Alberta Business Marketing

Hot off the presses…I pulled this off of some newswire stories today.

According to PCWorld’s Carrie-Ann Skinner, Facebook is reconsidering some it’s privacy settings after a backlash from their members.  Maybe not so many changes, but making privacy and controlling what others see in Facebook easier for the average user of Facebook.

Carrie-Ann included a quote from a Facebook representative in her article “We’re working on responding to these concerns. Watch this space”.  Privacy commissioners here in Canada and privacy groups in the UK have called Facebook privacy settings “unacceptable” and are on a rampage against the US-based social networking service.

Privacy specialists are lobbying Facebook for an opt-in vs. an opt-out policy for who sees what with your information on Facebook.  Some Facebook users are even threatening to take extreme action on May 31st, 2010 by deleting their accounts if Facebook doesn’t fix their privacy.  You can share your intention to quit Facebook by signing up on quitfacebookday.com.  Funny thing, according to Facebook, they added 10 million new users since the uproar on security first was reported.

Once again, I need to remind or caution you all that if you wouldn’t email a photo or even share it face-to-face with someone..then posting it on Facebook is also not a good idea.  When you elect to post something to any online service you must practice “sensibility”.  This goes for posting, sharing, status updates or anything that could be used against you.  Almost sounds like a court of law.

But, Facebook is just the whipping boy this month.  I still remember when Microsoft was the whipping boy for all the security holes in Windows…have we forgotten about Windows.  Next month or some time down the road it will be another program or social networks turn in the spotlight.  Maybe it is Twitter or LinkedIn’s turn next.

How can you test your Facebook privacy settings?

There is an answer for all of you who are concerned about your Facebook privacy settings and don’t understand how to lock everything down.  There is a great website and serve that does all the testing for you and ensures your Facebook account is properly secured.

Are you interested in testing and then ensuring your Facebook privacy settings are set correctly?

I stumbled across this interesting site today that helps you determine you level of privacy online.  Check out reclaimprivacy.org and test your online privacy. When you hit the reclaimprivacy.org site, read the instructions very carefully and run their tool against your Facebook privacy settings.  The service will offer up recommendations to tighten up your Facebook security and actually fix them for you.

Give it try to see if you have any privacy holes that need filling.

Tags: Blog software, canada, Carrie-Ann Skinner, Criticism of Facebook, Facebook, Facebook Beacon, Facebook Inc, Internet privacy, LinkedIn Ltd, Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Windows, online privacy, online service, Online social networking, privacy, reclaimprivacy.org site, representative, Social information processing, social media, Social network service, social networking service, social networks, Technology/Internet, Twitter Inc, United Kingdom, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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“You can’t do that from here in the United States because the market is different in Canada, it’s unique,”

Arvind Rajan, the Vice President of International at LinkedIn is one smart businessperson in my opinion.  Of course the way we do business in Canada is totally different from our colleagues in the south and in my opinion you can not run a Canadian business without having feet on the street.  LinkedIn understands the importance of connecting with the local communities.  LinkedIn now has over 2 million users in Canada according to a recent Financial Post interview with Rajan.  LinkedIn also went on to say that Canada is one of the most active countries online.

Read more about LinkedIn expansion to Canada here.

LinkedIn is also looking to expand into the UK, Netherlands, Australia, Ireland and other countries.

Tags: Australia, canada, Community websites, Company Expansion, Geography, linkedin, LinkedIn Ltd, Netherlands, Online social networking, Republic of Ireland, Social information processing, social media, United Kingdom, United States, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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My good buddy and long time friend, plus creator of the Stuart Crawford look Richard Tubb in Birmingham, England is involved in a Microsoft scheme and needs our help.  Well at least feedback!

What are those devilish software giants in Redmond up too these days?

It looks like they are continue the scare tactics, now with UK IT services providers.  The focus remains zeroed in on the Microsoft BPOS offering and some IT partners are running scared into the vast UK wilderness.  Hey guys they did that on this side of the Atlantic as well.  Microsoft BPOS solution is a great offering for the small businesses, not only in the UK but also here in Canada.  It is ideal for the small business who doesn’t need anything complex and wants to save a small fortune in server costs plus monthly maintenance fees from their local IT provider.

Ulistic is a Microsoft BPOS partner providing Hosted Exchange, SharePoint and the rest of the suite.  Although we run Google internally we still have clients running the Microsoft hosted suite of products and we never have to support them, it just runs and runs great.

Richard is looking for some feedback on this latest Redmond driven scheme.  Read the Tubblog article here and jump in with some comments.

Tags: Birmingham, Business/Finance, canada, Computing, devilish software giants, Google Inc., microsoft, Microsoft Corporation, Richard Tubb, Technology/Internet, United Kingdom
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