From our front-page news:
If there is one thing that I dislike about the internet, it's the MySpaces and Facebooks. I'd begin to list every reason, but it would require far more space than a simple news post. The main one though, is the fact that many people don't understand the dangers of exploiting insane amounts of their own information. Like a naive six-year-old who thinks $600 for a game console is equivalent to that of a candy bar, many users of these services find absolutely no risk of offering a thousand images of themselves or updating what they are doing at any given time of the day.
So what the heck am I getting at? It turns out that Facebook believes all forty-million of their users wouldn't mind having their basic profiles spidered by search engines everywhere. If you are a Facebook user, then you know that no one can see your profile until you add them. However, with this move, Facebook will allow search engines to grab both your profile image and name, so that potential friends can find you outside of the website itself. What this means essentially, is that whether or not you want to be in a search engine, you are going to be. Of course you can disable this default security option, but how many non-computer savvy users are going to even know better?
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For some Facebook members, however, the policy change is troubling, because many chose the service because it is private. "I'm amazed that they seem to be opting-in literally millions of people who never asked for Facebook to put listings out in the public," says Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com and a Facebook user.
Source: USA Today
So what the heck am I getting at? It turns out that Facebook believes all forty-million of their users wouldn't mind having their basic profiles spidered by search engines everywhere. If you are a Facebook user, then you know that no one can see your profile until you add them. However, with this move, Facebook will allow search engines to grab both your profile image and name, so that potential friends can find you outside of the website itself. What this means essentially, is that whether or not you want to be in a search engine, you are going to be. Of course you can disable this default security option, but how many non-computer savvy users are going to even know better?
<table align="center"><tbody><tr><td>
For some Facebook members, however, the policy change is troubling, because many chose the service because it is private. "I'm amazed that they seem to be opting-in literally millions of people who never asked for Facebook to put listings out in the public," says Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com and a Facebook user.
Source: USA Today