A party advertised on Facebook quickly descended into a ‘riot’ after 100 people descended on a joint house party in 2 adjoining flats in a previously converted house in Chapel Lane, Farnborough, Hampshire.

It took police officers from both Hampshire and Surrey Police an hour and a half to restore order which involved a dog section and a police helicopter to deal with the crowd.

According to The Evening Standard Jordon says, "I have no regrets at all. It was a great party. I am well proud that people are saying it cost the police £10,000. My mates are saying what a sick party it was – the best yet. Seventy or eighty police officers came down for a house party! I have put my street on the map."

Seva described the party as "pretty good", but admitted events had spiralled out of control and according to the BBC since apologised.

There is now a public outcry for the pair to be held responsible for the £10,000 while their family apologies to the local community.

Facebook recently moved to a new campus previously owned by HP in California.

TechCrunch were lucky to get inside the new campus to see the new working environment. The HQ is in Palo Alto and is 15,000 square feet. The company used to base it’s HQ across a collection of buildings but as the company has grown the need for a campus increased and now all employees have moved to the new base nicknamed “The Bunker”.

For more photos check out TechCrunch’s article.

From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook. The one place, though, where your identity wasn’t reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like "id=592952074." That soon will change.

We’re planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.
 

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names. Your username will have the same privacy setting as your profile name in Search, and you can always edit your search privacy settings here.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

Facebook usernames will be available in basic text forms, and you can only choose a single username for your profile and for each of the Pages that you administer. Your username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop ("."). While usernames are currently available only for Romanized text, we’re looking at how we might support non-Romanized characters in the future.

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or "squatting" on names.

Be sure to check out this FAQ for answers to common questions, and if you’re an administrator of Facebook Pages, get more details here. If you want to ensure you keep the rights for a trademark or other protected name, contact us here.

Source: Facebook Blog

A Swiss woman has lost her job after her employers spotted she was using the Facebook website when she had claimed to be too ill to use a computer.

The unnamed woman was suffering a migraine and had told her employer, Nationale Suisse, she needed to lie in a darkened room.

The company said its discovery that she was also using Facebook destroyed its trust in her and prompted her sacking.

But the woman told a Swiss newspaper she was innocent.

The woman, who is from Basle, said she had been accessing the internet on her iPhone while in bed.

She said she did not believe the company’s assertion that a colleague had inadvertently noticed her using Facebook, accusing it instead of spying on her.

She said the company had created a fictitious Facebook persona which become “friends” with her, allowing the company to monitor her online activity.

Her suspicions were raised when the “friend” suddenly disappeared after she was fired, the woman told 20 Minuten daily.

But the company says it followed a simple logic: that those who are well enough to use Facebook with a migraine are well enough to work with a migraine.

It is not the first time Facebook has been involved in a workplace controversy. Some companies have banned it altogether, while others have fired employees over statements they make about work while online.

News source: BBC News

If you were one of the many who signed an online petition or joined a group over the distaste of the new Facebook layout; good news has arrived. The Facebook team has announced that they will alter the new layout based on feedback that they have received over the last two weeks.

The original goal of the new layout was to offer a similar format to rival twitter. But when a group on Facebook reached 45,000 people who said that they hated the new layout and an online petition reached 1.7 million signatures, the Facebook team got the memo.

“Facebook said that it will make changes to the site based on the thousands of pieces of feedback it has received since its latest revamp. In the Facebook Blog, Chris Cox, Facebook’s director of product, wrote that a number of specific areas of concern will be addressed: The site will add more control and relevance in the stream; highlights will update more frequently and will show more content; and design changes will help users locate features and apps more easily.”

No specific timeline was given about when the updates will occur but at least it is known that the Facebook team does listen to its users and recognizes the feedback they received.

News source: Neowin.net

Facebook is following up on recent news about them changing their Terms of Service, with a backlash from users worldwide in an uproar about Facebook owning people’s content, than an update to revert back to the old Terms of Service.

Facebook’s new introduction includes "Facebook Principles" and "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities". The Principals serves as the guiding framework behind any policy Facebook considers, or the reason for not considering others. The second Statement of Rights and Responsibilities will replace the existing Terms of Service.

Before Facebook makes any of these documents official, they are looking for user’s feedback and comments on the new changes. There are also groups about either policy on Facebook to voice your opinion directly to the Facebook team.

With a costly mistake last time that could have cost Facebook the race for dominance in the social networking game. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Facebook is reaching out to users for feedback before making any changes that could critically damage the company’s reputation.

Source: Neowin.net

Facebook recently made changes to their Terms of Use on their web site, which gave Facebook all permissions of your images, videos, and content when submitting anything to the web site.

The social networking web site received a tremendous response to the update of the policy, which caused a lot of caution flags to go up. The company has responded by removing their recently updated Terms of Use and replacing it with their old Terms of Use while the web site makes adjustments to their policy.

The message posted on the web site reads:
“Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

If you want to share your thoughts on our new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.“

During the writing of the article, Facebook had updated their message again to this:

The revised Terms of Use, now restored to the original, angered a lot of users that posting their content was essentially giving Facebook full rights to the content users submit, including personal stuff such as images, comments and videos.

The Terms of Use is now set back to the old policy, with the stamp on the last revision set to September 23, 2008.
View: Facebooks Terms of Use

Source of article: Neowin.net

According to The Consumerist, Facebook made a small but significant change to its TOS (“Terms of Service”): now they claim complete ownership of all of the content you upload for all time and can use it for any purpose, including making money off it, even if you close your account.
A read-through of key points in Facebook’s TOS shows just how extraordinary their claims are to your creations (words, photos, videos, audio–even your name!).

1. “You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service…. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.”

In other words, if you infringe someone else’s copyright by uploading material for which you do not have the right, then it is your fault and not Facebook’s. And you assert that all the content you upload is yours to hand over forever to Facebook. “Hand over forever”?

2. “You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”

Yes, “hand over forever”. They can do anything they want with it, even if you close your account. The previous TOS made it clear that, once you cancelled your account with Facebook, they would no longer retain these rights over your uploaded materials. However, things have changed. Now, even if you have left Facebook, the company can use your name and any photos or other content you uploaded in their advertising or “in connection with the Facebook Service”. But what is the “Facebook Service”?

3. The “Facebook Service” is much more than what people normally think of as “Facebook-the-website”. It can include any medium currently existing (books, films, audio, or whatever) and any medium developed in future. As detailed in the company’s new TOS, “The ‘Facebook Service’ means the features, services and properties that Facebook makes available through (a) www.facebook.com or any other Facebook-branded or co-branded website (including, without limitation, any and all sub-domains and all international, mobile versions and successors thereof), (b) the Facebook Platform and ( c ) other media, devices or networks now existing or later developed.”

In other words, once you upload it, they own it and can do whatever they like–however they like–with it until the end of the universe.

News source: Neowin.net

Well good job I don’t really upload anything to 3rd party websites and just tend to link to content hosted on my own web server that I have total control over then.