According to the Experian Hitwise report, Facebook was the top searched word in search engines this year. It was not only the first, four out of ten top search had the word ‘Facebook’ in them. Google’s YouTube was the second, Craigslist the fourth.  

1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Facebook Login
4. Craigslist
5. Facebook.com
6. Yahoo
7. eBay
8. www.facebook.com
9. Mapquest
10. Yahoo.com

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‘Facebook’ was the most searched term in 2011

A girl in Hamburg-Bramfeld, Germany invited her friends to her sixteenth birthday party by posting an event page in Facebook. But, she forget to make it accessible only to her friends.

The invitation was available for everybody to register. It soon went viral and more than 15,000 people confirmed to be present in the birthday party in their home.

When Thessa’s parents found out about it, they were worried and soon canceled the party in a haste, and they also informed the police about the incident. They even hired a private security service to control the crowd.

Despite the cancelation of the birthday party, some 1,500 guests showed up on Friday, June 3, 2011 in Thessa’s home and.  About 100 police officers were also present to control the crowd. Some guests had also brought presents and homemade cakes. Thessa however had fled her home for her safety.

The huge crowd in front of Thessa’s house asked Thessa to be present in the party. They chanted birthday wishes. The police had reported that eleven people were detained temporarily. One of  the police officers was injured and the firefighters had to extinguish two small fires.

Thessa later told that she quietly celebrated her birthday with her grandparents. (Photo source – AP)

Inspired by Facebook, an Israeli couple have named their daughter ‘Like’. I guess, Like is much better sounding name for a girl. I hope she, will be most ‘liked’ girl in school.

There was an Egyptian dad who named his son Facebook to honor its contribution to the Egyptian revolution. I think, Like is a much better sounding name than Facebook.

The couple Lior and Vardit Adler were seeking for some unique name and were even considering some Chinese names. But, they finally decided to go with Like as the mother Vardit liked the sound of it.

Some comments people made on news about naming their kids with such ‘unique’ names:

Years ago, I named my son MicroSoft, and now he can’t get a date. Girls turn away when he introduces himself, (Hi I am micro soft).

I won’t be surprised if somebody names the kid ‘Reply’, ‘Comment’ or likes in future. (via Huffingtonpost)

As if nobody know, Julian Assange, told that Facebook and other social networking tools are being used as intelligence gathering mechanisms by the police and other spy agencies.

It is no secret, spy used to be lurking in bars and restaurants to get the information on suspects. Now, internet has made it easier – people post such information online. The jobs of spies are made easier. All they need is data gathering and analysis tools and a little bit of common sense to spy on anybody with online presence.

Assange told that the information that Facebook collects is a huge resource for the U.S. government to keep track of its users. He added, Google and Yahoo also “have built-in interfaces for U.S. intelligence.”

Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.

I agree with Assange. But, I also believe, it is nothing new. Nobody forcefully divulges information in Facebook and it is something one would tell to the person’s pal in any public places. Although it looks scary how the information is distributed all over the world; people will get used to it and will learn to live with it. There is nothing one can do to stop people from telling what they want to tell. If it were not Facebook, there were other tools that people used to speak their mind out.

Spies are all over the internet – they are scouring blogs, forums, website comments and everywhere. Complaining doesn’t solve anything. Starting awareness campaign might help people to better manage their information.

Facebook Response

As expected Facebook spokesperson told Forbes:

We don’t respond to pressure, we respond to compulsory legal process. There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data — we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient. … The legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard.

Whatever Facebook says, it is an open secret, the information can eventually land in unintended hands. The users should be well aware of such things and let the technological development go on.

This is an old video… but, it is still funny and still relevant so I am sharing it with you guys.

This is a funny but real wedding representing the new social networking generation. The groom by the name "Locuester" in YouTube changes his relationship status in his Facebook account and wrote in his Twitter status before even kissing his bride. Although he didn’t tell his bride about his plan, he had her phone ready, to be handed over at that time to do the same.

He wrote:

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Wedding – Facebook Status and Twitter post before the kiss

Happy fifth birthday Twitter!

Five years ago, today was the day the first tweet was sent. when @jack, @ev, @Biz and a small team started it they didn’t know it will get this big and grow to a team of more than 400 full time workers.

but how will it survive?

@Biz wrote in the official Twitter blog:

Twitter users now send more than 140 million Tweets a day which adds up to a billion Tweets every 8 days—by comparison, it took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion Tweets. While it took about 18 months to sign up the first 500,000 accounts, we now see close to 500,000 accounts created every day.

Twitter and Facebook are considered to be the vehicle of current day social networking. Although some, after watching is birthday video, suspect Twitter might be off-track when communication between general public. The video focuses on portraying Twitter as a platform of following celebrities rather than being a social network. Watch the video and decide if it is more about who you follow than what you share!

A little Egyptian baby girl was named name Facebook. The young Egyptian dad, Jamal Ibrahim, has decided to call his first daughter "Facebook" in recognition to it’s role in his country’s political revolution.

According to an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, the baby’s family and friends have gathered around the baby in support of the Egyptian revolution that was started on Facebook. After the the President resigned on 11 February, Egyptian people have hailed the role of Facebook it the uprising.

Some argue:

Nobody can deny that Facebook has became the symbol of freedom for Egypt. But, just because Facebook helped them in their revolution doesn’t mean people should give their child a stupid name.

Others support the name:

We can’t judge people by their action without knowing their social and cultural aspects. If the girl name is spelled "Fazbuk" or something like that, it will be a nice Arab name and won’t conflict with the social networking website.

About odd names, I wrote previously about Venezuela almost banning such names.

In an unexpected way, the internet was full of the rumor of the shutdown of Facebook on March 15. Facebook officials were quick to respond and tell that the rumor was started by sites seeking cheap publicity.

The rumor site weeklyworldnews.com wrote, Zuckerberg, in a statement said, "Facebook is completely excessive, I must end all this madness. All the pressure is now managing this company has ruined my life."

Texts, chat and email all in one @facebook.com  

Facebook has recently started its email service and is slowly opening the @facebook.com email address to it’s registered members.

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Facebook – all-in-one email and shutdown rumor

WikeLeaks founder Julian Assange with 382,026 public votes and average rating of 92 leads the Time magazine public poll. But, the winner is somebody else – ranking 10 in the list Mark Zuckerburg with rating of 52 with only 18,353 votes.

It was Julian Assange who shook the world with Iraq Apache helicopter attack, Guantanamo Bay  leaks, Scientology and Climate Reasearch e-mail leaks, and the world diplomacy earthquake – Cablegate. 2010 was the year when WikiLeaks had shocked the world. These releases have created ground-breaking impact in the world in 2010, and many think Assange is much deserving person in the list. Some argue, Facebook and Zuckerberg has done nothing in the year 2010 as most of the things are unchanged from the year 2009.

But, Time officials don’t think so. Many suspect Uncle Sam was acting behind the scene.

Mark Zuckerberg is selected the person of the year by Time magazine.

• Full Name – Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
• Birth year – 1984
• Born at – White Plains, New York, US
• School – Ardsley High School  / Harvard computer science.
• Facebook start – in his second to last year at Harvard with fellow Harvard students Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.

Facebook was only available to Harvard students initially, It’s popularity help it to be expanded to the surrounding universities. In its initial days, only university assigned email address were accepted for sign-in until the site was made open to the general public.

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Mark Zuckerberg – Time person of the year 2010 – profile