It’s emerged as one of the most popular ways to connect with friends, family and long-lost acquaintances, but nearly 25% of Canadians believe Facebook has played a more negative than positive role in society, a new poll suggests. The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey, conducted March 27 to 30, asked more than 1,000 people about the social networking site’s impact on society.

While 40% said Facebook was a positive force, 24% said it played a more negative role.

The remainder declined to take a stand.

“There’s no question it looks, to a certain number of people, as something that can be used as much for negative purposes as for positive purposes,” Harris-Decima spokesman Bruce Anderson said from Ottawa.

Since launching as a university-only website in 2004, Facebook has exploded into a cultural phenomenon claiming to have more than 70 million users worldwide.

An Ofcom report has come out today, warning of the dangers to children who are unaware of the risks of leaving your personal info to run free on your social networks. There’s 25% of 8-11 year olds who have sneakily ticked the ‘yeah, I am *totally* the right age to use one of these things’ when really they should have stayed away.

But it’s not just a kid-based thing - most of us are guilty of sharing a little too much online, so here are a few tips to keep you safe.

1) If you wouldn’t say it to a stranger, don’t post it
If a man stopped you in the street and asked for your full address, date of birth and email address, would you give it to him? Hell, no. So don’t put it online - that man on the street is a lot harder to trace when he’s nothing more than an IP address.

2) Be aware of your networks
I once posted a post-date analysis on Facebook, thinking the boy in question wouldn’t see it. I didn’t realise that by joining the London network everyone in that could see my full profile - ouch. This is customisable now, so go into the ‘Privacy’ area of FB and check out who you’ve allowed full access to your profile.

Glassdoor.com, a stealth-mode “social networking company focused on employment conditions in the workplace,” has raised $3 million in a second round of funding led by Benchmark Capital, according to PEHub.com.

Sausalito, Calif.-based Glassdoor was co-founded by Robert Hohman, former president of Hotwire, and current Zillow chairman and CEO Richard Barton.

The company says on its website that it “expects to have something live in mid 2008.”

“I like Britney,” 5-year-old Elissa Bouganim, who has taken three classes with the pop star, told People magazine. “Today, first we were dancing slow, and then faster and faster … Then we did the fish-move and lots of other fun things.”

Spears, 26, has become a semi-regular instructor at the Millennium Dance Complex in the past month.

“It’s just amazing to watch Britney with the kids,” Elissa’s mother, Pam, told People. “Elissa won’t stop dancing now, that’s all she wants to do. Britney has really inspired her.”

Elissa even gave Spears a gift during Tuesday’s class.

“It was a picture of [Peter Pan’s] Tinkerbell,” she told People. “And she gave me a hug.”

Elissa also said she wants to dance with Britney “all the time.”

Facebook is now taking user privacy and improving the user experience very seriously. As part of its ongoing improvement program the rules for allowing publication of a story have been updated. Henceforth they will only allow actions that have been actively taken by the user to be published to the news feed.

At present applications can publish alerts to the news feed whenever a user profile gets updated, whether this is done by the user themselves or due to a third-party action via an application on the user’s profile. For example, if a user receives a virtual gift from a friend, the application can publish this to the news feed, even though the user has not done anything themselves.

In a month’s time, passive events, or third party reporting of an act will not be allowed to be published to the news feed. This is because Facebook wants to reserve its most valuable feature, which gets the most user eyeballs, to maintain the highest standards and only publish stories that are relevant to user activity, rather than publishing poorly masked promotional activity from third-party providers.

Technical details about the change in policy can be found on the Facebook Developers blog.

Facebook expects all developers to discontinue usage of the old, passive format of reporting, at the earliest. They may contact their users or use other means to enforce the necessary changes if they think it appropriate to do so.

Ultimately, this is good news for users. It will not only improve their experience on Facebook, but also shows that Facebook has been listening to user feedback provided via the ‘thumbs up’ and ‘x’ rating icons alongside every news feed item.