Linkedin Hacked! Change Your Password RIGHT Now!

Vicente Silveira (Director at LinkedIn) declared on June 6, 2012 that Linkedin members’ password COMPROMISED. He declared that a huge number of members (unofficial 6.5 Million) passwords stolen.

Though Mr. Silveria declared that they are continuing to investigate this situation, but Security researcher Per Thorsheim confirmed that the passwords are shared via a Russian hacker site.

If your password is in that list you can check through an application known as LeakedIn .

It is run by Fictive Kin, a design studio that has a contract with Betaworks, and Chris Shiflett. When you will type your password in the box, it will convert it to a "hash" (#). Then LeakedIn will check if that # is on the list of hacked hashes.

Linkedin Said they sent Emails to members whose passwords were affected, explaining step by step how to reset them because they were no longer valid on this social networking site.

This California based company founded in December 2002 though launched in May 2003. As per 2012 February report this professional networking sites have more than 150 million registered users throughout the World.

Linkedin did not declare but we are suggesting that change your Linkedin Password immediate.

Click Here: How to change your Password.

Source : http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/linkedin-member-passwords-compromised/
DiggEmUp : Your Source For Social News & Networking

You Are Secretly Being Monitored

Yes, it’s true that you are being monitored by the ones you never have thought of. You are in the Social Network like the rest of your friends, family and others. But there are people around you watching your moves as you go online, but that doesn’t make you worry enough. What if they are the people whom you have dreamt to work with? You will surely tie up your knots and start thinking about it.

It’s a big question “How to grab your dream job even in this tough economy?”. The solution is how you handle critical information like the change you should make in your Facebook pages and your email address. We will soon be discussing the Do’s and Don’ts of finding work even in this terrible job market. 

How your email address can be used against you. Leave off the weird nickname and the other bizarre stuff. From resumes and references to research will explain what you need and how the rules are changing when you are looking for a better job.

 

According to the Employers, Social Media is now the new first impression. People are going to see you before they actually get to meet you. May be you have posted your resume in every single job site you can think is there online and then send it to everyone you can think of but for some reason you still haven’t landed that Golden Job.

What are the things that a lot of people do on Facebook is obviously what they are themselves. They put a lot of things out there but you should be using it as an asset instead of posting kind of weird things. The first thing which is mostly recommended is that :

• DON’T: Turn your Facebook page into a tabloid. Social Media is now the new first impression. People are going to see you, before they actually get to meet you, on Social Media sites like Facebook. So none of the professional ones will be interested in the Body-shop pictures from those local bar out there and that’s the first impression you make.

• DO: Use it as an asset. Make sure to project who you really are and that’s what is really important as it is the first impression. So you should be very careful when you set the Facebook page because lot of people say “This has nothing to do with getting a job”. But that really has something to do.

Remember that the recruiters are going to value and they want to find out if they are going to spend 40+ hours a week with you or putting you with people for 40+ hours a week. They really want to know about you as much as they can. So they are going to find a way out to get on to your Facebook page.

Most of the applicants send emails to the Employers from bizarre email addresses, so here are some tips for that.

• Don’t send your resume from email addresses like cutie33@hotmail.com. This can not only send a bad first impression to the recruiter but also compels them to ignore the resume sent from such an email address thinking it to be a spam or can leave a virus on their computer.

So make sure to have a professional email address in some kind of a shape or form like firstname.lastname@email.com, leave of the weird nickname and all. 

At the same time keep on researching about the Employer also and keep an eye on their Facebook page also. What they are posting and what not. Don’t just believe the hype. Hiring is a two-way street. They want to know as much as possible and you need to know as much as you can also.

 

Do make sure to spend time learning about them but don’t just believe what they are telling you, don’t just believe what they are having on their website. Instead, look at trade publications, definitely look at press releases to find out what they have been doing in the news or what the news is saying. Join the local professional associations. It gives the inside scoop from people who are in rival businesses or have worked there before. You just got to know where you are getting into.

DiggEmUp : Your Source For Social News & Networking

“Unthink” - The End Of Facebook

A team of one hundred people had been secretly working for years at their Lutz house to launch what they are calling a “Social Media Revolution”. The thing is, we don’t know what it is because they won’t tell us about it. It is called “Unthink” which is just about ready to launch. 

For more than three years out of their Lutz home a group of around 100 people worldwide have secretly worked on what they are calling a “Social Media Revolution”. Asking the co-founder of the website, Spiro Verras, replies “I think like Steve Jobs when people asked about his next iPhone, how it’s going to look like, I am dying to share more”. They just won’t let anybody to step inside the house and won’t be revealing about the specifics about what they are doing.

Only that is called “Unthink” and it will launch in a few weeks. It is being said that it will be very important as it’s going to change people’s lives. What will it look like? What will it do? They can only tell us what it won’t be.

It is not going to be a Facebook clone or like a Google+, not even something trying to be the next Facebook. It’s a fundamental Unthinking of what it is to be Social Media. Co-founder Spiro Verras says Unthink partly modeled itself on “Facebook Problems” like privacy concerns, change in terms of recent redesigns, lack of ownership and control – Unthink’s promotional video says all these things.

UK Investor DouglasBay invested millions into the site. Unthink says it will not generate profits of user advertisements. On your Unthink you will not be having advertisements as there are many ways to make money – says the co-founder. “We do not want to make money and have our users hurt in some way even if they don’t know about it” – says Spiro.

Unthink assures us all of our questions will be answered when the site launches. And this is Unthink’s website –

 You can type in your email address where you will be sent an invitation code. The Tampa Company is also supported by a team in India and they are all preparing for this launch. The company being funded by the DouglasBay Capital launches itself as more open and more honest form of a Social Networking. Here the users will find themselves as the owner of their data and not for the Advertisers to sell their products. 

 Taking down Facebook is the core marketing campaign of Unthink. It’s not just another Social Network, it’s a “Social Revolution.”

 DiggEmUp : Your Source For Social News & Networking

CIA Sniffs Through Facebook

Hello everyone, let’s get straight to our top story on Facebook – US Congress reauthorized funding for Facebook for the massive Online Surveillance Program by CIA. According to the department of Online Security Report Facebook has replaced almost every other information gathering program since it was launched in 2004.

According to Christopher Sartinsky(Deputy CIA Director), “After years of secretly monitoring the public we have founded so many people who have willingly publicized where they live, their religious belief, political views and advertised their friends’ personal email addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment. It’s truly a dream come true for the CIA”.

Mark Zuckerberg is said to be the Director of CIA’s Facebook Program who once initiated the Facebook Operation for the Agency. The decorated agent code name “THE OVERLORD” was recently awarded the prestigious medal of Intelligence Commendation for his work with Facebook Program. He has also mentioned Facebook as the single most powerful tool for population control ever created due to the maximum amount of time being spent by the users than any other Social Networking sites.

Among the biggest success of the Facebook Program is “Operation FarmVille” which has as many active users as 85 million people after unemployment rates rose dramatically. Other features such as the “Suggested Friends Window” has been allowing Government agents to infiltrate deeper into the networks of suspected dissidents.

So let’s check in with the facts from the fast responders. Senior Political Analyst, Jason Copeland says “One of the key reasons is that CIA has been so thorough in convincing the nation that constantly sharing information about everything you do is somehow desirable”. 

According to Duncan Birch, the Facebook Program save the CIA money like the maps application where you list every place you have been whether it’s a state or a country with the pins which show where you have visited. That kind of information is taken by the CIA and been compared with the Hotel receipts and Plane tickets which shows the information are perfect and can be trusted.

They say there are other CIA programs in the minds of CIA like Twitter. But the main concern is that there are 400 billion tweets but not one useful bit of data was ever transmitted. 

Now is this trend of Social Networking information gathering ‘DANGEROUS’? The answer is “Obviously Not” – are you doing something wrong to hide? If you do, then it’s better to stay away from the Social Networking sites as they are not merely a networking site anymore. A message to the twitter users – “You are still out of the eyes of CIA as they think Twitter is not that much of use for them”

News – Onion News

DiggEmUp : Your Source For Social News & Networking

3 Steps to Create Facebook Ads

Facebook is the first among its class to give a new dimension towards innovative Ad creation and targeting process. It’s very much unique when it comes to targeting unique audience. Facebook has got the largest number of active users which has crossed a population of more than 800 million. So think about branding your products or services on a website which is having such a huge reach of audience. But if you compare it with Google then you are making a big mistake. If you are trying to create an impulse on the viewers of your Ads then Facebook is the best place.

Here’s a step by step guideline towards the making of a successful Facebook Ad. Just make a blue print about the Design of your Ad, Target audience & Pricing and you are all set to run. Here are the 3 simple steps to create a Facebook Ad:

Sign in to your Facebook Account and go to the footer of your wall or home or any page where you will find a link “Advertising”. By clicking on it will redirect you to the first page of Facebook Ad creation.

 

By clicking the highlighted link will take you to the first page which will perfectly look like this:

Select “Create an Ad” button and you are set to put all the details about your Ad. Now you can see a page which has a lot of fields to be filled up by you which are pretty simple like this:

  

    1.  Design Your Ad

  

 

Here you will be required to put a few details like:

Destination: Specify the web page or Facebook destination page that people should end up on after they click on your Facebook Ad or Sponsored Story.

URL: Specify the web page that users should be sent to when they click on your Facebook ad. Make sure your ad and the target page are related. Ideally, the Destination URL should allow users to take action on what caught their interest in your ad.

Title: Write a title for your ad that is specific, compelling, and interesting or catchy. Avoid all-capitals or multiple exclamation points, as these titles will not be approved. Note that if you are advertising a Facebook page, your title will automatically be the name of that page.

Body: Use this section to further explain the product or service that your ad is about. Emphasize benefits to the user, unique qualities of your product/service, and any special offers. End with a clear call-to-action that users should take if they like your ad.

Image: Use this section to upload an image for your ad. The image should be related to your product/service and, to make it even more compelling, related to your title/body text for the ad as well. Choose an image that is clearly visible when it is small.

The last one is the “Preview” area where you will find how your Ad will look like.

 

    2.  Targeting

 

Here you will be targeting your audience through various parameters like:

Location: Choose countries where your target users are located when they access Facebook. 

Demographics:

Age 

Enter an age range for your target users. If you're not sure, start broad, and then narrow later based on the ages of people who see or click on your ad.

Sex 

Select "All" unless your ad should target only men or only women. Note that some users do not enter a gender, so you can only reach such users by selecting "All".

 

Interests: 

Precise Interests 
 Precise Interest targeting lets you define your ideal audience by what they are interested in, using terms people have shared in their Facebook profiles. These may be drawn from their listed interests, activities, education and job titles, pages they like or groups to which they belong. 

Topics (marked with a #) let you target everyone who has expressed interests closely related to the term you select. E.g. "#Cooking" lets you reach interests like "cooking", "cooking tips", and "cooking and eating". Precise interests (unmarked) target people who have expressed that specific interest. E.g. "cooking" includes only the interest "cooking". 

Advanced Demographics: 

Interested In 

Select "All" unless your ad should target users interested in a specific gender for one or more of the following: friendship, dating, a relationship, or networking. Note that some users do not specify this information, so you can only reach such users by selecting "All." 

Relationship 

Select "All" unless your ad should target people with a specific relationship or marital status. Note that some users do not specify this information, so you can only reach such users by selecting "All". 

Languages 

If you think your target users use Facebook in a different language than the common language for the location that you specified above, enter that language here. Otherwise, leave this field blank to target all users in a location, regardless of the language they choose to use on Facebook. 

Education & Work: 

Education 

Select "All" unless you would like to target users who are in a specific stage in their education, or who attend or are alumni of specific colleges. 

Work Leave blank unless you would like to target users who work at specific companies or organizations. 

    3.  Campaigns, Pricing and Scheduling

This is the place where you will be fixing your budget for the Campaign, scheduling it accordingly and choosing the option to either Pay for Impressions (CPM) or Pay for Clicks (CPC). For the Budget Type you can specify either a daily campaign budget or a lifetime campaign budget. If you choose a daily budget type, it will distribute your ad spend by day. If you choose a lifetime budget type, it will distribute your ad spend throughout the duration of the campaign. You can also schedule your Ad if you are selling a particular product which is a seasonal one or your Ad is reflecting an offer for a limited time. Pricing can be managed both by Impressions and Clicks. Pay for Impressions are suggested for Branding purpose while Pay for Clicks are suggested for Conversions. But you can use any of them beyond the suggestions. 

 

Now when you are done with all of them, it’s time to review your own Ad and if everything is fine then “Place Order”. Your Ad will go live within a while and start getting Impressions. The best place to create impulse..Facebook.

 

If you love Facebook then I would like to suggest you the most powerful guide to The Missing Manual.

  DiggEmUp : Your Source For Social News & Networking

Facebook Ads : Proper Demographic Targeting, Huge Conversions!!

You may me struggling a lot to reach out to the right kind of audience for your products, right? If it’s true, then you haven’t started promoting your products or services socially enough. We all are connected to at least a single Social Networking site which we prefer mostly and feel comfortable with. This is the place where we, the customers, are also spending most of our leisure time chatting with our friends, family members, co-workers and others. So think about it..you are chatting with your friend and asking her to suggest you some idea about what to gift your best friend on his 24^th Birth Day and suddenly found an Ad about an offer going on for some stylish watches on your wall. This creates an impulse and you find it worthy enough to jump on it and place an order right away. Think like a customer and you win the jackpot.

Online buyers are mostly driven by impulse created by some Ads floating on the web pages we surf the most looking for some information. This means that we are interested in the topic we are searching for. And that is the place where to place your Ads related to your products or services. But advertising products or services and branding has become lot more easier now a days by the social networking sites. They started as a simple online club where we all flock together and gossip but gradually started helping the advertisers to place their Ads in those sites which not only helping the advertisers but also the customers to have their favorite products right there.

So, it’s all up to you. The most important thing to know in this Social Media Marketing is your target audience. It’s all about how you segregate your customers Demography. If you are selling e-Cards, you know you can best target your customers by age ranging between 15 – 30. Products like e-Cards, e-Books, e-Tutorials have a wide range of customers irrespective of gender but can be best targeted to audiences by their age.

Now I can tell you the interesting part of my research on Facebook Ads. Recently I was doing FB and my eyes suddenly got stuck on an Advertisement on the right pane where the Ad was about some “Lounge Wear” which, being a man, I had nothing to do with. But then I went through the content which clearly says “Gift your lady today”. Bingo!! I told my girl friend to keep an eye on her FB if she can see any of the Ads of that online Lounge Shop. After few days she told me that she has also seen the Ads of that online shop but this time the Ad says something different. It says “Surprise your man with exotic Lounge Wear”. This is the art of targeting the right audience at the right time. 

 Often wrongly targeted Ads can make a big hole in your pocket, so being an Advertiser you should know your target audience and have some research work done before jumping on it. I have an example ready in hand which can show you how wrongly targeted Ads can cost you lot more than your budget. I can still see an Ad saying “Opportunity for moms!”. Being a bachelor, will I be ever interested in this Ad? The answer is a simple “NO”. Then why is this Ad on my wall? It’s all because of wrong Demography Targeting. This Ad would have been helpful for a married person irrespective of gender but not for a bachelor. The creator of this Ad was not aware of the “Advance Demographics” option in the Targeting section of the Ad Creation Page. It’s an advice to the Facebook Advertisers to explore all the targeting options to use them at its optimal performance and get the best result out of it.

Hope this small piece of writing will help you a bit in targeting the right audience. However I will be publishing a lot more about Facebook Advertisement tutorials in my Blog which will take you to the step by step Ad creation process thoroughly. Watch out for the 3 Steps to Create Facebook Ads. Happy Reading!!

DiggEmUp : Your Source For Social News & Networking

Eye-popping Social Media stats for 2011

The popularity of SOCIAL MEDIA increases day by day connecting people with whatever they watch and buy. The Consumers are connecting with Brand icons through their LinkedIn profiles or it can be an Advertisement asking a consumer to “Like” its product page on Facebook. Whatever the ways are, they have powerful influence on Consumer Behavior not only online but offline also. The Emergence of Social Media has changed the entire theory of Management Courses as most of the Management Institutions are thinking of including a special subject on Social Media to enhance the skills of the marketing experts both online and offline.

Let us take U.S. for an example in this context. 80 percent of the total active internet users in U.S. spent their times on Social Networks and Blogs. This statistic increases which has a direct influence on their purchase decisions. Sixty percent consumers are prone to use digital means which can be three or more in number to research for a product learned about a specific brand or product from a social networking site of which 48 percent of them mostly respond to the retailers posts on Twitter or Facebook. As this social interest continues to grow, it has become inevitable for the traditional Retailers or Advertisers to understand the different segments of consumers share and use contents on the Internet.

To make things more simpler I have taken the U.S. Internet Market as a reference but we will be discussing about the world statistics for Social Media Usage.

The U.S. internet users spend more time on Facebook than any other U.S. websites.

The Various Key Findings

The apps for social networking ranks third among the smartphone usage in U.S.

• The social media users access 40 percent of their social media contents from their smartphones.
• Social Networks and Blogs are visited by nearly 4 out of every 5 active internet users.
• Social networks and Blogs nearly accounts a quarter of the total time spent by the U.S. internet users.
• Internet users above the age of 55 visit the social networks through mobile internet.
• Men watch online videos and for a longer duration than women on social networks and blogs
• 70 percent of the active online users shop online and 53 percent of the social networks prefer to follow a brand while 32 percent prefer to follow a celebrity.
• Tumblr has tripled its audience from a year ago and has been emerging as a key player in social media.

Social Networks and Blogs rule Americans’ Internet time

The numbers above reflects the use of Social Networks and Blogs which 35 percent which is more than double the amount active internet users for Online Gaming which is 15 percent.

Demographic Analysis of Most Active Female Social Networkers 

Among the most active visitors Female internet users occupy the majority of the total number of visits to Social Networking sites and Blogs. Also people who fall in the age group 35-49 are also avid visitors.

Women Rule The World Of Social Networks

Men are more likely to visit LinkedIn and Wikia while Women prefer to spend their time on Social Networking sites like Facebook, Delicious, Docstoc, Flickr, Myspace, Ning, Twitter, Upcoming.org, Ustream.tv, Yelp and many more. A stunning set of stats below will provide a clear picture of the percentage of social Networking usage by Men and Women.

Comscore has revealed that social networking reach among women was highest in Latin America which went up to 94 percent of female online.  Areas in Asia Pacific, where the broadband penetration is low, still have a surprising 55 percent active female internet user. However women maybe more active on Facebook, Twitter or Myspace but cannot compete in case of news sites like Digg, Reddit and Slashdot where the stats got reversed by 84 percent by active men participants.

Few Amazing Facts & Figures Facebook And Twitter

• Facebook has more than 800 million active users of which 50 percent of the active users stay online on Facebook in any given day
• Average Facebook users have 130 friends
• More than 250 million photos are being uploaded on Facebook every day
• Average user is connected to 80 groups, events or community pages
• There are more than 900 million objects in Facebook that people interact with
• Approximately 80 percent of the Facebook users are from outside U.S.
• Facebook users install apps more than 20 million times every day
• Among 800 million active users 350 million of them access Facebook through their mobile devices
• More than 475 mobile operators work globally to promote Facebook mobile products
• 65 percent of Twitter users are under the age of 25
• 97.8 percent Twitter users follow less than 400 people
• 98 percent of Twitter users have less than 400 followers
• When someone has 1,000 followers the number of Tweets/day jumps from three to six, while someone 1,750 followers earns about 10 tweets/day
• About 50 percent of Twitter users haven’t updated their status in the past seven days
• Twitter activities becomes more on Tuesdays followed by Wednesdays and Fridays
• Most Twitter activities happens between 11a.m to 3p.m (EST)
• TweetDeck has 19.7 percent market share while Twitterfon and Twitterfeed has 4.5 percent and 3.8 percent share respectively
• By population, U.S. is the biggest Twitter country followed by UK, Canada and Australia

DiggEmUp : Your Source For Social News & Networking

All the above statistical data are being collected from Facebook.com, Twitter.com and “The Social Media Report” by Nielsen and NM Incite