Photo: Alessandro Valli. Flickr/CC

Presuming the Washington Post’s management is acting in good faith, I applaud its effort to persuade staffers to behave themselves online. But the paper’s social networking guidelines are clearly based on some misunderstanding about the difference between a Facebook “friend,” and a real one.

Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.

via WaPo’s Social Media Guidelines Paint Staff Into Virtual Corner; Full Text of Guidelines | paidContent.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Retweets, joinings, friendings, likings: None of these are endorsements of anyone or anything. These are the associations that people make with each other, based upon their peculiar interests.

As a journalist, I have joined many groups, and friended many people–even those whose views I find objectionable–so that I might learn more about them.

That’s what reporters do.

Laptopless. Photo: CC/Franco Folini

San Francisco is one of the more desirable places to land on your ass, homeless. So, I get that a few tech-savvy folks, roughing it out West, might be surfing the web.

I just hope no one is deluded enough to think that throwing computers at homeless people is any kind of great idea–like putting electronic whiteboards in grammar school classrooms.

Still, one blogger suggests that losing an internet connection might be worse than losing a home.

It also occurs to me that this will prove an excellent way to track homeless people.

New York City has put 42 computers in five of the nine shelters it operates and plans to wire the other four this year. Roughly half of another 190 shelters in the city offer computer access. The executive director of a San Francisco nonprofit group, Central City Hospitality House, estimates that half the visitors to its new eight-computer drop-in center are homeless; demand for computer time is so great that users are limited to 30 minutes.

via On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired – WSJ.com.

I worked-up a similar story myself, back in ’03.

A warning to all you social networking, or “Web 2.0″, junkies out there: This kid (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg) and his coding pals are not your friends. Photo: “Scott Beale / Laughing Squid,” at laughingsquid.com. – mb

Practically all of the stupid games, quizzes, widgets and apps used by Facebook social networkers scoop-up more personal data than they need, and keep that data longer than they should, without notifying users.

A University of Virginia study found recently that 90 percent of the most popular apps (UVa looked at 150 of them) rip-off Facebookers’ personal data.

Here’s a link and excerpt to some recent coverage of the case study’s release:

Privacy Lives » Blog Archive » Social Networking Sites’ Applications Gather Users’ Personal Data
“Facebook fanatics who have covered their profiles on the popular social networking site with silly games and quirky trivia quizzes may be unknowingly giving a host of strangers an intimate peek at their lives,” reports the Washington Post. A couple of weeks ago, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (“CIPPIC”) filed a complaint (pdf) against Facebook alleging 22 violations of Canadian law (which I blogged about here). The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has launched an investigation. The BBC discusses security vulnerabilities in these applications here. CNet News and others have reported on the problems surrounding this kind of data-gathering from social networking sites and third-party application creators.

The Conference Board, which includes top executives from Merck, Alcoa, Deutsche Bank and Yale University, said this week that the social networks’ “cheery atmosphere(s)” make them an ideal place to make brand impressions.

“Obtaining information about others” is one of a consumer’s most positive online experiences, according to the Conference Board, which also produces the the oft cited Consumer Confidence Index.

Marketers, schooled in the positive psychology movement popularized by Marty Seligman, are typically obsessed with consumers’ feelings. They seek to be associated with strong emotional triggers, preferably positive ones.

Advertisers, for example, pressured news organizations to kill the bad news reports coming out of Afghanistan after 9/11, and to replace them with positive stories.

Consumer Internet Barometer – The Conference Board
Says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center: “Online social networking is an integral part of many people’s lives and a natural extension of our means of communication which the Internet has created. The next growth wave will be expanding and incorporating these networks into our business lives.”