Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik recently appeared as a guest on FOX & Friends to discuss online reputation management, Internet privacy, and his new book Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier (which he co-authored with Reputation.com Chief Privacy Officer David Thompson).

Check out Michael’s interview below, and don’t forget to order your copy of Wild West 2.0 at Amazon.com today.

In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the value of Facebook data, why the government is coming down hard on Internet companies, and take a peek at the first poster from the new movie The Social Network.

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How Much Is Your Facebook Data Worth?

This article from the San Francisco Chronicle explores the myriad ways in which Facebook users willingly and unwillingly share their information and how much money that data is worth. Some of the data security issues raised in the article include games and apps like Farmville, Facebook’s “Instant Personalization Project,” and the threat of hackers and scammers.

Mark Zuckerberg Visits U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron

Hoping to smooth bumpy relations in the U.K., Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited with Prime Minister David Cameron and British secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Jeremy Hunt, to discuss ways to improve “digital engagement in policy making.” Facebook is widely popular in the U.K., and the company has a number of allies in government.

Politicians Continue to Press Internet Companies Over Privacy

In the wake of Google’s Wi-Fi sniffing scandal, politicians have seized on populist anger over privacy violations and are looking hard at passing more stringent privacy regulations for Internet companies. Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy for the Center for Democracy & Technology, sums up the renewed interest best when he says, “While privacy concerns have ebbed and flowed, I think it is fair to say that they are at an all-time high now.”

Stories of How People Lost Their Jobs Over Facebook

Status updates and wall posts might be great ways to stay in touch, but they are also great ways to get in trouble if you’re not careful about who you’re friends with on Facebook. This article from the Des Moines Register offers several stories of Iowans who have lost their jobs because of ill-fated Facebook messages in the last few months. The issues range from employees who complain about their jobs to a school teacher whose private messages ended up in the wrong hands.

First Poster for Facebook Movie The Social Network

The first poster for the new Facebook movie The Social Network has been released, and it has an inspired tag line. The image, which features actor Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reads, “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.” Early reports on the script for The Social Network suggest the film will bring about a lot of negative publicity for Zuckerberg and Facebook, especially since the company is still battling privacy concerns.

On Tuesday, Reputation.com General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer David Thompson appeared as a guest at the ACM Computers Freedom & Privacy Conference in San Jose, California, to talk about Internet privacy issues and to deliver Reputation.com’s proposed “Social Media Bill of Rights.”

We are happy to report that many of our proposals have been mirrored in the official draft of the Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights for the conference. Check out the full text of the proposal below.

We the users expect social network sites to provide provide us the following rights in their Terms of Service, Privacy Policies, and implementations of their system:

1. Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service.

2. Clarity: Ensure that policies and terms of service are easy to understand.

3. Freedom of speech: Don’t censor without a clear policy and justification.

4. Empowerment: Support privacy-enhancing and assistive technologies.

5. Security: Treat my data as securely as your own, and notify me if it is compromised.

6. Data minimization: Minimize the information I am required to provide and share with others.

7. Control: Let me control my data, and don’t share it with others unless I agree first.

8. Predictability: Don’t change who or what sees my data without my consent.

9. Right to know: Show me how you are using my data and allow me to see who and what has access to it.

10. Right to self-define: Let me create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. Do not link them without my permission.

11. Right to appeal: Allow me to appeal disciplinary actions.

12. Right to leave: Allow me to delete my account, and take my data with me.

Currently, conference attendees and Internet viewers are debating the proposal. To join the discussion, visit the official CFP conference website here or follow along on Twitter and Facebook.  Once the debate has concluded, the amended Bill of Rights will be put to a vote. We will update this post with the finalized language at that time.

In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about criminal behavior caught on YouTube and Facebook, as well as the predicted demise of personal e-mail.

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Lakers Riot Caught on YouTube

After watching their team win the NBA championship last night, L.A. Lakers fans rioted in the streets of the city until the wee hours of the morning. While rioting is a regrettably common tradition in big cities after major sporting events, the catch this time is that most of the “festivities” were caught on video and uploaded to YouTube’s CitizenTube channel. We have seen looters get arrested after their antics were shared on Flickr. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happened to the rioters in these YouTube videos.

Facebook COO Predicts End of E-mail

Could you give up e-mail? Someday soon, we may have to – at least according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. In remarks made at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference, Sandberg pointed out research showing that only 11% of teens use e-mail. Sandberg’s logic is that “If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow you look at what teenagers are doing today.” Without e-mail, what would be the main mode of communication? Presumably, from Sandberg’s point-of-view, Facebook.

Facebook Made $800 Million in 2009

Speaking of Facebook, it turns out that estimates of the company’s 2009 profits were significantly under the company’s actual earnings. According to a Reuters’ report, Facebook made close to $800 million in 2009. Earlier reports placed the amount between $550-$700 million.

Facebook Rebukes Privacy Groups

On Wednesday, a number of privacy groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote a letter to Facebook imploring the company to make additional changes to its privacy controls. In response, Facebook published its own letter rebuking the criticism and saying that the company has already taken significant steps to protect user privacy.

Kids Break Into Zoo, Post Pictures on Facebook

A group of college-age kids apparently broke into the Albuquerque Bio Park Zoo sometime this week. How we do know? Because they posted pictures of their illegal visit on Facebook. The pictures, which include the kids posing for pictures with giraffes and sea lions, were pointed out to police by an anonymous tip. Police are currently investigating the crime and will likely use the photos to identify the perpetrators.

In today’s Quick Hits we discuss the end of the social media era, the growth of a website popular among cyberbullies, and how LinkedIn messages might have gotten a Minnesota job recruiter in trouble.

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Formspring.me Passes 700 Million Questions

TechCrunch recently reported that Formspring.me, the popular anonymous question and answer site, has passed 700 million questions, becoming the 61st most visited website in the U.S. according to Quantcast. Formspring’s rapid growth is interesting, particularly because of the website’s negative association with cyberbullying. Formspring has been cited as a contributing factor in the suicide of 17-year-old Alexis Pilkington in March.

Study Shows Facebook is First Thing 11% of Internet Users Check

According to a new study by ExactTarget, 58% of American Internet users check their e-mail first before doing anything else online. While e-mail may still be number one, the study also showed that 11% of Internet users access Facebook before anything else, again proving how the world’s largest social networking website has become a central part of our digital lives.

AOL Sells Bebo for $10 Million

Yesterday, AOL made news with the announcement that it was selling the once-popular social networking website Bebo. AOL purchased Bebo two years ago for $850 million, but Facebook’s ongoing growth made the acquisition moot. Reports suggests AOL sold Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners for a mere $10 million.

Can Social Media Communications Violate a Non-Compete Agreement?

If you leave a company to take a new job, but you still stay in contact with your former colleagues online, are you in violation of your non-compete agreement? That’s what one Minnesota court case is seeking to figure out.

From the ComputerWorld article: “In a first-of-its kind lawsuit, an IT staffing firm has accused one of its former employees of violating the terms of her non-compete agreements through her conduct on LinkedIn…The lawsuit alleges that after Hammernik left TEKsystems in Nov. 2009, she “communicated” with at least 20 TEKSystems contract employees and “connected” with about 16 of them using the LinkedIn professional network.TEKsystems contends that Hammernik’s actions were on behalf of her new employer and constituted a violation of the non-compete and non-solicitation contracts that she signed when joining TEKsystems as a recruiter in Jan. 2007.”

Social Media Era Ending in 2012?

Social media expert Justin Kistner predicts that the “Social Media Era” will peak in the year 2012. Kistner’s position isn’t that social media technology will die out, but that it will become so commonplace that we will no longer require a special name for describing websites like Twitter or Facebook. Kistner compares it to the rise of the term Web 2.0, which became popular in 2005, but has since faded considerably.