In this day and age, it’s pretty much a given that you should be keeping your social networking lifesomewhat under control because schools and prospective employers might be looking at it. But that’s not all, banks and creditors seem to be creeping in that direction too, because why let a little free information go to waste? As it turns out, there are plenty of things that creditors might like to know about you that, legally, they can’t ask, things like your race, your marital status, and whether or not you’re receiving public assistance. Also, having deadbeat friends who are yapping on about their inability to afford weed on their completely public profile probably wouldn’t help your case either. At the moment, the ways in which your social media activity will affect your credit score are largely hazy and underutilized. There are, however, a few shining beacons of the terrifying insanity that may be on its way. Lenddo, for instance, is a Hong Kong-based micro-lender that asks for some unusual information: The credentials for your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live accounts. Upon handing these over, it seems like Lenddo assimilates them into your Lenddo account proper where your score will benefit or suffer based on how financially stable your Lenddo friends are. If they default, it’s going to affect you negatively. Think about it this way, you’re going to do a much better job at stratifying your friends into socioeconomic groups than Lenddo is. Who Your Facebook Friends Are Could Affect Your Credit Score |...

When Facebook first started experimenting with its radical new (and I think, sensational) Timeline interface back in late September, we showed you an 8-step way to get a sneak preview. Now, it’s a whole lot easier: You can enable the timeline with one click, and then publish it for all to see with one more. Follow this quick slide show, and before you know it you’ll have the Facebook Timeline enabled on your own account. The best part is, after you click the “Get Timeline” button, you have seven days until it automatically goes live, but until then, you’re the only one who will see it until you authorize it to be published. However, if you don’t want to wait seven days, you can publish it any time by clicking “Publish Now.” Facebook Timeline: How to Enable it With One...

We reviewed Facebook Timeline, the awesomely personal, beautifully designed new profile, in September. September. Facebook said it’d be open to everyone soon after. Clearly, that hasn’t happened—but the wait is over! If you live in New Zealand. What? As someone who uses Timeline daily, I’m without an explanation for why Facebook is holding out on us. There are occasional bugs, but no more than has been the case with any other Facebook feature. When I’ve asked Facebook engineers about the delay, they clam up and say Timeline will go public when “Zuckerberg is ready.” The New Facebook Is Finally Public! …In New...

When you open up the site and click on an image of a blue lollipop, you’re prompted to allow Take This Lollipop to access your Facebook profile. This is standard stuff; for instance, if you want to use your Facebook profile to comment on a website—say, Slate—you agree to such access. But Take This Lollipop demonstrates exactly what you agree to when you hit “OK.” In a stunning display of interactivity, the site shows a creepy video, a couple of minutes long, showing a dirty, creepy man, his fingerstips caked with grime as he points his way to Facebook. There, he accesses … your profile. The site takes the information from your Facebook page and seamlessly weaves it into the video. You watch as the stalker looks at your photographs, your recent status updates, your list of friends. Then he pulls up Google Maps and finds directions to your home (geographic data contained in your profile). He hops into a car, your profile photograph taped to the dashboard. The scene ends as he gets out of the car, presumably to track down his target—you. As horror movies go, the plot’s pretty thin. But it’s still jolting to see yourself cast as the victim… Take This Lollipop: creepy site offers warning about giving away personal info on Facebook. I totally love this! It’s by the creator of my favorite holiday website Elf Yourself. It’s also timely in that it brings awareness to the type of permissions you give websites when you authorize applications. As I’ve said before, the Internet was not made for you, but was made to push the agenda of website creators. Take note of that and pay attention to the websites you visit and the terms you agree to! I also love...

       Last August, Google asked us all to say good-bye to Google Wave. Some said Wave was ahead of its time, some said that the platform had enough features to sink the Titanic. However, Google today announced some significant updates to its social network, Google+. And one of the features launched today on Google+ seems a throwback to one now-defunct feature of Google Wave, called “Playback”.  Google+ Resurrects Playback Feature From Wave, Renames It “Ripples” |...

Although a federal judge has refused to grant a temporary restraining order on Facebook at the request of Timelines.com, a small Chicago company that claimsFacebook’s new Timeline feature threatens its business, Facebook has promised to delay a full launch. Facebook Timeline, a feature that reorganizes users’ profiles into multimedia-rich scrapbooks of past updates, has been expected to go live any day. Some 1.1 million users havealready installed the feature on their profiles by enabling developer access. The judge in Timelines.com’s patent lawsuit declined the site’s request to disable users from signing on through the developer program. He did, however, order Facebook to report daily how many new developers were enabling the Timeline. Facebook Timeline Launch Delayed in Federal Court...