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.

 Fitness Singles (http://www.fitness-singles.com) and Active.com, an online community of The Active Network, have teamed up to serve single adults who engage in active and fitness-oriented lifestyles. With the arrangement, The Active Network is helping their members connect to a large database of like-minded, active singles by way of Fitness Singles.

Since its inception in 2003, Fitness Singles has been the fastest-growing online dating community for sports and fitness enthusiasts. With Fitness Singles’ user-centric interface and emphasis on a broad range of fitness categories, the agreement with Active.com was a natural progression and ensures Fitness Singles’ continued leadership in online relationships for active singles.

“This agreement is great news for active singles who focus on health and fitness,” said Christopher Mattioli, President of Fitness Singles. “Whether you’re into bodybuilding (http://www.fitness-singles.com/unregistered-results_fitness.asp?fitness=Bodybuilding), running (http://www.fitness-singles.com/unregistered-results_fitness.asp?fitness=Running), cycling (http://www.fitness-singles.com/unregistered-results_fitness.asp?fitness=Cycling), weight training, yoga, working out, hiking, playing sports, or any number of other activities, Fitness Singles is where active singles get together.”

“In the past five years, we’ve become the Number One dating site for fitness oriented, single adults,” he continued. “With our relaionship with Active.com, we are making it even easier for more singles to find like-minded partners, no matter what their interests.”

Posted by Amy Tiemann 

I’ve been writing about parenting and technology long enough for themes to begin to emerge. Like Lou Dobbs talking again and again about the “War on the Middle Class,” I am going to keep following the evolving story about kids and online safety, and supporting the idea that “Safe Product Design is Good Product Design.”

Yesterday’s announcement that MySpace has unveiled a new safety plan, working in cooperation with 49 attorneys general, is a step in the right direction. However, it did draw the predictable criticism epitomized by this reader comment on The Social blog:

A Novel Idea…: reader comment from jltnol Posted on: January 14, 2008, 2:24 PM PST Story: MySpace agrees to social-networking safety plan

Why can’t parents just do what the [sic] are supposed to do? Part of parenting is knowing what your kids are up to all the time.

If you can’t do it then hire a baby sitter who can.

You need a license to drive and a license to fish, but anybody can have a child.

Go Figure.

Read More »

Under the agreement, IBM will pay $58 for each share of Cognos (COGN:

cognos inc com

COGN 57.15, +4.17, +7.9%) (CA:CSN: news, chart, profile) , an Ottawa-based software company whose products help businesses gauge their performance.

The offer represents a 9.5% premium over the Friday closing price of Cognos. In recent action, Cognos shares were up 7.7% to $57.07.