Facebook Friends & Invitations

This piece from the New York Times was worth sharing because it’s kind of what I’ve always suspstected – that people have an inordinate number of “friends” on facebook.  In reality, these friends are not really friends, they’re just acquaintances.  It’s kind of sad really because I feel for the guy in the story who [...]

Facebook Privacy Concerns pt. 2

A few months ago, I posted about a computer science major who had done some research about the third party applications that many people add to Facebook.  In her research, Adrienne Felt found that “90.7% of applications are being given more privileges than they need.”  Well, the BBC recently did a little research of their [...]

Facebook Privacy Concerns

I know that Facebook is a very popular website for students. But, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (link only available for 5 days after this post), if you use any of Facebook’s add-on applications, you may be giving out information that you don’t want to give out. I [...]

Social Networking Safety

I just finished reading the article “Getting Past Google: Perspectives on Information Literacy from the Millennial Mind” by Carie Windham (PDF). It’s worth a read, especially for librarians and administrators at schools & colleges. One thing in there that I thought was especially useful was a set of tips on staying safe on [...]

Friends – real or trophy?

A recent study conduced by Will Reader at Sheffield Hallam University found that people on social networking sites like Myspace & Facebook have tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of friends. But, he concluded, of that list, there are approximately only 5 core friends. This study concurred with a study by Robin Dunbar at [...]