A technical bug in the Facebook inappropriate photo reporting tool, caused private photos of users to be visible to non friends. The bug allowed you to click on a profile picture of any user to report it and then brought up a screen displaying other private non public shared photos the user could browse through to report as well.

The bug meant that users could access other users’ private photos even though they were set to private. CEO and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was used to demonstrate the exploit and caused many of his private photographs leaked to the internet. These photos included photos of him and his long time girlfriend, his dog, him and Barack Obama and even photos of him holding up a just slaughtered chicken.

Facebook has since responded with the following statement:

“Earlier today, we discovered a bug in one of our reporting flows that allows people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously. The bug allowed anyone to view a limited number of another user’s most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos. This was the result of one of our recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time.

“Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed.”

It seems like the young billionaire has had a change of heart, or so the New York Times have reported. According to the New York Times, people briefed on Facebook’s plans say that in coming weeks the company plans to introduce a free iPad application that has been carefully designed and optimized for the tablet.

According to these people the Facebook iPad application has been in development for almost a year now and is currently in it’s final testing stages.

The question now remains will Facebook’s official iPad application be a hit, seeing as it has to compete with two already popular Facebook applications for the iPad namely MyPad and Friendly for Facebook, the first mimicking the popular Twitter for iPad layout and flow.

Take the Cell C twitter account for example, a quick look at their account reveals that they would rather tweet about how many spider legs there are in chocolate bars rather then about their own products or services.

So what are the main reasons for consumers following brands on Twitter? After some investigation I came up with the following reasons:

• Get updates on future products
• Stay informed about company activities
• Receive discounts and promotions
• Get updates on upcoming sales
• Get free samples, coupons, etc.
• Get access to exclusive content
• To learn about the company
• Share ideas and provide feedback
• Product support

All of the above makes sense to me, seeing as they are all related to the brand itself and that I presume that it’s also what brands are trying to give to consumers through social media.

Why do you follow brands on social media?

It seems as if Facebook Places has now officially been activated for South African Facebook users, I picked up on this when Gary Meyer tweeted asking if Facebook just launched Places in South Africa and I quickly fired up my Facebook application to check.

Using the Facebook for Android application I was able to view check-ins of my friends and also it allowed me to check into places as well. Other users have also reported that its working on the Facebook iPhone app.

Whether this is a bug or the official release of Facebook Places in South Africa we will just have to wait and see, as Facebook has made no official statement on their blog yet about the roll out of Facebook Places to other countries.

Does Facebook Places work for you?

[UPDATE]
I just checked out the Facebook Touch site and it seems that Places has also been activated there.

Its seems that rumors was true, well sort of, but its not Facebook releasing a phone, it’s HTC.

HTC unveiled an array of new phones at the Mobile Web Congress in Barcelona yesterday and two of these phones, the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa, had a very popular social networking site button on them.

Both the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa comes with a dedicated Facebook button on the devices, once the Facebook button is pushed it will lead users directly to the popular social networking website or post content to it automatically, depending on what is being done on the phone at the time.

These handsets are the first of their kind with dedicated Facebook buttons and deeper Facebook integration, but we can expect more phones this year with similar functionality.

The Facebook buttons on both devices are context aware and will gently pulse with light when there is an opertunity to share content or make updates on the devices.

“With a single press of the button, you can update your status, upload a photo, share a website, post what song you are listening to, ‘check in’ to a location and more.” said HTC in a official statement.

Taking pictures and uploading them to Facebook is a breeze, when a user take a photo the simple press of the Facebook button will upload the photo to their Facebook profiles. Facebook messages and convesations will also appear in the phone messages and email inboxes.

HTC phones has for long had pretty good Facebook integration, but with the new HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa they have taken Facebook integration to a whole new level.

A few years down the line and us South Africans finally got Xbox LIVE in our own country, but despite all the hype it was not welcomed with warm feelings as most of the services and feature we got used to when using international accounts was now gone. Some of these features included the ability to browse Facebook and Twitter from your console.

Xbox LIVE South Africa is now 3 months old and things are finally starting to look like its taking shape as Microsoft has announced that from 26 January 2011 Xbox LIVE subscribers will be able to access Facebook and Twitter from their Xbox 360 consoles.

Facebook on Xbox LIVE features include:

• Connect with friends using Facebook
• Explore news feeds from friends and family
• Post, read, and respond to comments on status updates and photos
• View photos using the Xbox 360 built-in scaler for great-looking pictures
• With Friend Linker, find friends on Facebook that also have Gamertags and invite them to your Xbox LIVE Friends List
• Update your status with achievements in-game

Twitter on Xbox LIVE features include:

• Read Tweets from people you follow, post new messages and reply to existing  ones
• Automatically sign into Twitter when you sign into Xbox LIVE
• Link your Gamertag to your Twitter username
• Connect with Xbox LIVE friends who you follow on Twitter, view user lists and favourite Tweets

Please note that the Facebook, Twitter, video chat features and Xbox LIVE Party require an Xbox LIVE Gold membership.

If you really think about it, why would Facebook shut down only days after it acquired an additional $500 million funding?

Facebook Director of Corporate Communications Larry Yu has denied the rumor saying that it is false. In an email sent to Mashable, Yu added the following, “The answer is no, so please help us put an end to this silliness. We didn’t get the memo about shutting down and there’s lots to do, so we’ll just keep cranking away like always.”

Still not sure how this whole thing works? Check out the video bellow.

Facebook is gradually rolling out the new messaging platform to all users by mean of invites, so how do you get an invite to make use of this new next generation messaging system which includes a facebook.com email address?

Simply head over here and request an invitation.

Facebook is calling it a “Modern Messaging System” that integrates E-Mail, SMS Messaging and Instant Messaging into one unified inbox. The main aim of the new Messaging platform from Facebook is to simplify messaging allowing you to view and send messages from one central places no matter what type of message it is.

One of the new features of the new Facebook message platform is that users will receive @Facebook.com E-Mail address should they wish to and from there they can send E-Mails and SMS messages to other friends. Worried about SPAM? Don’t worry, the new platform allows you to filter messages so that you only receive them from your real friends.

The nice thing about the new Facebook message platform is that you are not bind to one interface for sending and receiving messages, you can even tie in your existing E-Mail account into the system and send and receive messages from your Mail client, IM Messenger, Facebook Webpage or Cellphone.

Facebook will be rolling out the new messaging platform to all its users gradually over the next few weeks in the form of invites so keep an eye out. As soon as I have an invite available I will put it through its paces and tell you about it.

Well watch out, Geeks are here to rule the world and they are slowly making progress. Out of the top 20 richest persons in America, eight are Geeks from technology companies like Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon and Dell.

In fact out of the top 5 richest people, 2 of them are Geeks, the number one position belonging to Bill Gates from Microsoft and number three to Larry Ellison from Oracle, while Social Networking giant Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, hold the title of the youngest Geek billionaire on the list at number 35.

Here is a list of the top 20 richest geeks in America.

Nice hey? Who knows, maybe your name could be on that list, so start that startup.