Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 22nd June 2009
9 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
New Facebook discussion blog FBHive has announced their arrival to the blogosphere with a post describing a serious vulnerability within the worlds largest social network, Facebook.
The site claims to have found a hack which exposes the entire “basic information” section within anyones Facebook profile. This section includes location, gender, relationship status, relatioships, political views, religions views, birthday and hometown. Clearly enough for sly marketers and identity thieves to play with.
TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters contacted the blog to challenge them to exposing his basic profile information:
“I asked them to tell me some things about me that they could only find on my Facebook account, which is protected from public viewing and should only be accessible to my networks and friends. Almost immediately, they replied with my birth date, the name of my hometown, the name of my fiancé and my political views. That’s scary (and more proof is available if you click the link below).”
Rightfuly, the site doesn’t explain exactly where/how the leak is hacked, but does refer to a Register article that gives details of how Facebook Search can expose many of these details.
FBHive says they have contacted Facebook via a number of channels but have received no response.
Written on 28th May 2009
46 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Google has updated PageRank, the link analysis system Google uses to rank individual pages on the net. Whilst some sites have seen increases, virtually everyones Twitter profile page has seen a fall in PageRank.
Although some ‘SEO specialists’ believe page rank is now irrelevant, others follow it religiously and still believe it to be a major influencer on their sites rankings.
Blogger’s blog So Web, has picked up on the fact that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams profile PR has fallen from 8 to 6. Dom Sagolla, the often forgotten Twitter co-founder, has had his profile page rank slashed to 4. Chris Brogan previously had a Twitter page rank of 7, that has now dropped to 4. Barack Obama was also on 7, now fallen to 4. Interestingly though, Twitter’s homepage has risen from 8 to 9.
Aside from the fact that this may a reaction to Twitter’s gain in popularity, it also stirs discussion around the importance of Twitter profile pages. Whilst not often a consideration, it’s interesting to think the value of a link from a Twitter profile to a webpage. Most peoples priority when someone tweets a link to their site is the number of followers that end up clicking on it, not the value that link back might bring to the site.
It also brings up questions regarding how many links back does your Twitter profile have? How good is the quality of content you are sharing? Are you better known for your twitter profile than any other place on the web? And above all, will all these questions be answered when Twitter releases their analytics features?
On a side note, did you know that PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank)? Also, if you’d like to check page rank yourself – this is probably the best place to do it.
Written on 1st October 2008
2 COMMENTS
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
Twellow, the ‘yellow pages for Twitter‘, has extended its usefulness with the ability to create your own biography entry of up to 2,000 characters.
As well as being able to claim your twitter profile, and classify yourself in up to 10 categories (although I’m in 14 for some reason), you can also add your social media links to your profiles on Pownce, LinkedIn, Flickr, FriendFeed, etcetera – and now add more details about yourself in a mini-profile or biography.
The search facility in Twellow can also reach into your brief summary to pick up keywords and links used there, and your biography information can also include basic HTML, so links and visual formatting can be added. The summary is indexed in search – the biography does not appear to be indexed yet.
Apart from being a great way to find people using Twitter with similar interests, and pinpointing interesting people to follow, categorized Twellow profiles are also becoming visible in Google and Yahoo searches. So I’d recommend making sure you claim your profile at Twellow and add your details and social links to ensure your online visibility and credibility stay high.
Written on 29th February 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
All you online identity experts out there, there’s a new kid on the block. It’s called RealMee, a service that allows people to set up a profile page ‘in seconds’. You can share contact details, add personal stuff such as the school you went to and display videos and widgets. What else is new? You might ask. Well, your blogger is here to tell you.
The service has one main advantage, somehow it makes sure that your page shows up in the top search results. Are they fooling Google? The FAQ says:
No, we are not. We play by the rules set by search engines. This means no cloaking, linkfarming and all those other geeky terms that describe ways of influencing search engines in prohibited ways. We know we cannot build a solid service based on lies. We simply make sure your personal website is found by search engines and the best way to help improve your own ranking is by linking to your own RealMee website from wherever you think it might be relevant, e.g. from your Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace profile.
I’ve tested it by searching for some folks from the – not so practical – RealMee index and the RealMee page was always on the first page.
This might not be that relevant for you, since I assume you’re a pretty web-savvy person. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this tech blog. You know how to get your blog to the top results. Yet for the less geeky crowd, this could be a handy way to manage their online identity. Now they can finally start to fight those drunk pictures that always show up on Google. And you know what? They owe it to Scoble, since the founders Ronald Carpentier and Hans Helms wrote this on their ‘About us‘ page:
One simple question from Robert Scoble got us thinking: “What if we could just post one post with all the stuff you’d want to appear in Google or Live Search or Yahoo for when people search for your name?” The need was clear. People need to control how they are found when people look for them online.
Written on 11th January 2008
4 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Business card of Facebook Interaction Designer
Facebook is launching a new Profile clean-up tool that will make it easier to manage and clean-up your Facebook profile. Facebook mentions that ‘users are complaining that their own profiles are cluttered, and they have installed so many applications that it has become overwhelming to un-clutter it’.
That sounds kind of familiar as most of us don’t take time to check any of the requests we get on all those social networks and just once a week click the ‘Accept’ button on everything and everyone who wants our attention. It is easier to ‘Just say yes’ to these things than to actually figure out what they want. This does mean that our profiles are becoming less and less attractive to look at and therefor less useful. It seems that Facebook has come to the realization that less can be more.
The tool won’t actually delete stuff from your profile but “Similar to how your computer’s desktop will remind you to get rid of unused icons, this tool will give users the option to move extra profile boxes to an “extended portion” of their profile”. So the clutter will still be there, just hidden behind a “Show my clutter” link.
Lets just hope they also add a ‘Agree to all’ and ‘Delete all “friends” I don’t actually know’ button too.
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