Social Networking

Buzz updates comming

Posted by Andy on March 12, 2010
Cool Tech, Social Networking / Comments Off on Buzz updates comming

Have you been using Google Buzz?  I’ve been playing with it, and I like the way conversations flow, but honestly it’s just a little too much at the moment.  I follow just a few people, but some are verbose and have lots of comments.  The nice thing is that you are not limited to 140 characters, but the really really really BAD thing is that you can’t collapse the comments at all.  That means that if I have 100 new posts to read, I get through about 3 before I give up.  With all of the comments displayed, you have to scroll through endless nonsense to just see what you might want to read.  totally annoying.

At least Google seems to be addressing things that people complain about, and is adding some control options to help limit the inbox flow for Buzz.  Specifically,  the ability to choose which items get sent to your inbox.  If you just want an e-mail when someone comments on your post, it will soon be possible.   If you want just posts where you are @replied, that’s possible as well.   The second feature is a “Mute” link on individual buzz posts, which will stop a buzz post from reappearing in your inbox every time someone comments.

Good starts, but where is the supress comments??!!??

Tags:

10 Facebook Privacy Settings you NEED to know.

Posted by Andy on September 02, 2009
Privacy, Security, Social Networking / 3 Comments

I will summarize here, but the full article by Nick O’Neill from www.allfacebook.com is a great read, and something I wish I had written.  Facebook is a great tool, but in a world where information and identity theft is rampant, you need to know how to protect yourself from, well, yourself.

1) Use Friends lists to group your friends into logical groups.  This allows you to grant different access rights to different groups of people.

2) Remove yourself from Facebook search results.  Like the author, my family is chock full of teachers.  For the most part, they don’t want their students to randomly find their personal information from a Facebook search, but still want to be on Facebook for family and friends.  The solution?  Remove yourself from Facebook search results.  You do this from the “search privacy settings” page.

3) Remove your Facebook self from Google search results.  As you know if you Google yourself (doesn’t everyone do this?) your Facebook profile will come up pretty quickly.  You can remove yourself from Google searches from the “search privacy settings” page – uncheck the “Create a Public Search Listing for me …” check box.

4) Control who sees your tagged photos – You can do this from your profile privacy page.  The cool thing is if you’ve set up your friends groups right, you can allow access to tagged photos by group.  That way the photo of you that you don’t want your boss to see won’t get you fired.

5) Control who sees your photo albums – as with tagged photos, not all pictures are for all eyes.  Check out the Photo Privacy Page.  From there you can control who sees what.  Very handy.

6) Control how your relationship status is displayed in news feeds.  Everyone likes to tout their relationship, but do you really want everyone (boss, business contacts) to know?  Uncheck the “Change relationship status” box on the News Feed and Wall section of your Privacy settings.  This will prevent people from seeing changed to your relationship status in their news feeds.

7) Be sure that applications don’t publish embarrassing news feed posts.  Many applications you sign up for post items to your news feed that are potentially embarrassing.  Be sure that you scan your profile every time you install an application, or better yet, avoid applications completely.

8) Control who sees your contact information.  If you use Facebook for business and for personal contacts, you can control who sees what contact information from you using your Friends Groups.  You can add multiple email address and phone contact items, then edit the custom privacy settings for each to control who sees them.

9) Avoid embarrassing wall posts.   Facebook lets you control not only who posts to your wall, but also who can see those posts.  In the Profile section you can change who posts to your wall by choosing “custom” from the “Wall Posts” drop down.  From there you can use your Friends groups to control who posts and who sees what.

10) Like your hands, keep your friends to yourself.  I love seeing who is friends with my friends, but some people don’t want to share, and in some cases, it’s probably not a good idea to share.  Once again, you can customize who can see your friends list using your friends groups.

There are endless ways to control your privacy on Facebook, but you need to take the time to sort through the settings.  Friends Grouping is a great place to start and ensures that you have separation of your business and personal contacts.  Get to know your privacy settings!!

Tags: ,