Social Media

Social media is a blessing for many news outlets, but a new study by the Pew Research Center reveals few people need their friends to tell them what news to read.

"The notion that large percentages of Americans now get their news mainly from recommendations from friends does not hold up," Pew researchers wrote in the organization's 2012 State of the News Media report, which concluded that social media is an "important but not overwhelming" driver of news, at least for now.

Just 10 percent of people who consume news online said they followed recommendations from Facebook or Twitter "very often." And almost all of those people also use other ways to find news.

Still, social media sites have become indispensable.

"Social media - particularly Facebook, with its huge audience and domineering lead - have become a partner no news organization can afford to ignore," the report concluded.

For more on Pew's study, visit our Tech page.

Facebook is once again expanding its Washington office and bringing on two officials from the administration of former President George W. Bush.

Joel Kaplan, who served as deputy chief of staff to Bush, will be joining the social networking service on June 13 as vice president of public policy and will head Facebook's Washington office. Kaplan will be coming to Facebook from Energy Future Holdings, where he has served as executive vice president overseeing the firm's public policy and external affairs.

Myriah Jordan, who worked in the Bush administration's Office of the Chief of Staff, will be joining Facebook in Washington on June 6 to help lead Facebook's congressional lobbying as a policy manager. She was most recently general counsel to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.

"It's imperative that we scale our policy team so that we have the resources in place to demonstrate to policymakers that we are industry leaders in privacy, data security and safety," said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. (Noyes is the former editor of Tech Daily Dose)

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who worked as a counselor to Bush in the last year and a half of his administration, said Kaplan will prove to be a "real asset" for Facebook and has good relations with both Republicans and Democrats.

"They have some big issues ... and having someone of Joel's gravitas and stature is important for them right now," Gillespie said in an interview with Tech Daily Dose.

Some of the issues the company is grappling with include concerns voiced by several lawmakers over the social networking site's privacy practices. Facebook also is recovering from a public relations blunder when it was revealed recently that it hired a public relations firm to try to plant negative stories about rival Google in the media.

Cathie Martin, who has been heading Facebook's congressional lobbying efforts, has requested a leave of absence from the company to deal with personal matters and will be leaving early next month, Facebook said. Noyes said the company hopes she will return.

What does the AT&T-T-Mobile merger portend for the spectrum crunch? Reuters says nothing good...

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After conquering the world of social media, is comic book stardom next for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? The folks at comic book publisher Bluewater Productions apparently hope so.

After being mistreated by a policewoman and ignored by municipal officials, Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire Dec. 17, 2010, in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. He died Jan. 4.

Bouazizi's act, which was videotaped and posted on Facebook, sparked the revolution that overthrew Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Alithe on Jan. 14, Nextgov.com reported.

"The revolution would have been impossible without Facebook," said Mohamed Al-Yahyai. The video of Bouazizi's suicide ignited rage among Tunisia's unemployed, oppressed and impoverished.

Bouazizi's friends then used Facebook to call for protests, and 10 protesters turned into 100 and then 1,000, said Al-Yahyai, a reporter for the Middle East Broadcasting Network's Alhurra Television.

A similar suicide shortly before Bouazizi's received no Internet coverage and provoked no reaction, Al-Yahyai recalled during a Feb. 15 discussion of new media and U.S. government efforts to use it to spread democracy.

Social networks also are being credited for rallying hundreds of thousands of Egyptian protesters who drove President Hosni Mubarak from power Feb. 11. Click here to read more.

The concerns that two key lawmakers the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised Wednesday about Facebook's proposal to share its users' mobile phone and addresses with third parties will likely continue as lawmakers begin to craft legislation to provide online privacy safeguards for consumers.

In a letter Wednesday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, requested answers to a long list of questions about changes Facebook outlined last month to expand the user data shared with third parties to include mobile phone numbers and addresses.

Markey said in a statement that he wants answers "to better understand Facebook's practices regarding possible access to users' personal information by third parties. This is sensitive data and needs to be protected."

In a blog post about this proposal last month, Facebook's Douglas Purdy said the proposal would allow Facebook users to improve their online e-commerce experiences by streamlining the checkout process at online retail sites and added that mobile phone and address information would only be shared with user permission. However, he also announced that Facebook was suspending the service and planned to relaunch it to make it easier for users to know when they are granting access to the use of their data.

In their letter to Zuckerberg, Barton and Markey wanted much more information about the service including whether the proposed feature called for sharing any other information beyond mobile phone numbers and addresses with third parties and whether any data was shared before the service was suspended; the process for vetting new services like this; why the company suspended the rollout of the new service; whether the changes will prompt a more prominent notice to users; and whether the company considered the risks to teens and children of sharing this information.

This is not the first time Barton and Markey have questioned Facebook's privacy practices. The lawmakers, who are the House co-chairmen of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, wrote Facebook last fall about reports that Facebook user data had been breached by third parties.

Facebook released a statement Wednesday that said it believes there is "tremendous value in giving people the freedom and control to take information they put on Facebook with them to other websites. We enable people to share this information only after they explicitly authorize individual applications to access it."

While noting that this permission system was designed with privacy experts, the social networking site acknowledged based on user feedback that "there may be additional improvements we could make."

The answers Markey and Barton receive could help inform legislation that they and other lawmakers plan to offer to bolster online privacy.

Privacy advocates say they would like to see more attention paid to information collected by sites like Facebook and more focus on whether their opt-in systems are as robust as they should be, according to Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. He said it's an issue he plans to raise with lawmakers and in his comments with the Federal Trade Commission on its proposed online privacy guidelines.

Markey is working on a measure, which a spokeswoman said he will introduce early this Congress, aimed at preventing children from being tracked on the Internet for advertising purposes. Barton has said he plans to work with a bipartisan group of House lawmakers on broader online privacy legislation.

A recent internal test by a federally-funded broadcaster shows that the U.S. government has the power to bypass foreign Internet censors by feeding news over a special e-mail system. How that capability might affect events in Egypt, where leaders have cut off Internet services despite appeals by the Obama administration to restore them, remains unclear, Nextgov.com reported.

Between March and June 2010, the Broadcasting Board of Governors successfully used the tool in China to transmit news feeds from broadcasters Voice of America, CKXX and China Weekly, according to a report the nonprofit website GovernmentAttic.org obtained this month through a Freedom of Information Act request. The experiment offers a glimpse into the secret measures the State Department and U.S. broadcasters have taken -- and may currently be taking -- to enable the free flow of information when oppressive regimes cut off Internet access. Click here to read more.

Meanwhile, Google announced Monday that it has worked with Twitter to post messages on Twitter from those cut off from the Internet in Egypt. Those who want to Tweet a message can call three phone numbers and leave a message that will be tweeted using the hashtag #egypt. Those without Internet access can dial the same numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) to listen to Tweets from Egypt.

As part of its ongoing work examining how Americans use the latest technologies, the Pew Research Center's new report released Thursday found the digital advantage that Democrats had over Republicans during the 2008 campaign had largely evaporated by the 2010 midterm elections, when the GOP scored huge gains.

The survey from Pew's Internet and American Life Project found overall that 22 percent of Americans used social media tools like Facebook or Twitter to follow events surrounding the November midterm elections. Most of those, 21 percent used social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, while just 2 percent used Twitter,.

Of the 22 percent who used these tools, 45 percent voted for Republicans while 41 percent chose Democratic candidates. Of the social network site users, the survey found that 40 percent of Republican voters and 38 percent of Democrats used these sites to get politically involved.

"The social networking population as a whole has grown larger and demographically more diverse in recent years, and the same is true when it comes to political activity on social networking sites," said Aaron Smith, a senior researcher specialist at the center and the report's author, in a statement. "These platforms are now utilized by politically active individuals of all ages and ideologies to get news, connect with others, and offer their thoughts on the issues that are important to them."

Meanwhile, the survey showed 11 percent of Americans were willing to say on social networking sites who they voted for in the 2010 elections, while 9 percent of online adults received campaign or political content and 8 percent posted political content on Twitter or a social networking site.

The survey of 2,257 adults was conducted Nov. 3-24 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

Coincidence? Maybe, but just a day after Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's account was reportedly hacked, the company unveiled new security measures that will allow users to use Facebook over a secured connection and prevent more remote breaches.

Usually reserved for times when a user inputs a password or credit card information online, HTTPS secured connections will now be available for the entire time a user is on Facebook, according to a company blog posted Wednesday.

"Facebook currently uses HTTPS whenever your password is sent to us, but today we're expanding its usage in order to help keep your data even more secure," wrote Facebook security engineer Alex Rice. "Starting today we'll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS."

The company suggests users enable the feature if they frequently use public Internet networks. The option is available as part of the "account security" section of the "account settings" page.

Another security feature unveiled Wednesday is "social authentication," which will be activated if Facebook spots suspicious activity on a user's page. If such activity is detected, the user may be prompted to identify someone in one of his or her photos.

"Hackers halfway across the world might know your password, but they don't know who your friends are," Rice said.

A hacker apparently left a message under Zuckerberg's name Tuesday, calling for the company to become a "social business."

Facebook did not comment on the hacked account and no mention of it was made in Wednesday's blog post. Instead, the company said it unveiled the measures to coincide with Friday's Data Privacy Day.

A cell phone starts shaking on a coffee table in California, instantly triggering an application that alerts the phone's owner to drop to the ground, take cover under a sturdy piece of furniture and hold on until the earthquake stops.

The resident sends a text message through the social media site Twitter, saying, "Quake.Trapped.555CreekSt90210." Soon after the magnitude 7 quake strikes, emergency responders locate and free the victim, and Craig Fugate, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, already has started mobilizing to rush in electrical power, food and shelter.

Nextgov.com reported that this is the not-too-distant future for Fugate, who has seen cell phones equipped with accelerometers that measure vibration, he said. Under the alias "@CraigatFEMA," he currently searches the Twittersphere regularly for signs of state, local and national emergencies. Click here, to read more.