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This Week In Social Media – November 13, 2009

This Week In Social Media: Nov. 13, 2009 iePlexus from iePlexus on Vimeo.

From Facebook groups being invaded, to Rupert Mudoch taking his New Corps Sites off Google, this is what happened this week in the World of Social Media & on the World Wide Web.

-A group known as Control Your Info, invaded nearly 300 Facebook groups this week, demonstrating how users need to pay more attention to their accounts.  The group wanted to bring attention to the fact that Facebook groups are becoming an increasingly large target for hackers, primarily because if a group admin leaves, an option to take over the group is open to anyone.  If someone was to take over a group, they could change everything, from the name, pictures, objectives, and just about anything you can think of, along with sending messages to the group as a whole. Control Your Info, made Facebook users wary as they joined and took over 289 groups.  Once they were the administrators of the groups, they changed everything from the group name, picture, and description to show how easy someone could change group information and ruin personal reputations.  Facebook did not enjoy the stunt an immediately shut down Control Your Info’s Fan page and account, saying they violated the terms of service.  Control You Info said on their website they created a back up of every group profiles as it was and intedned on restoring each page to the way they found it.  Facebook has not made any further comments. 

-Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, gave an interview with Sky News Australia earlier this week where he says he plans on taking News Corps sites off popular search engines like Google. (QUOTE) Murdoch later on said that they’d rather have few people coming to the site if they are paying and that people who use search engines don’t just become loyal readers.  News Corp owns more than 100 media assets around the world including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and MySpace.com.  Traffic reports show that Google and Google News are the top traffic providers for the Wall Street Journal, bringing more than 25 percent of traffic to the site each week. Google is responsible for promoting news organizations around the world sending them about 100,000 clicks every minutes.  Google said in a statement that: ”If publishers want their content to be removed from Google News specifically, all they need to do it tell us.”

-If you are constantly complaining how slow your Internet speed is, you maybe in luck. Google announced Thursday, that  they are in the early stages of a project, in efforts to make the Internet nearly two times faster than it is now.  The internet protocol they are working on is called SPDY (Speedy), which would take over the current HTTP. Google’s Chromium Blog says that since testing began, the top 25 websites which include Facebook & Google, loaded 55% faster than they typically do on HTTP.  55% would be a significant improvement and something that everyone would be able to notice.   The company also notes there is still much more to do, however they believe they have reached a point where they are ready for “active participation, feedback and assistance of the web community.” If you are interested in testing out some of the new features you can visit Google’s Chromium Group.

-Starting Monday, you may notice YouTube videos get a bit clearer.  That’s because YouTube announced that you will now be able to upload videos in 1080p.  For those of you not technology friendly, or literate, 1080p is the picture type usually associated with Blu-ray players.  Not only will videos be clearer, but they will also be larger, which will appeal to people who have larger computer monitors.  To be able to post videos in the new 1080p format, you will need a camera which shoots in 1080p.  However, it is becoming more common feature in video cameras, so if you have recently purchased a new camera, there is a good chance you’ll be able to test the new feature.