Facebook aims to help prevent suicide

The Lifeline currently responds to dozens of users on Facebook each day.

Facebook is making it easier for people who express suicidal thoughts on the social networking site to get help.

A program launching December 13th enables users to instantly connect with a crisis counselor through Facebook’s “chat” messaging system.

The service is the latest tool from Facebook aimed at improving safety on its site, which has more than 800 million users. Earlier this year, Facebook announced changes to how users report bullying, offensive content and fake profiles.…Read More

Study: Facebook does not hurt college students’ GPA (much)

Right now, hundreds of thousands of college students across the US are cramming for the end-of-semester finals. Either that, or they’re procrastinating on Facebook, Digital Trends reports. Which, according to a study from Lockhaven University of Pennsylvania published last month in Computers in Human Behavior, really isn’t such a bad thing, as far as grade point average is concerned. Of the more than 1,800 students surveyed, 92 percent admitted to using Facebook, and those who do log on spend an average of 106 minutes each day on the social network. For every additional hour and a half (93 minutes) spent on the site, GPAs dropped an average of 0.12 points. That said, the study found “no strong link” between Facebook usage and a drop in GPA. Instead, the grades a student got in high school are twice as strong a predictor of how well he or she will do in college…

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Facebook users: Five degrees of separation

On Facebook, it seems that just about everyone is a friend of a friend somewhere down the line, reports the Washington Post. There are plenty of occasions where Facebook users will make a new connection, only to find that they have some very surprising mutual friends. So how unlikely is it, for example, that your new co-worker is friends with your best friend from elementary school? More likely than you may think. A new study from the social network and its data team has found that 99.6 percent of all people on the social network can be connected within five steps, or six relationships. Ninety-two percent can be connected within four steps…

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What to make of Facebook’s oversharing?

Facebook’s penchant for sharing everything you read via its Open Graph news apps caused quite a weekend stir. However, I wonder how far this flap goes beyond tech insiders and news junkies, reports Larry Dignan for CNET. CNET’s Molly Wood set off a bit of a fire storm by noting that Facebook is ruining sharing. In a nutshell, she doesn’t want to click on any links on Facebook because they are broadcast to her friends. Chances are you’ve seen stuff a friend has read because they installed a news reader app from the Washington Post, Yahoo or a bevy of others…

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How many people does it take to run a college’s Facebook page?

Most colleges have social media teams of two or three people.

Most college campuses don’t have one staff member toiling away on the social web, answering students’ burning questions and updating the school’s Facebook page. Some institutions have an entire team – seven people, sometimes more, managing the daily Facebook goings-on.

It depends on the size of a university and its commitment to consistent communication with prospective and current students and web-savvy alums, but social media staff varies widely from campus to campus, according to research released Nov. 16 by Varsity Outreach, a company that advises schools with web-based promotion.

Three in 10 colleges have one employee to manage the school’s Facebook presence, according to the Varsity Outreach study, while a few schools – 4 percent of respondents – have seven or more staff members managing and updating social media sites.…Read More

Penn State goes on Facebook blitz as campus scandal continues

PSU's Facebook page has seen consistent updates in recent days.

Facebook has become ground zero for crisis management in higher education, as demonstrated by Penn State University’s consistent communication with its 243,000 followers as the campus descended into riots after the Nov. 9 firing of head football coach Joe Paterno and university President Graham Spanier.

The university’s Board of Trustees dismissed Spanier and Paterno days after PSU drew national attention when former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with sex crimes against minors.

Students took to the University Park, Pa., streets and protested the firing of Paterno. The university updated its Facebook page after midnight with alerts telling students to “vacate” the rioting areas immediately.…Read More

Penn State students organize, vent online during campus scandal

'Fire Joe Paterno' has more than 1,000 Facebook followers.

Penn State University (PSU) students used Facebook, Twitter, and an online petition this week to pressure the school’s Board of Trustees into firing the university president after a sex scandal embroiled the campus.

Penn State’s official Facebook page is filled with supportive and angry messages from current students and alums a week after Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s longtime assistant, was charged with 40 criminal counts of sex abuse of minors.

Students, alumni, and PSU supporters took to Facebook to defend and criticize Paterno, who was fired by the Board of Trustees Nov. 9 after 46 years as PSU’s iconic football coach.…Read More

Google+ allows colleges to create official pages

Stanford attracted 1,000 Google+ followers in 24 hours.

Higher education’s social media pros aren’t sure how students are using Google+, or how many alumni have signed on to the social network. Even so, universities lured by Google’s massive audience are creating official campus pages.

A handful of notable universities joined Google+ Nov. 7 after Google officials announced that schools, businesses, and organizations can make their own pages.

The social site, which features “circles” that make it easy to pick and choose which online friends you can share certain items with, and “sparks” that provide links to related photos and articles on a topic, had only allowed people to create accounts since its July unveiling.…Read More

Mark Zuckerberg is going back to Harvard

Mark Zuckerberg is heading back to Harvard, seven years after he dropped out to run Facebook, the Huffington Post reports. The CEO won’t be re-enrolling. Instead, he’ll be there encouraging other Harvardians to follow him to Facebook. Zuckerberg, together with Facebook’s vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer, will be recruiting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Harvard, starting Monday, November 7…

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‘Socialbots’ pose IT security threat on campuses

Socialbots had an 80 percent success rate during the two-month experiment.

University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver researchers unleashed an army of more than 100 socialbots—technology that poses as people on social networks—and harvested personal information from 3,000 Facebook users, demonstrating how vulnerable campus networks are to attacks through social media sites.

In “The Socialbot Network,” released Nov. 1, a group of UBC researchers claim they used a cluster of fake Facebook accounts to obtain more than 250 gigabytes of personal information from Facebook users who accepted friend requests from socialbots during the two-month experiment.

The socialbots have profile pictures, personal information, and posts like any other regular Facebook regular.…Read More

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