Eric Eldon at InsideFacebook reports that the social network has begun experimenting with a new option for users to report the senders of friend requests as someone they don't actually know. The prompt appears after you click to ignore a friend request. Actually knowing a person isn't a requirement to be their friend on Facebook (unlike LinkedIn, for example), so this is an odd choice of words, but presumably the vast majority of the site's users do only want to be friends with people they've met. Facebook has strict limits on the number of messages and friend requests a person can send, but apparently that hasn't worked well enough. Sponsor Two years ago MySpace added a requirement that any friend requests sent had to be verified as human using a CAPTCHA. That cut spam friend requests on MySpace down dramatically. There is no such requirement on Facebook. Dealing with information overload and spam are key steps in creating and maintaining a user experience that keeps people coming back to non-essential websites like social networks - as opposed to email, which you'll keep using anyway because you have to. According to Eldon, Facebook hasn't determined yet what it will do with these reports when filed. We regularly hear about people claiming abuse by the Facebook anti-spam team but every time we call Facebook about one of those complaints, the company's response seems quite reasonable. People do a lot of obnoxious things on Facebook. I don't know any of those people, though, and plan on clicking a button that says so when the opportunity arises. Discuss

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Facebook Adds Zap-a-Spammer Button

The American Dialect Society (ADS) has named google - the verb - as its Word of the Decade. According to the ADS, the verb google (meaning to "search the Internet") won out over blog, which, according to Grant Barrett, the chair of the ADS's New Word Committee, "just sounds ugly." Tweet was named the top word of the year for 2009. Fail - "a noun or interjection used when something is egregiously unsuccessful" - was 2009's most useful word. Sponsor Definitions: Tweet : noun , a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message. Google : Verb meaning "to search the Internet." Generic form of the trademarked "Google," the world's dominant Internet search engine. Fail : A noun or interjection used when something is egregiously unsuccessful. Usually written as "FAIL!" The ADS's members include linguists, grammarians, etymologists, writers, editors and university students. The ADS was founded in 1889. Twitter and other social networks have clearly captured the imagination of many language societies. Twitter was the top word of in the Global Language Monitor 's survey, and unfriend was the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2009 Word of the year. To represent the 1990s, the ADS picked Web as the top word of the decade. Do You Agree? What do you think? Do you think google deserves to be the one word that represents the last decade? Or is this just another example of how Google is succeeding in its slow takeover of our culture? Discuss

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Google: The Word of the Decade

Flixster just announced that it has acquired Rotten Tomatoes , the popular movie review site, from IGN Entertainment. IGN is a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Flixster is one of the world's most popular movie communities and currently features about 2.3 billion user ratings and reviews from its users. Rumors about this acquisition first surfaced in late December, when Kara Swisher first reported that a potential acquisition of Flixster by MySpace would hinge upon a merger of Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster. Sponsor The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. A Natural Fit Combining Flixster's user-generated reviews and Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews from top movie critics, seems like a natural fit.

Factories may not be the first place you'd expect to see demand for social technologies. But social networks are changing how manufacturers view their operations. In a recent survey of 268 manufacturers, 63% of respondents said that enterprise resources planning (ERP) software will provide its highest value when integrated with social computing technologies. Users want ERP software to perform the functions of collaborative technologies and social networks. Sponsor But why do manufacturers want social technologies in the enterprise? According to Manufacturing BusinessTechnology , a trade publication, they want to develop ways to share the knowledge of senior engineers and professionals. Among manufacturers with more than $1 billion in revenue, 72% said they wanted this capability. Manufacturers are most interested in using data from social networks to capture leads, research competitors and perform business intelligence functions, such as product training. They are also interested in receiving contextual information from similar users at other companies, and troubleshooting. Manufacturers are turning out to be the surprise adopters of Enterprise 2.0 technology. In a recent survey done by the 2.0 Adoption Council, manufacturers were some of the most eager adopters of social technologies. The survey of manufacturing managers was done on behalf of IFS North America , one of the largest software providers to manufacturing markets. IFS is developing its open-source applications to fit the changing manufacturing landscape. For example, it is migrating away from static documentation technologies in favor of more collaborative applications such as wikis. Many manufacturing companies face an aging workforce. A new breed of socially oriented technologies will be considered part of doing business for a younger generation. It's evident that real-time technologies, social networks and cloud-based services are having real impacts across our economy. In 2010, we expect to see clear examples of how these new messaging and communications services affect supply chains across multiple industries. Discuss

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Facebook in the Factory: Manufacturers Want Social Software, Too

SnapLogic is one of those kinds of companies we run across that you can say, "yes, these guys get it." The company provides data integration services that snaps information from the enterprise, social networks and the web. MindTouch is a company we have covered a lot about lately. MindTouch provides a presentation layer that for instance, shows information from multiple data sources in a dashboard environment. Now the two companies are teaming up to provide Business Application Integrations (BAI) . Systems that the companies say make for affordable enterprise integration services that are cheaper by an order of magnitude compared to more traditional offerings. Sponsor BAI integrates the database functionality of SnapLogic and combines it with the presentation capabilities of MindTouch. The service is priced at $4,995. Historically, custom built systems cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement. It's an Enterprise 2.0 play. The service can be up and running in almost no time at all. Custom, heavyweight systems often take months to implement. The companies maintain BAI cuts down on operation costs such as maintenance and the need to have multiple developers constantly managing on premise systems. Almost more so, data is overwhelming companies right now. Analytics are of critical need. Will BAI be adopted? Larger questions will be about the value the service provides and how customers view it. On the one hand it is affordable and simple to implement. But those factors may be a hindrance, too, as companies are not quite accustomed to the lightweight systems that SnapLogic and MindTouch embrace. Discuss

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MindTouch and SnapLogic: Another Affordable Way to Fit Information Together

The debate rages on over whether social networks (and Twitter, and YouTube, and, and, and) have any legitimacy in the workplace, fueled in no small part by people who sell tools to block them . But employers who turn their noses up at Facebook et al. may well discover that their coveted Millennials (a.k.a. Generation Y, a.k.a. those damn kids who won't get off your lawn) are happy to return the favour when recruiting time rolls around. Blocking access to Facebook looks a lot like those IT departments that wouldn't install web browsers on your computer a decade ago... or external email access a few years earlier. Sponsor And like those tools before them, the social web today is increasingly being used by companies and organizations for productive, collaborative work. So it's not just a question of denying your HR department a hiring pool of cool kids. Blocking social media from your company can mean cutting yourself off from an important potential source of productivity, innovation and increased efficiency. Of course, that's an argument I like to make to people who haven't just received a dozen Farmville notifications. More Noise to Signal. Discuss

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Cartoon: Friends With Benefits

Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd took a decidedly different approach when considering social networking at today's LeWeb conference. In speaking to a room packed with more than a thousand entrepreneurs, investors and journalists, Boyd explained how we tend to focus on the positive aspects of social networking services. Technologists tend to praise web publishing for its ability to encourage artistic expression and public dialogue. In contrast, Boyd makes the point that negative and disturbing web content can also serve as a vehicle for change. Sponsor Boyd explains how those who monitor online profile information, tend to have something to gain from it in a negative way. For example, oppressive governments often monitor the web for signs of criminal activity in order to enforce laws or suppress certain activities. Nevertheless, Boyd believes the visibility of violence, drug use and criminal activity can also be used by regular netizens for constructive purposes. She references "eyes on the street" - a concept coined by urban sociologist Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities . Writes Jacobs: "There must be eyes on the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street.  They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.  The sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce a sufficient number of people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks." Boyd believes this same concept can be applied to online safety and health. Says explains, "The web makes available all parts of society and it's up to us to find a way to make it constructive." With Facebook's user base often cited as being bigger than the population of all but 4 countries in the world, netizens have the visibility to do more than simply consume content. Boyd's presentation reveals that while the internet has the power to uncover the abuses and oppressions that are happening around us, ultimately it's up to us to decide whether or not to acknowledge and help remedy them. Photo Credit: Ewan McIntosh * For more updates on LeWeb, follow along on the Social Media Club House Discuss

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Says Danah Boyd, Leverage the Web's Most Disturbing Content