 2009, eMarketer released the fourth and last part of it's Business-to-Business (B2B) and On-Line Marketing Outlook series. The series primarily tries to predict the overall on-line marketing outlook for 2010. The predictions are provided by analysts Debra Aho Williamson and Paul Verna.

Here are two predictions from their 2009 fourth online marketing outlook.

Verna predicts that in 2010, twitter will grow into a serious web-based business from merely being an on-line phenomenon. He also predicts that Twitter will also make some money. It's a well known fact that despite tripling its user base in 2009, twitter hasn't made any money despite its the immense (??) popularity.

Williamson predicts that due to the growing integration of social media content with on-line search, social media will become important for businesses in 2010. She says that businesses will find new opportunities for advertising on social media sites and also warns of intensive scrutiny of such efforts by privacy pundits.

Now maybe I'm just darn good at this stuff. Or perhaps it's just simple logic that allows me to arrive at the same "predictions" as the above mentioned "industry experts".

I mean, wouldn't you as a business owner even be able to predict that eventually Twitter founders will monetize their baby (Twitter) one way or the other? They can't not know the power of handing greater than 6M users to advertisers on a platter. And of course social media will become important to businesses. How else can they get viral instant popularity if they have experts like us to help them market them online?

And finally, social networks are great for criminals who want to lurk and read up on every piece of personal detail shared by users. So of course privacy issues will continue to remain high on the minds of not just the site owners but also the people who want to advertise there.

So once again, Happy New Year! And look for more emarketer 2010 predictions (that are more interesting too) coming soon….
 

If you are a Twitter user, you've come across direct messages that ask you such questions like "Are you in this video?" or "What's your IQ?" These are malicious viruses that are being spread across the social media networks causing quite a bit of guilt and embarrassment to unsuspecting users.

Another scam that is quite popular on Facebook is the "Western Union scam" wherein friends of users whose accounts have been hacked are approached with long-soppy stories about the user being stuck somewhere and requesting money through Western Union.

So what to do to prevent yourself from falling victim to such viruses and scams?

• First and foremost don't have passwords that are easy to guess. admin123; 12345678; 87654321; and password are just some of the very very very commonly used passwords. Why allow yourself to be vulnerable with a password that can easily be identified by spammers who have use of sophisticated password guessing software? Also, try not to use birth dates, names, and easy to decipher passwords. Create a combination of letters, numbers, and characters that is unique.
   
• Change your password every 30-45 days. It will only take a minute to do so, so make the effort to protect yourself.
   
• Try not to click on any links from anyone whom you don't know. Any information that looks suspicious should be ignored and only trust links that come to you with real information.
   
• Trust no one with your passwords.
   
• Keep an eye on news items that may report on what's happening in the social networks with new viruses or scams so that you can be one step ahead of the scammers and spammers.

Social networks are MORE and MORE susceptible to crooks than any other media to-date. Stay vigilante!