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First they targeted Nicolas Sarkozy’s Facebook page, and now they have targeted none other than Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s page on his own social networking website according to a report.

An unknown hacker hacked into the Facebook account of the 26-year-old celebrity CEO and recent Times Person of the Year, and posted this message.

“Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011″

The post has since been deleted and Zuckerberg’s page is now back up again. Facebook has not commented about the hack and there is no mention about it on Mark Zuckerberg’s now online Facebook profile either. No-one knows how the hacker broke into his account.

Online security firm Sophos has posted this video about the hack.

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The number of Facebook friends you have is correlated to the size of your amygdala, the center used to process the memory of your emotional reactions in your brain, according to a new study published in Nature Neuroscience.

The volume of your amydala has been connected to the size of the circle of those you come in contact with even with nonhuman primate species before, so Kevin Bickart and his coauthors took the idea and tested it out on people who interact with people on Facebook.

Using 58 adults with varying sizes of Facebook friends, the scientists figured out how many people each individual involved in the study regularly interacted with.

Then, they determined how many different groups of Facebook friends the person was in contacted with. Those two data points were compared to the volume of the amygdala and hippocampus, the later of which should not change in size depending on the size of the social network.

The results showed that the size of a person’s amygdala increased with more friends and more complex social networks.

So much for saying that people you interact with on Facebook aren’t really your friends. And, even if we might not know them personally, our brains are definitely making an emotional connection.

Read People’s Reactions Over At Time.

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1. Starbucks (16,032,409) (Visit The Page)
2. Coca Cola (15,095,389) (Visit The Page)
3. Oreo (12,085,126) (Visit The Page)
4. Skittles (11,508,441) (Visit The Page)
5. Red Bull (10,198,875) (Visit The Page)
6. Victoria’s Secret (8,429,334) (Visit The Page)
7. Disney (8,394,141) (Visit The Page)
8. Converse All Star (7,366,892) (Visit The Page)
9. iTunes (7,071,721) (Visit The Page)
10. MTV (7,043,056) (Visit The Page)
11. Zara (6,063,583) (Visit The Page)
12. Pringles (5,762,518) (Visit The Page)
13. NBA (5,616,388) (Visit The Page)
14. Starburst (5,380,056) (Visit The Page)
15. Nutella (5,208,281) (Visit The Page)
16. Dr Pepper (5,164,646) (Visit The Page)
17. Monster Energy (4,916,536) (Visit The Page)
18. Adidas Originals (4,804,224) (Visit The Page)
19. H&M (4,520,070) (Visit The Page)
20. Ferrero Rocher (4,424,751) (Visit The Page)
21. McDonalds (3,795,486) (Visit The Page)
22. Playstation (3,683,751) (Visit The Page)
23. Xbox (3,447,690) (Visit The Page)
24. Taco Bell (3,399,860) (Visit The Page)
25. Puma (2,712,075) (Visit The Page)
26. BMW (2,696,929) (Visit The Page)
27. Blackberry (2,675,387) (Visit The Page)
28. Nike (2,481,546) (Visit The Page)

Learn more at The Next Web.

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Mainstream media have served up to the American public a mixed view of how information technology influences society, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Over the past year, messages about the promise of technology making life easier and awe about new gadgets have competed in the news with worries about privacy, child predators, shrinking attention spans and danger behind the wheel.

The most prevalent message about the influence of technology is positive – the idea that is makes life easier and more productive.

Chomping close at its heels, though, is the sense that the convenience has risk, to privacy and children, themes that gobbled up almost a fifth of media coverage.

These themes form part of the findings of the study that examined 437 tech-related stories that appeared across 52 different news outlets.
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Okay, the latest news is that GOOGLE has bought social games start-up SocialDeck, the latest in a series of acquisitions that it is currently collecting so that it can compete against Facebook.

It’s on a not-so-secret mission to build an enormous social networking service.

Sorry to rain on the parade, fellas, but yer going to fail.

That’s right folks, you heard it here first, the Google entry into the social media world will be the latest addition to the growing list of Google flops and failures.

As much as I love Google (and truly I do), time and time again, Google falls into the trap of trying to be all things to all man – which is why it fails.

It’s getting to the point where Google simply cannot abide someone else having a decent brand profile on the Internet. Think I’m kidding? Here is some proof.
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Back in July, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, announced that Facebook had reached a new milestone, 500 million active users of its platform.

It announced the launch of Facebook Stories and, as I covered off recently, the launch of Facebook Places.

There is no doubt that Facebook is making large leaps forward, turning cashflow positive for the first time in September 2009.

So with all these users – and now a positive cashflow position – investors speculate when will the IPO happen?

Facebook insists there’s no imminent public offering. But that won’t stop people from wanting to know – What is Facebook really worth?

Shares of Facebook already trade on two private exchanges, where a small market exists for investing in venture-backed companies but because trades aren’t made public, it’s hard to know the true value.

Bloomberg says they’re valued at $24.9 billion while others says its higher than $33 billion, pushing the value Facebook higher than eBay and Yahoo!

Regardless of its capitalisation, and how realistic or otherwise you think that it is, there is certainly investors scrambling to get a piece of the action prior to any IPO, expected to be the biggest technology IPO since Google in 2004.

Read more in the Financial Times.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new Facebook Places location-based check-in service at a press event this week.

Following in the footsteps of services like Foursquare and Gowalla, the Facebook Places service provides businesses with a platform for marketing and promotion, and provides an opportunity to build customer loyalty.

It hasn’t been launched without some criticism though, with some quarters highlighting privacy concerns.

Unlike Foursquare, the Facebook users don’t have to sign up for the check-in feature but by default could find their friends are posting their location.

When asked at the Facebook Places launch whether or not the new service would be integrated with business pages on Facebook, Reuters reported that Zuckerberg and company dodged the question.
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Amid the bankruptcies, layoffs and budget cuts in journalism, one beat has prevailed.

Behold the rise of the social media director.

About 200 social media directors now exist at newspapers, book publishers, magazines and television news stations.

Most have taken on their positions in the last two years.

Rarely offline, their job is to tweet, ping, blog and friend-find throughout the day, building and interacting with new audiences, promoting media brands and sometimes breaking news.

Find out more here.

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FACEBOOK users beware: advertisers are watching your page and they know what you need.

Relationship status single? Dating agency ads pop up on your Facebook page.

Update your status to engaged and the spruiking is suddenly about wedding gowns, weight loss and planning hens’ nights.

Married? Then you must be thinking about babies, credit cards and mortgages.

Australia’s six million Facebook users are being targeted by businesses, which pay tens of thousands of dollars a month for access to personal information.

The advertising strategies are so refined businesses can target their products according to sex, age, location, relationship status, job title, workplace or university.

Even subjects such as favourite music or pastimes can be drilled into for the purposes of marketing.

Advertisers respond to a Facebook page update in the blink of an eye.

The Sunday Telegraph witnessed one user change their status from single to engaged last week.

Shannan Human, 30, of Dee Why, said ads on her profile page changed drastically when she changed such identifying details as her relationship status.

“Since I’ve changed my status to married I keep getting all this baby stuff, and I don’t want to have a baby,” she said.

“And when I changed to engaged I used to get stacks of wedding gown ads and weight-loss ads.

“I find it a bit of a pest, to be honest. I use Facebook primarily as a social networking site to keep in touch with my friends and family.

“I feel like it’s an invasion of my privacy if I don’t want my stuff sold to a third party – I’m there to socialise with friends, not to make money for other people.”

Ben Bevins, 30, became engaged to his fiance Lauren in December and noticed the ads for wedding suits and rings straightaway.

“It was actually a good break from all the muscle-building ads and ‘single women in your area’ ads,” he said, laughing.

Read more at news.com.au

WANT MORE ON SOCIAL MEDIA? Try How Skyrock made Social Media Profitable.

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