The Revenge of Facebook

Ah facebook!

Strict Asian parents? You don't say! :)

Silence of the Lam

Source: CBC

B.C. NDP Leader Carole James says the party's former candidate for Vancouver-False Creek showed a "lack of judgment" over pictures displayed on his Facebook page.

Ray Lam resigned on Sunday over the photographs, one of which showed him palming a woman's breast and another with his pants down and two people pulling at his underwear.

"Ray felt that they were inappropriate. Certainly it shows a lack of judgment, and he made the decision to step down," James said on Monday. "He didn't want it to distract from the campaign, so we are moving on."

James said candidates had been warned something like this could happen, saying even though the pictures were posted on a private page, "once you become a public figure, everything is public."

"I saw the pictures on TV. I thought they showed a lack of judgment. It's his age, you know, we all recognize that, but when you're in politics and you are going to be a public figure, it's important that you recognize that," she said.

I'm not surprised. The dumbest pictures appear on facebook and this guy is 22 years old and he's NDP!

Mum's catching up with with me ... on Facebook

Source: Asiaone

WHEN his mother added him to her friends' list on popular social networking website Facebook, SIM University student Chris Chen accepted the request readily.

But she soon discovered photographs of the Honda motorcycle he had secretly bought and things quickly changed.

Mr Chen, 22, had not told her he had learnt to ride a motorcycle, or that the money he saved from working part-time had been spent on the two-wheeler.

'She got really angry about it, so I blocked her on Facebook,' he said, matter-of-factly. 'I don't want her to see the offending pictures till she can come to terms with my riding a bike.'

Mr Chen's situation, though prickly, may not be such an unusual one. An Australian survey last month found that one in four children has his or her parents as friends on online social networking sites such as Facebook. Adults aged 35 to 54 using Facebook doubled from 7 per cent of its total users last year to 17 per cent in January.

A final-year project by a group of students from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) found that parent-child relationships actually improved when they used networking sites like Facebook.

The study, funded by the National Youth Council, interviewed 20 sets of parents and children who were online friends.

Project member Lee Weiyi, 22, said parents read about activities and pictures their children put online to feel closer to them and to find common topics to talk about. But this works well only as long as the parents do not find objectionable content in their children's profiles.

'Of course, the children are generally more tech-savvy than their parents and know how to censor what they put online,' said Ms Lee.

Some youth, she added, delete images they know their parents will disapprove of, or prevent their parents from seeing certain photo albums by limiting access to 'safe' content.

Student Dew Low, 17, was amused, but not surprised, when her mother, Madam Dorrianne Yeo, sent a request asking to be her friend on Facebook. In fact, Dew's grandfather, Mr Eddie Yeo, 71, is also on her list of Facebook friends.

They use Facebook mainly to share pictures with relatives living overseas.

'It's a little unusual, but I think my mum is quite hip,' said Dew. 'I don't worry too much about what she'll see on my profile, since I only upload things I don't mind sharing publicly.'

Madam Yeo, 45, is not worried about what she might find in her children's online profiles. 'I won't intrude into their privacy. But if I see anything I am uncomfortable with, I would talk openly with them about it.'

If you're a good kid and have nothing to hide and then adding mom isn't a problem.
But we were never good kids were we? :)

She offered nude pictures for virtual pet gifts

Source: Asiaone

IT SEEMS she is willing to exchange real-life nude pictures of herself for something that exists only in cyberspace - items for her online pet.

Is that all her modesty is worth?

The question doesn't seem to bother the Facebook user, who introduces herself as Ling Er, an 18-year-old Singaporean.

Her offer has drawn some flak, even from other netizens who are blase about such shenanigans.

As one of them put it, she may have taken games addiction and online barter to a new low.

The teenager set up a Facebook group last month to get netizens to give her virtual items for her character in the popular game Pet Society on the networking site.

Birthday suit

The name of her group: My birthday suit contest.

To date, some 133 users have signed up as members of the group.

The game, which can be played by Facebook members who download it, allows them to create and play with a virtual pet, buy it items, and pit its 'skills' against those of others.

The object of the game is to acquire as many points as possible.

These points allow players to acquire more virtual items for their pets' homes.

On her Facebook group, Ling Er has appealed to netizens to give her their most valuable Pet Society gifts possible.

She claimed that senders of the best five gifts would get a set of nude pictures of her in return.

They have to do so by 1May.

She has even listed those who have sent the most valuable gifts so far.

The teen wrote on the site: 'I will send you guys pics of me in my birthday suit that I was born with.'

Er, does she mean baby pics, perhaps? Who knows.

But since the group was set up, it has attracted more than 100 members, almost all of them men.

Wow. Proof there are 133 idiots around. Once she gets your pets, she'll run. No way you're getting ANY pictures!

Facebook face-off

Source: Asiaone

IT SOUNDED harmless enough - a drink with a group of new friends.

But soon after, the gathering turned sour, and Mr Ong Jian Zhao, 21, found himself left alone at a bar, with a $213 bill to settle on behalf of people he hardly knew.
Mr Ong, a civil servant, got to know Miss Chloe Yoong, 21 - one of the members of the group - through social networking site Facebook last month.
He said: 'I was randomly browsing through profiles and I decided to send her a message.' After several messages over the course of a few days, they exchanged handphone numbers.

He then asked her out several times, but each time, she declined saying she was busy.
But on the evening on 28 Feb, Mr Ong received an SMS from her inviting him for a drink at Raffles Hotel's Long Bar with her, her boyfriend and three other friends.
Said Mr Ong: 'I was reluctant at first, but she told me to join them anyway and not to be a wet blanket.'

He recalled that when he arrived, there were already several drinks on the table - two cocktails, a glass of bourbon and a bottle of red wine.
He then chatted with the group for a while.

But after about 20 minutes, Miss Yoong and one friend left, claiming they were going to the toilet.Shortly after, while Mr Ong was away taking a phone call, two others left.

When he returned to the table, only Miss Yoong's boyfriend remained. But he, too, left immediately, saying he had to take a call. Mr Ong claimed he waited for about 30 minutes for the group to return but nobody showed up. When he SMSed Miss Yoong, she claimed to have left with a friend who was not feeling well.

He then paid the $213 bill for the drinks and left.

He had believed the evening was planned by the group of friends to get him into paying for the drinks. He said he had repeatedly tried to ask Miss Yoong for his money back after the session but she had been uncontactable. He even contacted the National Institute of Education, where Miss Yoong is studying, hoping to get hold of her.

However, he was told to settle the matter on his own. When contacted, both Miss Yoong and her boyfriend, Mr Alex Lim, 25, confirmed the incident. Mr Lim said they had decided to leave Mr Ong to settle the bill because he had implied that he wanted to pay for the drinks.

He said: 'When he came over, he kept bragging about how well he was doing and how well-off he was.

'It is ridiculous that he is asking us for the money back.'

Miss Yoong added that in their exchanges on Facebook, Mr Ong said he had planned to treat her to a drinking or clubbing session. Mr Ong did not dispute this, but said he had only planned to take Miss Yoong out, but not her friends. Said Miss Yoong: 'When he first sent me a message, he said he didn't have a stable relationship with his girlfriend.

'He asked me out to go clubbing or for drinks, and said he wanted to treat me.'
She added that she began to get annoyed by Mr Ong's persistent requests and decided to 'get him off her back' once and for all. 'It happened that my boyfriend was around (on the night of the incident) so we asked him to join us.'Immediately after he paid the bill, Mr Ong reported the incident to the police but was advised to settle the matter privately with her.

However, he claimed he has been unable to contact her since.

He said calls and SMSes to her handphone went unanswered, and she later deleted him from her contact list on Facebook as well.

What he hopes for is an apology and his money back. When asked if they would accede to Mr Ong's request, Mr Lim said: 'Are you kidding?'
He added: 'It would be a different matter if he had been polite and nice.

'But after all that bragging, it was really difficult to be cordial to him.'

So what do you think?

Mum’s my Facebook friend

Source: Asiaone

FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Sheryl Seet does not just share photos with her friends on her Facebook profile.

She also shares them with her mother, whom she added to her list of friends on the social-networking site last December.

Sheryl’s mother, 41-year-old manager N. Seet, also sometimes receives messages on her Facebook profile from Sheryl and will chat online with her at work using MSN Messenger.

In fact, it was Mrs Seet who introduced the teenager to Facebook.

As Mrs Seet can reply to Sheryl’s online messages even at work during periods when she is less busy, Sheryl said that “it’s easier to communicate with my mother online than to call her”.

Sheryl is part of a generation of Internet-savvy children who are “friending” their parents on online social-networking sites.

An online global survey done in the last two months of last year found that one in four children aged eight to 17 added their parents to their list of friends on online profiles on sites like Facebook and Friendster.

Although kids will never admit it it's probably a good thing to have your parents involved in facebook. It would make the parent-child relationship more healthy and parents are pretty hip (they were kids once too) and would easily learn how to facebook as well.

Here's our own poll.

Are you friends with either of your parents on facebook?

Facebook used to nab thief

Source: The Straits Times

WELLINGTON - NEW Zealand police have arrested a safe burglar by using the popular social networking website Facebook to identify and track him down.

Calling it the 'first Facebook arrest', Queenstown police in southern New Zealand posted security-camera footage and pictures showing the man's face as he tried to break into the safe of a local tavern on Monday.

'The offender was identified after a movie and images of him were displayed on Facebook. He was identified from members of the public viewing him on Facebook and also seeing him on TV after the Facebook images were displayed on the news,' the police station said in a statement on its Facebook page.

Police said the unnamed, 21-year-old Queenstown native would appear in court on Wednesday

That's pretty cool and scary at the same time. It's great that facebook can help solve crime but that means if you're on facebook everything about you is known. I've heard that employers are now commonly using facebook to get a 'look' at their job applicants. So get those drunken pictures down! :)