Facebook is now arguably the second most powerful company online after Google. To all intents and purposes, they own the information on all of their users. However, this is not a reason to avoid the social network. Lack of privacy is a part of modern day life, particularly if you use almost any online service.

So here is my simple guide for how to make Facebook safer. (The issues are based on the questions I get asked the most.)

The Issues

1. People will see all the negative or embarrassing photos of you

This is easily avoided. The privacy settings for users can be set extremely high, so that no one can tag you in a photograph without your permission and you can even limit the people who see your photos. It is generally a good idea to have your privacy settings high anyway.

In order to do this visit: https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy

2. People will be able to find out everything about you

You only need to put on Facebook the information you are willing to share. There is no obligation to put anything you don’t feel comfortable with on your profile. Personally, I don’t have any relationship information, only where I live, work, went to school and university.

3. Children are vulnerable to bullying

This is a difficult one, because there have been some serious cases of bullying amongst school children. These aren’t due to Facebook though, the social network is merely the vessel. These dangers aren’t new since Facebook started, it’s just that now a certain amount of communication takes place online. In fairness to Facebook they are very aware of these problems and work with charities and the police to prevent future issues.

You can take steps to avoid this by ensuring that your child’s privacy settings are very high. You can also report and block users.

Here are a couple of useful guides:
Watch Your Words: Steps to Prevent Cyber Bullying
Best Ways to Avoid Cyber Bullying

If you have any other issues that you would like me to cover please just ask and don’t be afraid of Facebook. There is more to gain from being a part of the community than being outside it.

A couple of weeks ago Google launched their new social network, Google Plus. Despite users only being able to join by invitation from other users, the number of people on it quickly grew to 10 million.

What is Google Plus?

Google Plus works in much the same way as Facebook at first glance. You have a news stream with the latest updates from the people you follow or are friends with. It look’s a lot simpler in fact and the layout is clearer. You follow people by putting them into circles which means you can organise people into groups. This enables you to send an update to a limited number of people by only sending it to a particular circle.

You also don’t need to necessarily be friends with someone to follow them, meaning that it is a lot more like Twitter in many ways. One of the joys of Twitter can be just to watch people and follow people who share and find fantastic information.

Is it going to be better than Facebook?

There are many ways that Google Plus is better than Facebook. The circles feature means that you no longer have to fear saying inappropriate things with work colleagues or family members. It makes it easier to mix your work life with your private life. This means that it reflects how your actual groups of friends and acquaintances work, rather than treating all as equal as Facebook does.

The only thing that will trip up Google Plus is if people don’t take to it. Although the number of users is growing quickly, it will interesting to see whether the majority of people make the move. At the moment most users are still using Facebook and Twitter, mainly because their friends and followers are established there.

I can’t see Google Plus being a success unless it replaces either Twitter or Facebook – personally I’d like it to replace Facebook.

The beginning of this year has been all about question and answer site Quora. Having put aside some time this morning to have my first peek I have to admit that it is a fun site. A little like a cross between Yahoo! Answers and Reddit, it enables users to debate a question in an organised fashion, commenting on answers and approving or disapproving them.

Launched last May as a beta, Quora has exploded in the last week or so, but I was nervous to get involved – there is already limited time in the day to interact on the social networks I am involved in. The immediate function that struck me was how easily it integrated into my existing social networks on Facebook and Twitter. It followed all my Twitter friends who are already using it. No need to build a brand new network and already lots of things to look at. (This is a common aspect of most social networks now.)

The problem Quora will have is that it is very time consuming. The benefit of both Facebook and Twitter is that they can run in the background of your life and you can check in as and when. Quora requires indepth reading and so takes up a lot more time – half an hour flew by this morning. This is fine, but it means that many people will fade away as the novelty wears off and other distractions take it’s place.

So yes, it is just another social network. It won’t replace Twitter, since it’s not really a place to have a chat as well as share information. I suspect people will talk about it and how to share links to enhance SEO etc, but there will be limited effectiveness.

For further reading on this I strongly recommend Dave Chaffey’s article on iMedia:

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/28289.asp

A team of scientists from Royal Holloway, University of London, the University of Southampton and the Institute of Zoology at London Zoo have been researching the social butterfly effect – studying how we change our friends throughout our lives. They are interested in the fact that, despite the fleeting nature of many of our relationships, we often form cliques – circles of friends that are often friendly with each other. This could help us to understand why our society is made up of so many groups, from political to sporting.

This video is amazing! Watch it:

A life on Facebook from Matteo Gracis on Vimeo.