“FACEBOOK has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission.”

After checking on Snopes, I looked toward the official Facebook blog.  Sure enough, they have posted a note debunking this rumor.  Friday I wrote a post on Psychotic Resumes on how to lock down your Facebook profile.  I didn’t cover how Facebook actually uses photos, which, from that blog post has been described:

“How We Use Photos

We’ve run advertisements from our own advertising system for more than a year that let your friends know if you have a direct connection with a product or service, in the same way that your friends learn through your News Feed if you’re connected with another friend or an organization’s Facebook Page. For example, if one of your friends becomes a fan of a Page, you may see an ad, like the one below, with your friend’s profile photo that indicates the action that friend has taken.”

What this means is that if you fan a page or something like that – your picture and name might appear to your other friends showing that you’re a fan.  You can turn this off (if you’re REALLY paranoid) by going to Settings -> Privacy -> News Feed and Wall.  Then click on the “Facebook Ads” tab.  Mine is currently set to “Friends Only”, but you can set it to “No One.”  You might have more options depending on how your security settings are set, but… this is a pretty innocuous use of your info.

Facebook might have screwed up when it came to their last TOS change, but this time – it’s completely made up.

The wonderful picture of me (and many others) courtesy of the hideously talented Tamara Lakeman and the brick is a creative commons photo from Flickr.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out my new Twitter background on @ImNickArmstrong!

The previous design: Aspire.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJLgaAsT4tU

My talk at the very first Ignite Fort Collins ever was about social media marketing and how to market yourself or your business the right way with social media!  Here are the videos of the other presenters.  I look forward to participating, somehow, in Ignite Fort Collins #2 in August.

Here are the slides, as posted on my Slideshare page: