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Facebook instituted new terms and conditions in February which would have given the social networking site full ownership of images, videos, and data that users posted on their profiles.

This didn’t sit well with the site’s user base, who complained loudly.

So Facebook decided to create a new policy to put the question of new terms and conditions up for a user-wide vote.  This is commendable, given their entire business model is based on social networking.  If the users don’t use the site, the site has no value, but if the users participate in making the rules for the site and then actually participate, the site increases its value.  Smart.

Facebook withdrew the changes and offered up a vote to its users.  The votes were: to keep the new changes as they were, institute a new set that was offered (and didn’t have the full ownership phraseology), or not vote at all.  Of the site’s 200 million users, only about 600,000 took part in the voting, which lasted about a week.

Low turnout could be blamed on the long-winded wording of the proposals themselves, but I think it’s mainly just pure laziness on the part of most Facebook users.  Reading through that stuff to make an informed decision required time and brain power.  I’m sure many thought they could come up with much better things to do with those two resources.

Regardless, the vote is in and 75% of those voting want the new terms that don’t imply their giving up full ownership of what they post on Facebook.  So when you delete your profile on the site, you can take all of your marbles with you too.

Initially, by the way, Facebook also intended to include a “30% rule” in their procedures, requiring that 30% of the site’s users participate in the vote for that vote to be valid.  They’ve rescinded that rule, however, and are going with the current vote.

Given that this was a first shot for the voting process on Facebook and a little clunky and it didn’t get much advertising to Facebook’s users, but it was a good first attempt.

Thanks to the BBC for breaking this story.

Two things fill the Twitterverse right now: discussions of how badly Twitter is performing and worries about how large it’s getting in such a short amount of time.

I’m sure the folks at Twitter are ecstatic about a 95% growth rate in just one month (users went from 9.8 million to 19.1 million in just one month, according to TechCrunch and comScore).  Most of those users are outside of the U.S., it appears.  Those numbers, by the way, are highly conservative.  They only count hits to Twitter’s website: no mobile phone apps, desktop clients, etc.

Users, on the other hand, are finding out just how constricted Twitter’s ‘verse is becoming.  Crashing servers, dropped messages, and extremely slow service is the rule of the day now.  All because while Twitter is growing at an exponential rate, those million Ashton Kutcher followers and millions of new soccer moms following Oprah are seriously weighing down the system.  Erick Shonfeld at Tech Crunch points out that at this growth rate, twitter should cross the 50 million visitor mark by summer.

So two fundamental questions about Twitter remain to be answered: when will the service begin adding new tech to keep up with unprecedented demand like this and how is the service going to make money, anyway?

So far, Twitter has not announced any plans to increase the site’s technology base to accommodate all of the new users.  To their credit, it was over-built to start with and has managed to do well without a lot of scrambling to install new upgrades.

On the other hand, Twitter still has not announced any kind of business model or game plan to monetize the service.  Despite tens of millions of users, Twitter is still running entirely on startup funds and venture capital.  Eventually, that has to change.

So we spin through the Twitverse with nothing to anchor us to ensure Twitter’s future.  At least it’s a fun, wild ride!

Times, they are a changin’ for Mac users.  Fans of Mac systems have been relatively virus and trojan-free, since most malicious programmers usually aim their sights on PCs and Windows.  Symantec’s Kevin Haley, director of security response, says, “The bad guys generally go toward the biggest target, what will get them the biggest bang for their buck.”  CNN points out “Mac computers are known for their near-immunity to malicious computer programs that plague PCs.”

Apple enjoyed relative obscurity, with the number of personal computer systems being predominantly PCs.  That seems to have changed now, though, with small, but growing numbers of malware targeting Macs.

The big one in the news now is a trojan horse program called iBotnet, which has infected only a few thousand Mac machines so far.  It’s a relatively benign trojan, though, but represents a growing trend of Mac-specific viruses, trojans, and worms.

Symantec detailed iBotnet in Virus Bulletin’s January edition.  The company still promotes that Macs are generally not threatened by malicious software, so long as reasonable precautions are taken. iBotnet itself is a part of a pirated download of iWork.

Obviously, your Macintosh isn’t immune to malware and attack–nothing is.  But your Apple is a lot less likely to get a bite taken out of it by someone with evil intent than someone else’s Window will get broken by a virus.

Conversely, more limited, but direct attacks such as trojans and identity theft tools like keyloggers aimed at Mac users will occur more often than they have before, according to McAfee’s Cyberbrime and Online Threats assessment for 2009.  This is because users of Macs are generally more affluent, on average, than PC users.

So threats against Mac users are probably going to be on the rise.  If you aren’t using protection, most experts agree, you’re putting too much faith in the hope that your Mac won’t be a target.

The latest in online games doesn’t appear to be another fantasy RPG, but is instead an analysts’ hair-puller like Deal or No Deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, but without Howie Mandell.

The search engine turned Web portal has been in talks with Microsoft and most seem to agree that it’s been about search. Yahoo could potentially outsource their search to the Seattle giant, but nobody appears to want to confirm or deny any deals that might be coming from the talks.

Just to stir the pot and ad more confusion to the whirlwind of rumors, Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz made sure to dance around the subject without confirming, denying, or even keeping board room rancor in place during the corporation’s first quarter earnings conference call. She F-bombed the end of the call, just to prove her point.

The call’s emphasis was on both Yahoo’s lackluster numbers (which were expected) and on Yahoo’s future going forward. ZD Net says “It’s unclear whether Yahoo’s earnings call dance was choreographed but it was quite effective at confusing the hell out of people. ” She stated that:

“It is critical to our customers and partners that they have a combined search display experience on the Internet and so I haven’t changed my position on that. Relative to anything else with Microsoft, I actually have no comment.”

A big part of Yahoo’s troubles lies in their internal employee balance, she went on. Yahoo has one product person for every three engineers, so those engineers spend more time responding to requests than they do developing anything. Which makes me wonder if working at Yahoo isn’t a lot like a real-world version of The Office.

It was at this point that Bartz dropped the F-bomb.

“So we had a lot of people running around telling engineers what to do but nobody is f—ing doing anything.”

The really amazing thing in all this is that despite the totally confusing conference call report and the flood of analysts spouting opinions based on confusion, Yahoo’s stock actually pipped 5% in after-hours trading right after Bartz hung up.

No one is sure what Yahoo’s plans actually are. Bartz made it clear that they are cutting 5% of the workforce, outsourcing something (not a lot of detail on WHAT, exactly), and continue to “leverage strategic partnerships.” That could mean a partnership with Microsoft. Or not.

So which is it? Deal or No Deal?

Some of you might be familiar with CheckUserNames, which was a service to check user name availability on popular sites throughout the Web, so you could use one name across several sites. Well, the site has revamped and renamed itself and is now KnowEm.

The new service is much more robust than its older counterpart, allowing you to brand your name (or business) across over 100 social media sites on the Web. Now you can not only instantly check to see if a name is available, but you can also register it quickly on a wide spectrum of sites.

Let’s face it, anyone who does any Web marketing, blogging, or freelancing on the ‘Net knows that social media marketing is where it’s at. It’s how you establish your identity, build a network of contacts, and otherwise promote yourself or your business on the Web. Trust me, we at VOIS are well aware of this fact.

So KnowEm’s new tool might be exactly what you need to do that in a much quicker rand easier way. It can take all day to go through 100+ social media sites like Digg, Twitter, Friendfeed, etc. just to see if a name is universally available. It can take even longer to sign up, set up a quick account, and secure that name on all those sites. That’s where KnowEm.com comes in.

Of course, the service comes at a price. Better, though, not only does it check for availability and set up your account for you, but it will monitor new sites as they are added to KnowEm and automatically register your name there too. Thus your brand won’t be subject to theft by someone—like a competitor or disgruntled employee.

Monthly subscriptions are only $9.95 and KnowEm claims to be “first in line” for many beta sites and brand new social media sites as well.

While the idea isn’t entirely new, the service is definitely worth the money for those who have a real interest in securing their brand. Large companies like Coca-Cola and Nike pay salaries to marketers just to do this same thing. I guarantee they’re paying more than $10/month.

If the service can keep afloat (it’s just started under the new guise), I think it could catch on and be extremely useful. Checking username availability is still free, of course.

Hotmail’s developers have announced that a web-based instant messenger (IM) client will be coming to Hotmail very soon. Based on the MSN client, it will likely function similarly to the Google IM in practice.

The new IM will become available to users in various countries first, coming to the U.S. last. So those in France, Italy, Japan, and others will see it long before the states do. Hotmail says they plan to have the new IM rolled out worldwide before the end of the year, so it’s coming soon to you wherever you are.

Those who are currently using Messenger will receive a popup notice that they’re logged into two chat clients at the same time and be required to make a choice: keep MSN running or close it in favor of the Hotmail client. The two chat services will share information and use the same services, and be virtually identical. For instance, your MSN contacts will still see you as “online” when you’re using the Hotmail client.

If you have multiple Windows Live accounts, you can use each client separately as well. Beta reports say that the two services are integrating well together and that the settings in one are porting to the other with few problems.

Some bugs still need to be fixed, however. Contacts in the new IM system are not listed by who’s online and available by default and this listing doesn’t seem to carry over. So if you resort your contacts list to display by who’s online, when you logout and come back, it won’t be that way automatically.  My favorite line of the day concerning this came from Tech Crunch’s Robin Wauters.  He said “We’ll say it right off the bat: what the hell took Microsoft so long?”

I guess I also agree with what Stephen Shankland of Cnet said…Now if only Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Google would get together so I don’t have multiple, incompatible instant-messaging networks, then I’d be even happier.Overall, though, the European users who’ve already got this seem to be giving it the thumbs up.