SpeedPlexer Blog

It turns out that Facebook is an effective means of letting people know about a loved one’s passing… with internet speed. If you’ve created different lists with your Facebook friends, you have a network of contacts ready to go when you need it most. For this same reason, many funeral directors are turning to Facebook or other online means of sharing funeral and memorial service information, and allowing people to send condolences in a timely manner from anywhere in the world.

An article that discusses the Best Practices for Funeral Directors to use Facebook points out that in the days before online social networking, face-to-face networking was done by getting to know one’s community. This was done by being active in the organizations where people in your community might congregate. Then, when someone needed the services of a funeral director, they already knew who to turn to, and it was someone they knew and trusted.

Your Funeral Guy will walk you through how to set up a Facebook memorial from your loved one’s existing Facebook page. Or you can simply ask for the account to be closed. If you choose to have it memorialized, Facebook removes the deceased’s contact information, membership in online groups, and personal information like their favorite books, movies, quotations, etc.) Then for about a month, the user’s Wall, photographs, and basic info like the hometown and birth date remain. Then, already confirmed Facebook friends can leave messages on the user’s wall.

Do a search for “online memorials” to find several other ways to share condolences and stories online. You can also check with the chosen funeral home to see what they offer.

With the growing popularity and general ubiquitousness of the Facebook “Like” button, people have been talking about wanting a “Dislike” button too. That’s why when it looked like it was finally being offered, many responded with internet speed by clicking to download the application—only to discover it was a scam.

If you see a post of Facebook that says “I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!” with a link, you’d be better off not clicking it.

According to the security firm Sophos, “If you do give the app permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts.” That will give you something to dislike!

While Facebook works to block and remove this, and similar applications that promise to allow you the choice to dislike something, they’d like everyone to keep the following in mind:

“…there is no official dislike button.

“Also, don’t click on strange links, even if they are from friends, and notify the person and report the link if you see something suspicious”

Those tips are from Facebook company spokesman Fred Wolens.

The L.A. Times Technology blog reminded us that the Facebook Security Page has more information on how to protect your data on Facebook, and offers words of comfort.

“If you installed the fake app, don’t despair. Just click on the account button, then application settings and disable it. You can also delete the application’s posts to your Facebook wall.”

Facebook Security recommends you read the story from CNN.com to learn more.

Facebook’s “Like” feature has seemingly taken over the web.  A month or so ago, Mashable reported that the Typepad bloggers who installed the widgets on their sidebars got a 50% boost in traffic. As of that time, 1,500 TypePad bloggers had installed the “Like” buttons on their blogs in the first month. Then Typepad made it possible to add the Like button to each post. 2,400 bloggers added that version of the feature, and Typepad says they got a 200% boost. 

Then the Like feature was available for any website. Mashable says, “They were on 50,000+ websites within one week after launch, on 100,000+ sites in less than a month, and are now on 350,000+ sites.” But for people who like to Like sites to share with their Facebook friends, it can be frustrating that not all pages have the button.  They can relax now though, because there’s an extension called “Facebook Like” from Greasemonkey that places a “Like” bar on the top of any webpage you visit (with the exception of Facebook.com itself). It was built by Facebook Engineer Matt Kelly as a personal project during a company Hackathon. (Companies have Hackathons?)

Facebook Like works with Firefox as long as you have the Greasemonkey add-on installed, and allows you to Like, make Recommendations and add Activity Feed features on any Firefox page you visit. It also works with Google Chrome, since includes native support for Greasemonkey scripts, while Safari requires GreaseKit.

So get it, and then utilize internet speed to zip along the information superhighway in a hot rod with the top down and wind in your virtual hair, singing new lyrics to an old tune: “Oooooh…Like to Like You, Baby!”

One clever mom from Southern California, after reporting her children missing 15 years ago, decided to do her own investigation using Facebook to see if she could find them. After all, they were ages 2 and 3 when their father took them and ran off, so now they’d be teenagers, and would very likely be online and into social networking. 

Her clever use of internet speed paid off. The Associated Press reported, “The mother had found her daughter’s Facebook profile after searching for her name on the social networking site in March.” They didn’t go into detail if their names had been changed, or if she had to sift through hundreds or thousands of kids with the same first names, which is what we would imagine.  Who would kidnap someone and then not change their names? And why wouldn’t the authorities be able to find someone who hadn’t changed their names?  If it’s that easy, couldn’t the police be doing it too?

The kids have been living with their father in Florida. The mother apparently wrote directly to her daughter upon finding her, but the teenage girl told her mother she didn’t want to be in contact. It’s our guess that this is why the mother then chose to report the information to the police. She can’t have made life easier for the teenagers by having their father arrested for kidnapping and violating child custody orders. 

Now the kids are living with a friend of the family, while they await the results of their father’s July 17th hearing in Florida.

Read the full Associated Press story on Yahoo at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100606/ap_on_re_us/us_found_on_facebook.

Early last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading civil liberties group defending
our rights in the digital world, published Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections. They explain that Facebook has transformed substantial personal information — including your hometown, education, work history, interests, and activities — into “Connections.” This allows far more people than ever before to see this information, regardless of whether you want them to, with internet speed and reach. Here’s the gist:

1. Facebook will not let you share any of this information without using Connections. You cannot opt-out and if you refuse to play ball, Facebook will remove all unlinked information from your profile.

2. Facebook will not respect your old privacy settings in this transition. For example, if you had previously sought to share your Interests with “Only Friends,” Facebook will now ignore this and share your Connections with “Everyone.”

3. Facebook has removed your ability to restrict its use of this information. The new privacy controls only affect your information’s “Visibility,” not whether it is “publicly available.”

4. Facebook will continue to store and use your Connections even after you delete them. Even after you “delete” profile information, Facebook will remember it. We’ve also received reports that Facebook continues to use deleted profile information to help people find you through Facebook’s search engine.

5. Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you “Like” something. It too can sometimes add a Connection to your profile, without you even knowing it.

6. If you use the name of a Connection in a post on your wall, it may show up on the Connection page, without you even knowing it. (For example, if you use the word “FBI” in a post).

And check out the guilt trip that happens if you try to leave Facebook altogether!