Everyone has seen those annoying little pop-up ads for “Hot Singles Want to Meet You Now” that are part of the endless clutter of Internet advertising. Now imagine the smiling image used to promote the service is of your wife. That’s what happened to Cheryl Smith’s husband recently. But don’t worry – Ms. Smith hadn’t actually gone looking for a little extra-marital excitement – she’d just fallen victim to the latest bit of Facebook-related privacy mischief. It seems that a third party advertiser was creating ads for Facebook and they grabbed Ms. Smith’s profile photo for use in their ad. (For those of you who just raced to change your privacy settings on Facebook, don’t bother. This type of third party use of Facebook assets apparently isn’t covered by any user-controlled setting.)

Facebook has had some privacy upheavals in the past. In 2007, the company started tracking purchases made by their users and sharing this data with other Facebook users. After a brief, but well-publicized, protest by Facebook users the company discontinued this practice.

The good news here is that Facebook contacted the advertiser and Ms. Smith’s image was pulled from the ad. According to their spokesman, Barry Schnitt: “The ads that spooked people were from rogue networks that have been dealt with. The ads were removed, some ad networks were banned from Facebook, and developers were warned.”

The bad news is that there is no way to guarantee that something like this won’t happen again.

Link to the original article: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/07/hey-peter-the-ad-said-hot-singles-are-waiting-for-you-he-might-have-dismissed-the-advertisement-which-appeared-on-his-fa.html

Even in a world of twitter, email, text messages and instant messages, nothing beats receiving a greeting card in the mail; as in your mailbox on the side of the road. I admit that I love sending and receiving cards. Greeting cards conjure up emotion, not only in the pre-printed message, but in the handwritten message from the sender. I admit that I even have a Crown Rewards membership card where you earn a point for every paper card purchase towards free greeting cards. However paper cards lack spontaneity. Paper cards are planned, deliberate, and don’t capture spur-of-the-moment emotions.

Hallmark is looking to capture those everyday emotions through the recently launched Hallmark Mobile Greetings, a mobile application that allows users to send e-cards, with the Hallmark look and feel for a 99-cent fee. The Mobile Greetings are not intended to replace the paper cards, but rather capture everyday emotions that go beyond traditional text messaging. Senders can choose from over 500 greetings in a variety of categories such as Just for Fun, Birthday and Thinking of You, and personalize their message.

Diedra Mize, a representative for Hallmark, was quoted in a recent Media Post article, “Hallmark Greeting Cards Go Mobile,” “We consider ourselves a communications company and we’re going to be wherever people are doing that. It’s an evolution of where we’ve been and where we’re going. You can do Mobile Greetings whenever and wherever. We consider it another way for people to communicate.”

I wonder if Hallmark will have a Crown Rewards membership for their mobile cards someday. For more information about The Hallmark Mobile Greetings, please visit http://www.mobile.hallmark.com/.