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- Facebook Tips: How Do I Change My Profile Picture?
  by Chengos Fei on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:29am
  The following is part of our series, Facebook Tips, which answers some of the most commonly asked questions about using Facebook. While we hope the tips we share on the blog will be informative, remember that we are unable to answer individual questions here. We'll always direct you to the Help Center for additional information about the topics we cover.
  
  Last week, my mom called to ask me for help. She, like many of you, wanted to change her Profile picture to one that her old classmates would instantly recognize when they viewed her friend... requests.
  
  You can easily change your Profile picture by moving your cursor over the upper right-hand corner of your current photo and selecting the link, "Change Picture." From there, you can choose among uploading a new picture, taking a picture with your computer's webcam, choosing from an album, editing your current thumbnail or removing your current picture entirely.
  
  If you want to use a photo in which you're already tagged, just navigate to the photo you want and select the "Make Profile Picture" link at the bottom right-hand corner of the photo. After selecting the photo, you'll also have the option to crop the picture and adjust its size.
  
  If you are a new user and currently do not have a Profile picture, navigate to your Profile and click on either of the links located underneath the area dedicated for a Profile picture, "Upload a Picture" or "Take a Picture." From here you can either upload a picture or take one using your webcam.
  
  Chengos Lim, who works on the verification team in user operations, hopes that it all makes sense to her mom now.
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- Topics: Facebook Tips
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- Fighting the Battle Against Money Scams
  by Alok Menghrajani on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 12:47pm
  At Facebook, we take your security very seriously and have dedicated teams across the company that focus specifically on protecting people's accounts and fighting cybercrime. Recently we have noticed an increase in scams where people's login information is collected through phishing sites and then their accounts are accessed without permission to ask friends for money. While the total number of people who have been impacted is small, we take any threat to security seriously and are redoubling our efforts to combat the scam.
  
  In this attack,... commonly known as a 419 scam, fraudulent individuals access Facebook accounts and pose as the account owner, claiming to be stranded in a foreign country without access to money. Once they've logged in, the scammers send Facebook Inbox and Chat messages and may even post status updates to the person's profile asking friends to send money, usually through Western Union, a money transfer service.
  
  We've posted the full transcript of a real chat conversation between a Facebook user and a scammer to the Facebook Security Page, along with tips to avoid being scammed and instructions on how to report a compromised account. We've also worked with Western Union to help educate consumers about this scam. Western Union has posted a warning about the scam on their website, and they continue to educate their employees on this and other scams.
  
  On the technical side, we have improved a number of our automated systems to better handle this unique class of scam and are taking efforts to ensure that we adapt our response to the scam as it changes. At the same time, our security team is working with law enforcement and collaborating with email providers and other industry experts to identify and catch the criminals responsible. Western Union also is working closely with law enforcement on scams such as this one.
  
  While only a small number of people have experienced this type of scam on Facebook, we are committed to constantly improving our systems and implementing additional measures to better respond. We need your help too. Educate yourself on this scam and others by becoming a fan of the Facebook Security Page, and report any suspicious activity you see using the report links on the site and the contact forms in our Help Center.
  
  Alok, a software engineer on the site integrity team, builds systems to protect you and fight crime.
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- Topics: Phishing, Security
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- The Role of Technology in Promoting Tolerance
  by Abraham Cooper on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 11:42am
  Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Associate Dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance, a leading Jewish human rights organization with over 400,000 members. As a global activist for human rights for over 30 years, Rabbi Cooper is closely involved in producing exhibitions for the Center's acclaimed Museum of Tolerance and supervising its annual report on digital terrorism and hate. We've asked him to share his personal perspectives on freedom of expression and how people around the globe can leverage digital... technologies to promote tolerance.
  
  "Who knows," said Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, when he received the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature, "if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded — ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day." Considering that the courageous pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran were inspired and empowered by the social networking revolution, it seems appropriate to ask the more than 300 million people using Facebook whether the dramatic events in Iran make the French writer a prophet in his own time.
  
  There's no denying that cyber-freedom is limitless. Just ask blogger Xeni Jardin, who visited a remote Guatemalan village without televisions or telephone landlines. Yet, at a nearby Internet café, a village elder absorbed the news of Barack Obama's victory and declared, "If a black man can enter the 'Casa Blanca,' maybe a Mayan person one day can become President of Guatemala."
  
  Today, online activists have enacted many changes via social networking through tools like email petitions, virtual town meetings and online organizing — from Ukraine's cell phone driven "Orange Revolution" protesting corruption in the presidential election to South Korea's "mad cow" protests against tainted meat imports that were orchestrated by text-messaging teenagers.
  
  Going back in history, it's possible to imagine digital technologies — from websites to cell phones to Facebook and Twitter — making a real difference. Imagine if these options were available to Soviet dissidents and refuseniks who, back in the 1970s, were limited to secretly communicating by one handwritten samizdat at a time. Maybe the "Iron Curtain" would have come down a decade earlier. Or perhaps the outcome would have been different in Tienanmen Square in 1989 had Chinese protesters been able to communicate and organize instantaneously.
  
  Or maybe not. It remains to be seen whether real tanks or motorcycling shock troops such as Iranian President Ahmadinejad's Basij militia can be ultimately trumped by virtual protests. Would YouTube posts from inside the Munich beer hall where Hitler launched his abortive 1923 putsch have made the Nazis look ridiculous or, more likely, created a cult following among young people in search of a strong leader? Would smuggled cellphone videos from Auschwitz have horrified and mobilized the German public or world public opinion to stop the factory of death? Not likely, given that images of mass murder actually sent back home by Germany's "willing executioners" failed to change anything.
  
  There's little reason to believe the Internet could have stopped genocide in 20th-century Europe any more than it has in 21st-century Africa.
  
  In 2009, regimes such as Myanmar nip their potential Internet problem in the bud by outlawing the Web: no medium, no message. But China and Iran take a more sophisticated approach. The Chinese government has found hi-tech means to thwart Internet dissent. Tehran seems to be going further. Using technology bought from Nokia Siemens, Iranian authorities have identified dissenters who used technology during the recent street protests. And they are using Internet technologies to confuse tweeters with disinformation, a campaign that even denies the martyrdom of Neda, the symbol of people's civil outcry.
  
  As Big Brother regimes manipulate the Internet, extremist movements strive to exploit it. In 1995, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center began tracking online hate, there was one hate website. Today, there are more than 10,000.
  
  Let's face it: From the printing press to the telegraph, to radio and television and the Internet, innovation has always been a double-edged sword. Contrary to the technological Utopians, there is no such thing as an invention whose potential for good cannot be perverted for evil.
  
  Scholar Marshall McLuhan's "global village" has arrived, but it's populated by the good, bad and ugly of humanity. Alas, Mr. Le Clezio, the Nobel laureate is wrong: Technology will never deliver us from evil. Only decent people can. We all must do our part to ensure that social media lands on the side of the good.
  
  Rabbi Abraham Cooper would like to hear from people using Facebook on behalf of human rights.
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- Topics: Guest blog
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- Back to School: Tips for Teachers on Facebook
  by Jesse Dwyer on Friday, September 18, 2009 at 12:01pm
  This week something great happened: two of my former students connected with me on Facebook. Three years ago, I taught writing at a small college in New Hampshire, and the new friend requests reminded me of how great it is to see what your former students are up to years later, as well as how difficult it can be to be a teacher.
  
  Teachers work with an audience that is by definition impressionable. This means that being a teacher comes with the added responsibility of also being a public figure. As with most jobs, the extra-curricular life of a... teacher has professional consequences, which is especially important on Facebook where people are more connected and sharing more often.
  
  Some teachers stay away from Facebook altogether, while others — like some of my friends — have found creative workarounds such as only accepting friend requests from students who've graduated or those who are over the age of 18. However, it doesn't have to be that difficult. In fact, it is useful and rewarding to connect with your students on Facebook. So, in honor of all the people who are heading back to school this month, here are some tips for using Facebook.
  
  Create Friend Lists
  You can sort your friends into lists, without them even knowing it. For instance, if you're a teacher, you can create a Friend List called "students" and adjust your privacy settings to control what people in that list see. You then could allow students to see basic information about you and maybe your photo albums from a recent trip you took, but not photos in which you've been tagged.
  
  You can create a named list to organize your relationships in whichever way works best for you: close friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, students, among others. Just select the "Create a List" link on the left-hand side of the home page or create a new list from your Friends Page. Each time you receive a friend request, you'll have the option to add that person to the appropriate list as you accept them.
  
  By using the Friend Lists you've created, you also can filter your home page to get updates from the people you're interested in. If you're a teacher, you can see what your students are sharing on the site by filtering for that group from the left-hand side of the page. If one group is most important to you, you can even set it as the default view for your home page by dragging it to the top of the left hand bar.
  
  Check Your Privacy Settings
  Don't be afraid to severely restrict what certain people can see. For instance, if you're a teacher, you may not invite a student to a dinner party with friends, and the same goes for your boss or other people you don't interact with in those types of social settings. You should use your Facebook privacy settings to reflect the types of relationships you have.
  
  Once you've created your Friend Lists, you can use them to customize privacy levels for different information and content you include on your Profile. Select the "Settings" link located on the top menu bar and navigate to the Profile section of your Privacy page. From there, you can select "Edit Custom Settings," which will open a field for "Except These People." Adding a friend or Friend List here will exclude those people from seeing the information in question about you.
  
  For example, maybe you want your close friends to see your favorite activities and your contact information so they can reach you easily, but you don't want your students to see those sections of your profile. You can exclude your "students" list from seeing the "Personal Information" and specific "Contact Information" sections of your profile.
  
  We hope these suggestions can not only help students and teachers connect, but help all of you share with even more people in your lives.
  
  Jesse, a training and communications lead, is a teacher here at Facebook.
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- Topics: Privacy, Friend Lists, Education
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- Log In with Your Facebook Username
  by Bikash Agarwalla on Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 5:14pm
  A couple of months ago, we made it easier for people to find and connect with each other by using Facebook usernames. Beginning today, you also will be able to log in to your Facebook account with your username from any Web browser, mobile phone or Facebook Connect-enabled website.
  
  For example, I can enter my username, "Bikash," in place of my email address when I log in to Facebook.
  
  ...
  You will still be able to log in with your email address. We just wanted to add a more convenient way to access your Facebook account. A username gives you an easy-to-remember web address for your Facebook profile so your friends can more easily find and connect with you. If you don't have a Facebook username yet, you can choose one here.
  
  Bikash, a Facebook engineer, can be found at www.facebook.com/bikash, thanks to his username.
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- Topics: Username
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- Testing 1-2-3: Announcing Facebook Prototypes
  by Lee Byron on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 1:38pm
  Facebook's engineers thrive on innovation and experimentation. We're encouraged to work on projects that inspire us and build on new ideas, but not all of these features and improvements wind up launching on the site. In some instances, they're not quite ready for prime time, are a bit esoteric or don't quite fit. Now, for all the products that wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to see the light of day, we're introducing Facebook Prototypes.
  
  Facebook Prototypes let us share the experimentation going on inside the walls of Facebook with the... rest of the world. You'll be able to test any of the products and features we launch as Facebook Prototypes and then provide feedback directly to those of us who built them. To access Prototypes, visit the Application Directory and filter by "Prototypes." From there, you can activate or download any of the Prototypes listed.
  
  For instance, during a recent Hackathon — an all-night coding event that gives us a chance to build projects we just don't have time to pursue during regular hours — I worked on an application called Desktop Notifications, for Mac OS X. The application helps you keep up to date with what's happening on Facebook.
  
  Already, you can see when people take actions on Facebook related to you through the notifications that appear at the bottom right corner of your browser or through email notifications — quickly check out a photo you've been tagged in, a new friend request or read a comment on your status update. Now, you can receive the same notifications even when you're not on Facebook.com or checking email by using Desktop Notifications.
  
  After activating the application, you'll see a Facebook icon next to your computer's clock that will light up with a pop-up alert whenever you receive a new notification. When you click on the notification, you'll be taken directly to the action on Facebook in a new browser window. If you want to just read the notification without going to Facebook, you can dismiss the notification by waving your mouse over it. The application also keeps track of your Facebook messages and gives you an easy way to update your Facebook status.
  
  Other Prototypes include Recent Comments Filter, which allows you to sort your News Feed by items on which your friends have recently commented; Photo Tag Search, which enables you to find photos by the people who are tagged in them; and Enhanced Events Emails, which allows you to add a Facebook Event directly to your personal calendar in Google, Microsoft Outlook and many other calendar products with just one click.
  
  Keep in mind that Prototypes are exactly that — unfinished versions of products we're testing that may have some kinks to work out. Some Prototypes may eventually launch to everyone on Facebook and become part of the Facebook experience, while others may eventually be removed from the Prototypes directory all together. We won't test every new product in Prototypes before launch, but we're excited about testing new ideas regularly and often.
  
  We already get a lot of suggestions for new features. Keep them coming. They just might get built.
  
  Lee, a product designer, is using the prototype of Desktop Notifications to keep his finger on the Facebook pulse.
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- Topics: Comments, Notifications, Hackathon, Prototypes
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- Facebook Mobile: Now Connecting 65 Million People
  by Henri Moissinac on Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 8:32am
  Even when you're away from your desktop, we want you to be able to share and connect with those that matter to you on Facebook. We had that goal in mind when we launched Facebook Mobile in 2006. Today, we reached a new milestone with more than 65 million people now actively using Facebook on their mobile devices — a significant increase from 20 million just eight months ago.
  
  As we celebrate 65 million, we want you to be able to take Facebook with you wherever you go. That's why we are continuously making updates to our mobile products and... working with some of the biggest names in mobile to make sure that Facebook is available on the latest devices and mobile operating systems.
  
  Facebook Mobile first started as a simple mobile site in English with a few of the core site features built in, such as status updates and photo uploads. Since then, we've grown far beyond what was then a fairly basic mobile site. We have translated the mobile site into other languages, launched Facebook SMS and deployed a wide range of applications for hundreds of mobile handsets, including Facebook for Blackberry, Facebook for iPhone and Facebook for Nokia.
  
  Below is a quick tour of all of your options for using Facebook Mobile:
  
  Mobile Web Sites
  Facebook has two mobile web sites: m.facebook.com, which works on any mobile browser, and x.facebook.com, which is designed specifically for touch screen phones like Android, Palm, iPhone and Nokia. These sites have been translated into more than 60 languages and allow you to update your status, browse your News Feed and your friends' Profiles, comment or "like" stories, and view or update your Facebook Page.
  
  Text Messages
  Through Facebook Mobile Texts, you can receive notifications, set your status and send and receive messages via SMS. This service is now available on 52 operators in 25 countries, on any mobile phone.
  
  Facebook Mobile for Devices
  Facebook applications can be found on an increasing number of mobile phones; many come pre-installed while others can be downloaded from the Internet. The most recent Facebook mobile applications include major updates for Apple's iPhone and Nokia's N97 and 5800. These applications make it easier to update your status, share photos, browse your News Feed and keep in contact with all your friends on Facebook wherever you are.
  
  Also available are Facebook applications from INQ, HTC, LG Electronics, Motorola, Palm, RIM, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. There are also Facebook applications for the T-Mobile Sidekick and phones powered by Microsoft's Windows Mobile.
  
  Facebook Connect for Mobile Web
  Beginning today, you'll start to see Facebook Connect available on some of your mobile sites and applications, just as you would on the Web. Already, Facebook Connect makes it easier for you to take your online identity with you all over the Web, share what you do online with your friends and stay updated on what they're doing. Soon, you'll see prompts for Facebook Connect on mobile sites and applications and have the opportunity to take your Facebook profile information, friends and privacy preferences to your favorite mobile applications, as well.
  
  If you're a developer and want to build social applications, learn more about Facebook Connect for Mobile Web here.
  
  Whether you want to use an application, the mobile site or SMS, you can always learn more about all Facebook Mobile services here.
  
  Henri and the rest of the mobile team are working on helping you access Facebook on any phone wherever you are.
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- Topics: Growth, Applications, Facebook Connect, Mobile
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- 300 Million and On
  by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 1:00pm
  As of today, Facebook now serves 300 million people across the world. It's a large number, but the way we think about this is that we're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone.
  
  Because we want to make it as easy and fast as possible for the world to connect, one of the things we think a lot about is how to make Facebook perform even faster and more efficiently as we grow. We face a lot of fun and important challenges that require rethinking the current systems for enabling information flow across the web.
  
  The site we all use... every day is built by a relatively small group of the smartest engineers and entrepreneurs who are solving substantial problems and each making a huge impact for the 300 million people using Facebook. In fact, the ratio of Facebook users to Facebook engineers makes it so that every engineer here is responsible for more than one million users. It's hard to have an impact like that anywhere else.
  
  We're also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I'm pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.
  
  Over time, Facebook will continue to be as strong as all of the connections you make. We'll continue building new and better things to make connecting with the people you care about as easy and rewarding as possible. We thank all of you for helping us reach the point where we are connecting 300 million people, and we hope to serve you and many more people in increasingly deep and innovative ways in the months and years ahead.
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- Topics: Growth
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- Tag Friends in Your Status and Posts
  by Tom Occhino on Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 12:01pm
  UPDATE on Monday, September 14: Status tagging is now available to everyone on Facebook.
  
  One of the most popular features on Facebook is tagging, which gives you the ability to identify and reference people in photos, videos and notes. Today, we are adding a new way to tag people and other things you're connected to on Facebook — in status updates and other posts from the Publisher. It's another way to let people know who and what you're talking about.
  
  ...People often update their status to reflect their thoughts and feelings, or to mention things they feel like sharing. Sometimes that includes referencing friends, groups or even events they are attending — for instance, posting "Grabbing lunch with Meredith Chin" or "I'm heading to Starbucks Coffee Company — anyone want some coffee?".
  
  Now, when you are writing a status update and want to add a friend's name to something you are posting, just include the "@" symbol beforehand. As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages. Soon, you'll be able to tag friends from applications as well. The "@" symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post after you've added your tags.
  
  Friends you tag in your status updates will receive a notification and a Wall post linking them to your post. They also will have the option to remove tags of themselves from your posts. We hope that tagging your status updates and others posts from the Publisher will enable you to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, and connect with even more people. We're rolling this feature out over the course of the next few weeks, so you may not see the new feature just yet.
  
  Tom, a software engineer, is excited to be able to tag Eugene Letuchy in his status.
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- Topics: Tagging, Status Updates
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- Connecting with... Brian Phillips: The Facebook Matchmaker
  by Kathy H. Chan on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 1:04pm
  At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people — from experts in their field, academics and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook blog in our "Connecting with..." series. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Brian Phillips, a co-founder of Thread, which is one of 24 companies that in the fbFund REV incubator program for startups building Facebook applications and that announced funding today. Read the previous blog post in this series here.
  
  ...The basis for your company, Thread, is to introduce friends-of-friends on Facebook. How did you come up with the idea?
  Personal experience. One of our co-founders, Skye Lee, is a consummate matchmaker. She loves nothing more than to set me up. A typical day: I'll get a phone call from her before we even start thinking about business. "I just found this really cute girl on the street, and she's single. You should take her to coffee next week. I told her all about you." When we started to think about business ideas, it hit us — we should just make it easier to introduce people by applying cool technology like Facebook Connect.
  
  What have you learned with fbFund REV this summer?
  First and foremost, the collaboration has been great. We're co-located with 23 other fantastic start-ups with brilliant people behind them, and we're all working on things on the Facebook Platform. If we have a question, problem or challenge, surely someone in the building has had the same question, problem or challenge before.
  
  Secondly, it's been really educational. fbFund REV has a great curriculum with speakers who come to our office almost every other day — whether it be a representative from Facebook or Tim Ferris, author of "The 4-Hour Workweek," and experts in marketing, SEO, public relations or venture capital.
  
  And third, it's just been fun. For instance, every Wednesday afternoon, we have weekly check-ins to talk about what we're working on, and afterwards, the entire group goes out for a beer. We have our own happy hour. There's a great vibe, lots of energy.
  
  Facebook has never focused on dating. What made you think it would be well-suited for an application built on that idea?
  We try to take activity that people do off of Facebook and make it easier to do with Facebook. Two-thirds of all marriages are the result of friend introductions. This is how people are actually meeting in the real world. Now, you could actually make that easier. Instead of having to go to 30 dinner parties, I can use Facebook to browse my friends' friends and ask questions about them, instead of meeting every single one of them in person.
  
  How do you think the Internet is changing people's dating patterns or ability to meet new people?
  Historically, it started out with slow adoption. There's a good chunk of people who've never been on a dating site or sworn them off. The stigma is going away and people are becoming more comfortable with the idea of using the Internet. At some point, it will be rare for people not to use the Internet in some way for dating. One of our goals is not to have people think of us as a dating site. Thread is a service that just makes what people do offline really easy.
  
  Would you call yourself a matchmaker?
  I like to think I'm actually a pretty good matchmaker. I just recently set up two friends of mine. They met through Thread, and they've gone on three dates. I parade around the office high-fiving people about how creative a matchmaker I am. We have a competition going at the office: Who can make the most successful matches? One of our key metrics for success will be actual weddings.
  
  Now, obviously we're a new service, we've only been around for eight weeks or so, but I'm hoping this couple that I've set up will be good candidates for marriage. Let's say this couple is ultimately successful and someone asks them, "How did you guys meet?" Their answer will be, "We met through friends." Not a dating site or Thread, just through friends.
  
  How many people have you set up? What's the track record for your setups?
  Probably over a dozen couples. On Thread, you get an opportunity to look at what information people have available through Facebook and learn a little more about them. Instead of a blind email, which I may have used before to set up my friends, people can see a profile photo, what networks they're part of on Facebook and some of their interests.
  
  In the case of my 12 setups, probably a third to half of them went on second dates. You can put anybody on a first date if you're convincing, but if they go on a second date, that's something. That's just me, though. If you're a bad matchmaker offline, Thread isn't necessarily going to make you a better matchmaker. We'll just make it easier.
  
  What sort of criteria do you use on Thread to set people up?
  There's no better substitute than your friends' own judgement. The whole premise of our system is that your friends can either make suggestions for you or you can ping your friends and ask them if they think someone would make a good match for you. What's different about our site is that everybody you see, you know through at least one person and sometimes more than one. It's all about friends of friends.
  
  What do you think of the six degrees of separation theory? It's the idea that everyone is, at most, six steps away from knowing any other person.
  I buy it. Everyone probably is connected by six degrees. I haven't thought about the math or statistics behind this, but I would suggest that the person you're going to marry is probably not six degrees away. They're most likely one, maybe two, degrees away.
  
  Two degrees away is a huge number of people. On average, people on Facebook have somewhere around 120 friends. If you have 120 friends and they each have 120 friends, that's 14,400 people. And if those 14,400 people each have 120 friends, that's 1,728,000 people.
  
  So, are you single?
  I am single. My personal interests and business interests are perfectly aligned. A lot of people think, "Wow, Brian is really interested in meeting girls."
  
  This begs the question, why haven't you found someone by using Thread already?
  I've dated more in the last two months than I ever have in my life.
  
  Kathy, Facebook's resident blogger, is checking which of her friends are single and ready to mingle on Thread.
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- Topics: Applications, Facebook Connect, Connecting with...
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