Facebook is a popular topic of discussion here at the Reputation.com Blog, and why not? With more than 250 million users worldwide, the social networking website has become a focal point of our collective culture. Of course, with such unprecedented growth, Facebook was bound to run into some detractors, namely privacy advocates like Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.

In a recent government report, Stoddart called on Facebook to make substantial improvements to its current system or run the risk of facing legal action. Quoting from the news release,

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will review after 30 days the actions Facebook takes to comply with the recommendations. The Commissioner is empowered to go to Federal Court to seek to have her recommendations enforced.

Stoddart’s recommendations include the request that Facebook change its policy of keeping user information indefinitely, implement stronger safeguards with regard to third-party apps and developers, and offer more accessible and transparent information about its privacy policies.

For their part, Facebook is playing it cool. In a statement addressing the Privacy Commssioner’s report, Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said

“We are confident that we will come to some sort of resolution…[and] We believe right now that our privacy protections are adequate and that it’s far from a foregone conclusion that a court would uphold these findings.”

Despite such self-assurances, there is substantial reason for Facebook to take the charges in this report seriously. As the site grows and grows and grows, the opportunity for a major privacy breach becomes more and more severe. Furthermore, as the site continues to expand across the world, Facebook will have to deal with differing privacy laws and public sentiment about social networking.

Hitting the 250 million user mark in only 5 years is an impressive achievement, but the future of Facebook’s success lies in how Facebook addresses its numerous privacy and safety issues over the coming months. Remember, MySpace was all the rage just a couple of years ago. Up until MSNBC’s To Catch a Predator exposed the world to the kinds of dangers lurking on the site. Now, MySpace is trying to reestablish its identity to keep up with not only Facebook, but hard charging social networking sites like Twitter. Will Facebook face a similar fate in five years?

It’s no secret that people use Google to learn about potential dates or possible job applicants. In fact, it’s practically expected in the digital age. Despite this seeming awareness of how Google search can affect one’s life, however, few people invest in what Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik calls “Google Insurance.”

Just as you have home or car insurance to prevent damage to your belongings,  you should also have Google insurance to prevent damage to your personal brand online. In a recent post at the blog Plus&Play.com, Michael Fertik explained some simple ways to protect your personal brand from misinformation on Google.

Register the URLs for your name and variants, and consider creating a blog. The objective here is to own the first 1-5 results that appear on search engines if someone searches your name. I don’t think most people should be bloggers, but having a Google-friendly and SEO-rich blog platform like WordPress or TypePad that is updated even twice per month as an online journal is worth the investment for having first say in your image.

For additional advice on personal branding in the digital age, make sure to check out the rest of the blog post, which can be found here.

Thanks to the Plus&Play blog for helping spread the word about the importance of pro-active Online Reputation Management.

A recent report published by digital marketing agency iStrategyLabs shed some fascinating light on how Facebook has been trending over the last six months. According to the report, there has been a 70.8% increase in total US users over the last six months. Of that total, there has been a 190.2% increase in the number of  users aged 35-54 and a whopping 513.7% increase in the number of users aged 55 and up.

Conversely, there has been a 21.7% decline in college users and a 16.5% decline in high school users. In other words, the new face of Facebook is a little bit wrinkly, and it’s going to get wrinklier. What does this mean for Facebook’s  younger users? Get ready to clean up your profile, because Mom and Dad are moving in on your turf.

 [SOURCE]

We’ve written previously on the Reputation.com Blog about how to deal with having your parents on Facebook, but there’s a new site which takes the issue one hilarious step further. MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com, which was recently profiled at Time, excerpts some of the most delightfully awkward, embarrassing, and cringe-worthy exchanges between Facebook users and their parents. If you need a lift, make sure to check it out. Apparently, the founders of the site have also already bought up the domain MyParentsJoinedTwitter.com as well, a prescient move if I do so say so myself.

By the way, at your request, MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com will block out the name of you and your parent to keep a certain level of privacy. That being said, Reputation.com strongly advises potential posters at MPJF to use caution before posting an exchange. Just because it’s funny, doesn’t mean that your parent will think so. You don’t want to make an awkward situation even more awkward.

I don’t know much about being a spy, but I’m fairly certain it’s not the best idea to have your address, the address of your parents, and the address of your children posted publicly online for the world to see. Unfortunately, for Sir John Sawers, the incoming Head of the British Intelligence Agency MI6, this is exactly what happened.

Over the weekend, the British press reported that Lady Shelly Sawers, the wife of John Sawers, accidentally revealed her family’s personal details to the world when she neglected to enable privacy controls on her Facebook page. Because her profile was open to the London, UK, network, anyone living in the area with an account had access to her information. Naturally, the British government moved quickly to mitigate any blowback from the embarrassing incident, disabling Lady Sawers’ Facebook account and issuing statements to the press downplaying the event.

Nevertheless, some members of British Parliament, such as Liberal Democrat Edward Davy, have called Sawers’ preparedness for the position into question. In a statement Davy called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to, “immediately commission an internal inquiry as to whether this has breached the security of the incoming head of MI6 too seriously to allow him to take up the post.”

  James Bond would have never had this problem.

While I’ve had a little bit of fun with Mr. Sawers’ privacy problem, there is  nothing funny about the dangers of the Internet. Taking a proactive stance in managing your identity online is the most important step you can take to protect yourself from scammers, stalkers, and identity thieves. Make sure you know how to use the privacy controls on your social networking sites and always think before you make a public post. We might not all be heads of intelligence agencies, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be intelligent about protecting yourself on the web.

Hat tip to Mashable, where I first caught this story.

In 2006, the story of Megan Meier, a young girl who took her own life after being duped into a long and elaborate MySpace hoax, rocked the Internet world, bringing the concept of cyberbullying into sharp national focus. The case even prompted cyberbullying legislation to be drafted, the first of its kind.

Naturally, the subsequent trial of Lori Drew, the woman who allegedly instigated the MySpace hoax, has played out with extreme interest from all sides of the debate over cyberbullying. Today, in a somewhat surprising decision, a Federal judge temporarily dismissed the conviction against Drew as he reconsiders the facts of the case.

From KTLA:

In a stunning move, a federal judge has tentatively decided to reverse a jury’s verdicts and acquit a Missouri woman who had been convicted of computer fraud charges stemming from an Internet hoax that prompted a teenage girl to commit suicide.

Lori Drew was convicted in November of three misdemeanor counts of illegally accessing a protected computer.

She was expected to be sentenced today in a widely publicized “cyber bullying” case that resulted in the suicide of a 13-year-old girl.

The charges stemmed from the death of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being “dumped” on MySpace by a fictitious boy Drew helped create.

U.S. District Judge George H. Wu says his decision is tentative, and will not become final until he issues a written ruling.

We have covered the tragic story of Megan Meier previously at the Reputation.com Blog, and we will continue to bring updates as news of the case continues to unfold.