Hugh de Loayza, Zynga

• 50% of US women play online games, but when interviewed for a panel, don’t consider themselves on-line gamers. 41% of these ladies have used virtual currency
• Of those that play games with virtual currency, only 9% chose offers based on the points being awarded.
• They even stock up on virtual currency more often than they hit the ATM.

What explains this behavior? Q Interactive and The Social Media World Forum conducted a study of 2,100 women to study how US females interact with games. And they are not the typical teenage boys playing first person shooters.

Bob Girolamo of Q Interactive presented the study last week in San Jose at the conference.  Some interesting tidbits:

• Women are using few games—50% are using 2 or less games. 85% of these ladies are at 5 or less.  So there’s lots of trial, but only a couple stick.
• They earn and spend virtual currency daily—the game dynamics draw them in.  And it’s not just FarmVille, though that is the most popular of virtual currency apps with over 60 million users. 56.8% of women visit social networking sites at least a few times per week.
• When asked, “What made you want to play certain games?” 53% said that a friend or family member recommended it.
• When asked, “Why do you use virtual currency” 38% want to advance in the game, while 17% to acquire gifts.  Peer pressure works.
• Have you used real money to purchase virtual currency? 10% said yes.
• So why not spending “real” money?  38% can’t afford it. Yet 88% of the women are controlling the household finances—60% completely. Many don’t understand how to use PayPal, plus privacy issues.
• Do you give more virtually or in real life? 53% give as many real world gifts as virtually.

Now how about the offers themselves? The current wisdom is that incentivized ads are of low quality because users complete the offers solely to get points:

• 67% of women say that the offers are useful—but the glass is half full.
• Women pick offers based on content, not on the amount of virtual currency awarded. Only 9% choose offers based on the reward.
• Surveys were the most popular method to earn currency at 34%. In second place at 22% are hard goods (toys, electronics). Mobile is surprisingly not in this mix, which argues for a different demographic converting on mobile offers.

So how do we interpret these results? Some hypotheses:

• Female games are a completely different demographic than overall Facebook users—true, in that certain apps skew by gender and that this is a distinctly non college age user base.
• Sample bias in the study: This is something that can be leveled at any study, especially in how they selected these women and the small sample size. It may be that there are working professional women who are playing almost as much, but doing so in stealth and are harder to contact than stay-at-home moms. However, I’d rule out sample bias. Matt Wise, President of Q Interactive, noted that “Women seek a partner to support their entertainment, which is exceptionally important given their busy lives.” Thus, games provide interaction among groups of women who stay at home.
• Winning is fun: The fact that 97% of women prefer to earn their way through the game versus paying for currency says that the process of earning coins is likely enjoyable and that “cheating” by buying currency is taboo. The study did not comment on how much of this was influenced by the lack of purchase power.
• Users want to engage with brands: It’s not that the games built by players such as Zynga are bad or that the ad networks themselves are locked into an evil cycle. Rather, the right offers from trusted advertisers might allow users to enjoy free games, advertisers to get decent ROI, and game developers to be able to support their applications via games.

Overall, I found these results surprising, but intuitive in hindsight. What do you think?

Source: All Facebook

(Source: http://www.computerworlduk.com )Forrester recently received a flurry of inquiries concerning social network access inside enterprises. Many firms are reluctant to deny their employees’ access to social networking sites but at the same time are worried about consequences such as malware threat, data loss, and the loss of productivity.

More specifically, risks associated with social networking come in three flavors:

• Malware and phishing: Social networks have become a hot bed for malware and phishing activities. As such, allowing access to sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc., does carry a certain amount of security risks.

• Data loss: Employees post content to social networking sites pose a potential threat of data loss, which has many up in arms about the use of social networks in enterprises.

• Damage to corporate image: There is no reliable way to ensure that no one can set up a fake corporate page in LinkedIn or Facebook, and that no one takes your official promotional video and repost it to YouTube after unauthorized edits.

Should you allow access to social networks and social media? The answer is “yes”. Even if you do not currently allow access to social networks, you will have to soon — access to social networks is approaching the status of a “must-have” at work places. Competitive pressure will sooner or later make you rethink your restrictive stance on social network access. One question we often get asked is: “How many firms out there are allowing access vs. denying access to social networks?” We do not have an accurate answer to that. A small survey we conducted in the beginning of this year indicated that today nearly 40% of companies (enterprises and SMBs) allow access to social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

What best practices should you follow in regulating access to social networking and media sites?

First, you need to establish an acceptable-usage policy with respect to social networking and media access. Consider these aspects when writing your policies:

• Does everyone need the same level of access to social networking sites? The answer is often “no”. For instance, the marketing and sales team may need to post video and other media files for legitimate business purposes. But for other parts of the company, there isn’t such a compelling need. Perhaps a read-only policy is adequate. Of course, this would depend on the general company culture — how liberal or how restrictive you are in terms of personal computing at work plays an important role in these decisions.

• Be vigilant about software downloads. Remember that malware travels via software downloads over the Web, a prudent policy might allow users to access Facebook content but will block any software installation as a result of visiting Facebook pages. This will of course dilute the social networking experience, but in many ways, it is an acceptable compromise for workplace access.

• Should you allow access any time any where? Again, the answer depends on how liberal your company culture is. On one hand, you do not want to place unnecessary restrictions. On the other hand, there has to be a balance between personal uses of social media vs. workplace productivity. So, the acceptable-usage policy may state that employees should use their best judgment when it comes to the amount of time they spend on Internet social networking sites. Or, if the company culture allows, you may enforce time or bandwidth-based limitation on access to social networking sites.

• Acceptable data posts. Social networks allow data posts, which may pose a data leak threat to enterprises. In your usage policy, make it clear what kind of data/content is considered non-appropriate in data posts to public social networking sites. For example, some companies prohibit their employees from posting endorsement or commenting on the company on LinkedIn.

Second, you need to clearly communicate the policies to your users and educate them on the risks of social networking and acceptable usages with regards to data posts and software downloads. Make it clear that these security threats are not just against individuals, but also have the potential to compromise the security posture of the corporate environment.

Lastly, if you decide to enforce your policies (if any) technologically instead of simply stating the policies and hoping for compliance, you need to employ a Web filtering product (you probably want one regardless for anti-malware reasons). You may also want the product to collect and report usage statistics on your users. For any outlier population, e.g., the a few employees who spend an exorbitant amount of time on social networks, his/her manager can be made aware of the situation and deal with it in an appropriate way.

Often, just the knowledge that access to social networks is monitored would curtail such behaviours. Be mindful that not every Web filtering product is equipped to deal with script-based Web malware.

The ones that come with an antivirus engine but no script processing capabilities do not fit the bill. Finally, it is imperative that the Web filtering product comes with data leak prevention (DLP) capabilities to enforce acceptable usage policies for data posts.

facebook stalker application

Source: Facebook Applications Development Company

LONDON  (Source Google)— Doctors in Britain were warned Wednesday not to respond to sexual advances from patients made through social networking sites such as Facebook, as such contacts could breach their ethical duties.

The Medical Defence Union (MDU), which provides legal advice and assistance to medics, said it was aware of several cases where patients propositioned doctors through the sites — and said doctors should stay well clear.

In one case, a female doctor was asked out for a drink by a patient as she left the surgery.

She refused, but the patient continued the requests via Facebook and sent her a bunch of lilies, learning through the site that they were her favourite flowers.

“The pitfalls posed to doctors using social networking sites by inadvertently breaching confidentiality or posting unprofessional content, such as photos, have been well documented,” said Dr. Emma Cuzner, MDU medico-legal adviser.

“But doctors may be less prepared for patients using sites like Facebook to ask them out on a date.”

She added that doctors must keep relationships with patients “on a professional footing”, saying: “This is in line with doctors’ ethical duties not to pursue improper relationships with patients.”

Facebook & iPhone application developers in London UK

Source: Facebook Applications Development Company

The search companies released their annual lists on Tuesday as an effort to provide a cultural snapshot of what held the public’s interest over the past year. Jackson topped both Google’s fastest-rising and Yahoo’s overall searches.

“As millions of fans said goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson led the list of our top 10 fastest rising queries across the globe. And a new star was born, too – quirky pop singer Lady Gaga became a search sensation the world over,” wrote Google in their December 1, Zeitgeist blog post.

Michael Jackson tops Google’s list of fastest rising global searches in 2009. The pop star is followed by social networking site, Facebook and its invite-only Spanish social networking rival, Tuenti. This top 10 list includes:

1) Michael Jackson /> 2) Facebook /> 3) Tuenti /> 4) Twitter /> 5) Sanalika /> 6) New Moon /> 7) Lady Gaga /> Windows 7 /> 9) Dantri.com.vn /> 10) Torpedo Gratis

While Facebook and Twitter well known social-networking sites, two more social-networking sites managed to get themselves in the list; Spain’s Tuenti and Turkey’s Sanalika. The two other websites that made to the list are the Vietnamese portal dantri.com.vn  and Portuguese SMS website Torpedo Gratis.

Yahoo’s list was also headed by Michael Jackson in the top place with the list as follows:

1) Michael Jackson /> 2) Twilight /> 3) WWE /> 4) Megan Fox /> 5) Britney Spears /> 6) Japanese anime character Naruto /> 7) American Idol /> 8)Kim Kardashian /> 9)NASCAR /> 10) and online role-playing game Runescape.

Yahoo said the dominance of pop culture in the searches shows that the internet is being used largely for entertainment purposes.

Related posts:

1. “Facebook Login” in the 2008 Google Zeitgeist
2. Facebook Login with Google, Yahoo, and Bing
3. Facebook Most Searched Word On The Internet

Source: Facebook Login

Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network has discovered that the KoobFace malware campaign is now using a Christmas theme. This is not the first time the Koobface worm has infected social newtork sites.

The Koobface website offors a video posted by ‘SantA’ with the usual ruse of requiring a codec to watch the video is used to encourage the user to install and run a setup file. This file is currently detected by 16 out of 41 products, according to Virus Total.

The user on the compromised facebook page is presented with alink to a compromised site in switzerland. The user is redirected to one of the several Koobface websites through a malicious flash video file hosted on the compromised site.

If the user runs the infected file, the worm will automatically login to their Facebook, MySpace, and several other social networking sites and send messages to all their friends.

So be wary of this new worm with a Christmas theme, least it doesn’t make you and your pc merry this Christmas.

Related posts:

1. New Facebook Worm On The Crawl
2. Sex Offenders Dumped By Facebook And MySpace
3. What is the Facebook Application?

Source: Facebook Login

Under the state’s e-STOP Act, registered offenders are required to register their emails and other online identifiers with the state so that their online activities can be monitored. Sex offenders have 10 days to notify the state after creating new online profiles or face prosecution for a new felony.

It will be good to see more and more of these pervs who prey on the naive and defenceless cyberspace kids be rounded up and put aside.

There has been a lot of incidents regarding social networking sites lately and also a few recent calls for Facebook to actively do some background-check of its users, which is obviously almost impossible. But it’s nice to see the New York law enforcers taking this proactive stance on the issue of online prevs.

This act will be more effective if the other States and countries adopts it. Also hoping that more social-networking sites come forward to help the law enforcers in their quest to protect the minors.

Source [ NY dailynews]

Related posts:

1. Young Social Networkers On The Rise
2. Facebook Status Message Saves Robbery Suspect
3. Facebook’s ‘Unfriend’ Is Word Of The Year

Source: Facebook Login

Authorities said four girls and three boys were targeted on “Kick a Ginger Day,” which apparently started because of a Facebook message that pomoted “Kick a Ginger Day.” It is also believed that the inspiration for the attacks came from a 2005 episode of the South Park cartoon series that satarized racial tolerance.

According to Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman, Steve Whitmore, two 12-year-olds were arrested for suspicion of misdemeanor battery, and a 13-year-old was booked for misdemeanor cyberbullying.

Such incidents should not be taken lightly by authorities and parents alike and seize the opportunity to ponder upon the fact on the alarming rise in the availability of social networking sites to preteens and underage users and come up with measure.

Towards the lighter side, students at New Community Jewish High School were inspired to start a competing Web campaign called “hug a ginger day,” set for Dec. 8.

Source [abc7.com]

Related posts:

1. Young Social Networkers On The Rise
2. Facebook’s ‘Unfriend’ Is Word Of The Year
3. School Gets Sued For Demanding Facebook Login From Student

Source: Facebook Login

Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year and a half after she was diagnosed with major depression. She was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife, her insurance company, who reportedly pulled back her insurance this fall.

“I’m available to work, because of Facebook,” and some seems-happy pictures including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday posted on Facebook were used as evidence by her insurance company to determine that she was no longer depressed.

According to the CBC news, Blanchard said that on her doctor’s advice, she tried to have fun, including nights out at her local bar with friends and short getaways to sun destinations, as a way to forget her problems.

She also doesn’t understand how Manulife accessed her photos because her Facebook profile is locked and only people she approves can look at what she posts.

I would admit that this news came as a little creepy one. So, i would like to remind my dear readers to be careful in what you post online and who has access to your information. As in the case of Ms. Blanchard, you never know what will be used against you. What i don’t understand is why on earth the company would go around snooping around her social-networking profile or rather how they saw her profile. Taking into consideration all the hype about privacy settings in social networking sites, it is just might not be the company but someone on her friend’s list happened to be a snitch.

Anyway, i just hope that she get’s justice real soon. I don’t think i am gonna sit around in solidarity if i am depressed and is try to get back on my life.

Related posts:

1. What is the Facebook Application?
2. Young Social Networkers On The Rise
3. Facebook On Sony PS3 Soon

Source: Facebook Login