On October 28, 2021 Facebook filed for a trademark on the word Meta. Of course, that’s not surprising, since Facebook announced that they are changing the company name to Meta. If you go to the website meta.com you’ll be redirected to this web page on Facebook.com. I’ve read quite a number of trademark applications over the years, as part of my expert witness work, but also as part of DNProtect, but when I looked at the Meta trademark application from Facebook, my jaw dropped. I have never seen a goods and services description as long and long-winded as what’s in the Meta trademark application. [Read more…]

If you were a member of the settlement class of the Google Plus Profile Litigation, then you may have received a payment from PayPal. Just like others are reporting via social media posts, I received my settlement payment of a whopping $2.15 to my PayPal account today. If you have not received your $2.15 via PayPal, then you may still receive the payment. Based on what I’m seeing, several people previously received their payments a few days ago, and I just received my payment today. I can imagine that sending out millions of PayPal payments takes time, even if it’s an automated process via PayPal. They can’t send them all at once, or all of them in one day, I can imagine. [Read more…]

Google Webmaster Tools, now called Google Search Console (for several years), has moved their Twitter account from @googlewmc to @googlesearchc. This is in line with their launch of the Google Search Central, where they’re changing their name, consolidating documentation, and refreshing how we look–including a new sidekick for Googlebot. [Read more…]

Facebook is giving away $100 million dollars of grant to 30,000 small businesses that have been affected by Coronavirus and COVID-19. The Facebook Small Business Grants Program, this week, is beginning to accept applications from small businesses located in New York City, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and in other cities. There are specific requirements to be eligible to apply as a small business for one of these grants. I’ll outline all the requirements, and how you apply. [Read more…]

Yahoo Groups is shutting down. On October 21, 2019 they will lock down Yahoo Groups so that no one can upload any more content. Then, on December 14, 2019, all previously posted content will be removed forever. I have been getting used to Google shutting down services such as Google Plus and Google Bulletin, and even certain Google Groups. But it’s been a while since we’ve seen a Yahoo service being shut down permanently. [Read more…]

A list of keywords that the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uses to watch all social media accounts has been revealed. If you use one of these keywords on one of your social media posts, there is a chance that it may cause the DHS to start monitoring your social media accounts. If you want to stay off of a government watch list, I suggest that you don’t use any of these keywords on your social media posts. [Read more…]

It appears that several are mentioning that Facebook has been having issues today, March 13, 2019. Based on a few posts and comments that I’ve made on posts today, I’m seeing errors. I don’t know if these are being posted or commented on–or if comments are going through or not. Here’s an example of a post I just made, March 13, 2019 at 12:30pm Central Standard Time. I made a post asking if Facebook was down or having issues, and here’s what I got: [Read more…]

Posted January 11, 2019

It appears that Twitter has finally fixed their Google search results problem. If you might recall, [Read more…]

It appears that a small Twitter account, one without a lot of followers, has hijacked the Google search result listing for Twitter. When you search for the company or keyword Twitter on Google, you see the name of a Twitter account in the title tag of the Google search engine result listing as well as their bio in the area normally reserved for the meta description tag. See the screen capture below that I just made: [Read more…]

Facebook requires that you confirm your identity as a United States Citizen when running ads related to politics or national issues. I just went through this process to confirm my identity as a US Citizen with Facebook, and here’s what I learned, along with some background about why I needed to go through this process. [Read more…]

The social media network StumbleUpon is shutting down on June 30, 2018. StumbleUpon users are being encouraged to join Mix, another website by the makers of StumbleUpon. [Read more…]

In an effort to fight revenge porn, Facebook announced a new pilot program to encourage us to upload photos that we suspect may be out in the public. They will take those photos that are uploaded to fingerprint them and use technology to identify photos that are then uploaded by others. This pilot program is starting in Australia, Canada, the UK and US, expands on their existing tools for people to report that type of content. [Read more…]

Klout, the site that gave us our social media Klout scores, is shutting down on May 25, 2018. This is the same day that the GDPR is going into effect, so I’m assuming that it has something to do with GDPR. If you don’t know what GDPR is, and why it’s important, then you should read my What is GDPR post. [Read more…]

Due to an internal Twitter password bug, and the way Twitter stores passwords, Twitter is recommending that you immediately change your password. According to a Twitter blog post, Twitter said that they recently identified a bug that stored passwords unmasked in an internal log. Because the passwords were stored unmasked (in text format), they recommend that you immediately change your Twitter password. [Read more…]

The Hacker-News-style web site Inbound.org is being shut down, despite what appears to be a record amount of traffic to the web site. The owners of Inbound.org are shutting down the web site and launching a new web site called Growth Hub, which will reside at Growth.org. [Read more…]

Facebook allows really long posts that completely fill up a Facebook user’s feed, virtually completely taking over all posts in someone’s feed. Someone who I’m Facebook friends with shared a Facebook post by someone else, and that post completely took up the Facebook feed (timeline), making me literally scroll for almost a minute until I saw another post. Here’s an example of that post: [Read more…]

Facebook is responding to fake news posts, right in your Facebook feed, by inserting fact checker posts right after posts from your friends that they believe is fake news. If one of your Facebook friends shares an article that Facebook thinks is fake news, then right after that post they will post a fact-checker post. Here is an example of this: [Read more…]

ManyChat is a popular service that allows you to create Facebook Messenger bots.

In light of the data security issues that Facebook has had lately, Facebook is pausing the addition of all new Facebook Messenger bots. If you currently are running a Facebook Messenger bot, then you most likely won’t have any interruption of service, and your bot will continue to work as usual. [Read more…]

The United States Federal Trade Commission has issued a statement about recent privacy concerns of Facebook users. Tom Pahl, Acting Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, issued a statement about Facebook’s privacy practices. [Read more…]

Have you liked a Facebook page or post that has been built by a Russian agency spreading fake news? Or, have you liked or followed a Facebook Page or Instagram account created by the Internet Research Agency? The Internet Research Agency has been identified by Facebook as an organization that apparently was paid to spread fake news Facebook and Instagram–in an attempt to influence the United States Presidential Election. [Read more…]