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Facebook Users Check in to Starbucks More Than Any Other Restaurant

August 24, 2011 By Todd Wasserman Leave a Comment


Starbucks is the eatery Facebook users check in to most, according to a report from the social networking giant.

With about 17,000 locations, Starbucks’s ubiquity no doubt works in its favor, but the list also shows that smaller players can upset industry titans. Case in point: Buffalo Wild Wings, which has around 700 outlets, was higher on the list than McDonald’s and its 32,000 or so global locations.

The list in full:

  • 1. Starbucks
  • 2. Buffalo Wild Wings
  • 3. Chili’s
  • 4. Applebee’s
  • 5. McDonald’s
  • 6. IHOP
  • 7. Denny’s
  • 8. Olive Garden
  • 9. T.G.I. Friday’s
  • 10. The Cheesecake Factory

Facebook stats show that when people check in, they let an average of 130 of their friends know, in a tacit recommendation. Facebook introduced Places almost exactly a year ago. The feature, a rival to checkin services like Foursquare, has been used as a popularity gauge before, but this is the first time Facebook has supplied the data directly. Facebook declined to say how many checkins each establishment received.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Piutus

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Facebook’s Big Privacy Changes: An Overview [PICS]

August 23, 2011 By Ben Parr Leave a Comment


Facebook unveiled a massive wave of privacy changes on Tuesday. It’s one of the biggest privacy overhauls in the company’s history, one that includes more than a dozen changes to profiles, status updates, locations and tags.

In fact, there are so many changes that it’s easy to get confused about what changes Facebook is making and what impact they will have on your privacy. The updates are significant enough that Facebook will make every single one of its 750+ million users go through a tutorial about the updated privacy settings.

That’s why we’ve written this short guide to all the changes Facebook has implemented. Refer to this page for a quick rundown of all the new privacy features now available on the world’s largest social network.

Screenshots: Facebook Privacy Changes


Privacy Controls: Profile Editing




You can edit the visibility of individual parts of your profiles right from the profile editing page. In the past, this had to be done from the Privacy Settings page.


Tag Approvals




Facebook has implemented tag approvals. You now need to approve location or photo tags before they appear on your Facebook profile. This feature can be turned off.


Photo Tag Approvals




You can accept or reject photo tags right from the photo page.


View Profile As




The "View Profile As" feature, which lets you see your Facebook Profile page as one of your friends, is now prominently placed on your profile page.


Greater Control of Status Updates




Facebook has made it easier to understand who sees your published content. Icons indicate whether a status update will be public, appear only to friends or has been customized for a friend group or list.


Adding Locations to Status Updates




Places has been integrated into Facebook's Publisher Bar. The result is that location is more prominent in Facebook. The mobile apps will now have a "Nearby" icon that replaces the old "Places" icon.


More Control Over Photo Privacy




When untagging yourself from a photo, you will also be given the option to request the photo be taken down or block that person entirely.

Profiles

The major privacy changes to Facebook Profiles include:

  • Greater profile control: Profile visibility controls now appear directly next to content when you edit your profile. For example, if you only want your close friends to see which music you like, you can change it directly from the profile editing page.

  • In-line cues: Facebook will display a globe, friend or gear icon to indicate whether a piece of content is public, only seen by friends or customized for a friend group or list.
  • “View Profile As”: The “View Profile As” feature has been moved from the Privacy Settings Page to the top right-hand corner of the user profile. This is designed to make it more accessible.
  • Overhaul of the Privacy Page: The privacy overhaul will result in a much cleaner and simpler Privacy Page, since most of the privacy settings are now integrated at the profile page level.

Tags

The major privacy changes to Facebook Tags include:

  • Tag reviews: Facebook has implemented a system where users can approve or reject photo, status or location tags before they appear on their profiles. This profile can be turned on or off, depending on user preference.
  • Photo tagging changes: Because of the tag reviews feature, Facebook felt comfortable allowing a user to tag anybody in a photo, regardless of whether they are friends. This makes it simpler to tag people in group shots. Users must approve these tags before they appear on a user’s profile.
  • Tags in the Publisher Box: It’s easier to see who is being tagged in a status update. The left-hand side of the Publisher Box now includes an area for managing tags.
  • New untagging features: If a user untags herself from a photo, she will be given the option to send a request to the photo’s uploader to remove it. She will also have the option of blocking that person entirely.

Status Updates & Location

The major privacy changes to location-sharing and status updates include:

  • Public updates: The “Everyone” option in status updates has been renamed “Public” for greater clarity.
  • No more lock icon: The lock icon under the Publisher Box has also been changed. It will now display the globe, friend or gear icon based on whether the update is public, for friends or custom.
  • Facebook Places integration: Facebook Places has been integrated into the Publisher Box. Users can now tag a location into any status update. The same applies to photos and photo albums.
  • No more GPS restriction: Users can now tag any location in a status update or photo, regardless of whether they’re actually nearby. This makes it possible tag a location for a photo album after the user has returned home.
  • Mobile changes: The Facebook Places icon will no longer appear in the mobile apps. Instead a “Nearby” icon will take its place. It will display which users have tagged their location nearby.

Reactions

We asked some privacy and safety groups to respond to Facebook’s privacy changes. Here are two of those responses:

1. Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“We have been asking Facebook for granular controls over privacy setting for some time now, and are pleased that Facebook is now providing inline controls. We also appreciate the introduction of greater control over tagging.

Social network services must ensure that users have ongoing privacy and control over personal information stored with the service. To effectuate that, users need clear user interface that allows them to make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used. We look forward to seeing how these controls work in operation, to see if users understand them and it reduces the amount of unintentional over sharing on Facebook.

It is also good to see more competition on privacy controls between social networks. Google’s introduction of circles gave users of Plus inline controls for sharing, and now Facebook is providing more granular inline controls. We hope this trend of competition continues.

One disappointment is that Facebook is considering phasing out the setting that could disallow users to prevent their friends from checking them into places. As we understand it, there is no set deadline for this control, but it will be available for at least 60 days, and those who select the option will be grandfathered into keeping it. Even if a user does not want or need the control now, we recommend that they select the option now, to be sure that this control remains available to them.”

2. Connect Safety:

“This is a significant step forward in Facebook privacy for users of all ages – one that all of us Safety Advisory board members really liked. Giving users the chance to think about the level of exposure they want with each status update or photo posted encourages everybody to be a little more mindful about our social-media use, and that’s a good thing as we all work out the social norms of social media.”

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Facebook Makes Massive Privacy & Tagging Changes [PICS]

August 23, 2011 By Ben Parr Leave a Comment


Facebook is launching one of the largest privacy overhauls in its history. The initiative will make it clearer with whom you’re sharing photos, status updates and locations.

“We want to make it easier to share with who you want, no matter what it is,” Facebook Product Manager Kate O’Neill told Mashable during a preview of the new features.

The changes, more than a dozen in all, fall into two key areas: privacy changes to user profiles and changes to how users share content. They will roll out during the next few days.

Profile controls will now be embedded right on the profile page. In the past, changing settings such as who can see your photos or musical interests was done through the bulky Privacy Settings page. Now those settings appear on the right-hand side of nearly every section of the user profile when you’re editing your settings.

Facebook has also decided to bring the “View Profile As” feature directly onto the profile page. This feature allows you to view your profile page as one of your friends would see it. It was previously available in the privacy settings section, but will now appear on the top right-hand corner whenever you visit your profile.

The biggest change to profile privacy controls though is the addition to tag reviews. O’Neill told Mashable that users wanted greater control over who tagged them and how those tags appeared on their profiles. Users will now be able to approve or reject tags before they become visible to anybody else. This includes photos, locations and posts.

Changes to Sharing

The second set of changes affect how you share content. The Publisher bar has been modified and now includes three elements: locations, tags and control over who can see that status update.

You can make it so friends can tag you without approval, but you must approve tags from non-friends — which leads to another change to profiles: You can now tag anybody in a post or a photo, regardless of whether that person is a Facebook friend, subject to tag approval. This makes it possible to tag a large group of people from work or an event.

“Because I share an experience with them doesn’t mean I want to be Facebook friends with them,” O’Neill says.

Places has also been integrated directly into the Publisher bar. You can tag a location from the browser or the mobile apps. In addition, the restriction to tag places only a short distance from your GPS location has been scrapped. For instance, if you were at a party but didn’t write about it until you got home, you can now tag that location in your status update.

As a result of this change, the Places icon in the iOS and Android apps have been removed. In its place is a “Nearby” icon that displays recent checkins in your area. Checking into a location happens from the status update. Users can also tag locations to photo albums or individual photos or videos.

Facebook has also made some changes to the status controls. In the past, a lock icon controlled who could see your status update. Now that icon will change based on whether it’s a public update, one meant for friends or a custom update to a friend list or group. The “Everyone” option has been renamed to “Public” for clarity. You also now have the option of changing the visibility of status updates even after they’re published.

The last change to sharing content involves untagging. Facebook says that users were unclear what untagging themselves from photos actually meant, so it has provided more options for when they untag themselves from Facebook content. Now there are three options: untagging yourself from a photo, asking the photo uploader to remove the photo and blocking that person on Facebook.

This range of privacy changes seem to be proactive for a company that has been strongly criticized for its privacy practices. Privacy and safety groups have had a positive reaction to the changes overall. Perhaps at last Facebook will no longer be a company that only reacts when users launch protests.

Check out the screenshots of the changes below, and let us know what you think of the many privacy changes in the comments.


Privacy Controls: Profile Editing




You can edit the visibility of individual parts of your profiles right from the profile editing page. In the past, this had to be done from the Privacy Settings page.


Tag Approvals




Facebook has implemented tag approvals. You now need to approve location or photo tags before they appear on your Facebook profile. This feature can be turned off.


Photo Tag Approvals




You can accept or reject photo tags right from the photo page.


View Profile As




The "View Profile As" feature, which lets you see your Facebook Profile page as one of your friends, is now prominently placed on your profile page.


Greater Control of Status Updates




Facebook has made it easier to understand who sees your published content. Icons indicate whether a status update will be public, appear only to friends or has been customized for a friend group or list.


Adding Locations to Status Updates




Places has been integrated into Facebook's Publisher Bar. The result is that location is more prominent in Facebook. The mobile apps will now have a "Nearby" icon that replaces the old "Places" icon.


More Control Over Photo Privacy




When untagging yourself from a photo, you will also be given the option to request the photo be taken down or block that person entirely.

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Dunkin’ Donuts Launches Search for “President of Dunkin Nation” via Foursquare, Facebook Places

August 22, 2011 By Lauren Indvik Leave a Comment


If you missed your chance to become Dunkin’ Donuts’s ultimate coffee fan, you still have a chance to leverage your social media savvy for proper fanboy (or fangirl) recognition: From now until September 23, the food and beverage chain is giving customers who check in to U.S. Dunkin’ Donuts locations using Foursquare or Facebook Places a chance to be named the “President of Dunkin’ Nation.”

To enter, participants need to register their Facebook Places or Foursquare credentials on Dunkin’s Facebook Page. Fans are then invited to check in at Dunkin’ Donuts locations once per hour, up to 10 times per day.

The person with the most checkins each week is eligible to be named the President of Dunkin’ Nation for the week. (There will be five winners in total, for each of the five weeks.) A leaderboard on Dunkin’s Facebook Page will help them track their status in real-time.

Those whose checkin behaviors are less naturally competitive are also eligible to win a $25 gift card simply for checking in.

One concern: spam. Ten checkins at the same retail location in a single day is considered excessive by most users of location-based social networks, and while users can opt not to broadcast their checkins to their friend networks on Foursquare, the same option does not exist for Facebook Places users. Although there’s a chance that so many checkins will quickly alert participants’ friend networks to the promotions, there’s also a serious risk that participants will overwhelm their friends, thus losing a chunk of their followers and developing a less-than-savory association with Dunkin’s brand in the process.

Kevin Vine, interactive marketing manager in Dunkin’s brands division, admitted that he hadn’t considered the possibility of spam, but noted that participants using Foursquare could hide their checkins. At the end of the day, he says, it’s more important to open up the promotion to as many people as possible — and that means making it available to Facebook’s vast userbase in addition to Foursquare’s.

In speaking of goals for the campaign, Vine says the company would be pleased to see 100,000 people participate. He emphasized that the campaign is less about driving traffic to Dunkin’ Donuts locations than “celebrating and rewarding our dedicating fans who are already engaging in this kind of [checkin] behavior,” although the former is still important.

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MasterCard Rewards Facebook Places Checkins in New “Priceless” Campaign

August 1, 2011 By Todd Wasserman Leave a Comment


The original Yankee Stadium was demolished in 2010, but some of the seats have survived and are now being used in a Facebook Places campaign for MasterCard.

Twenty such seats will be scattered around New York City starting Monday. Fans who find the seats and scan a QR Code will be checked in to Facebook Places. Once a fan checks in, they make themselves eligible to win VIP tickets to a 2011 Yankee game in MasterCard’s exclusive Batter’s Eye Café.

The program will challenge fans to find the seats — which sport names like Doubleheader, Chin Music and Triple Play — around the city. The chairs will be placed at locations like Katz’s Deli, Murray’s Bagels, Junior’s and the New York Stock Exchange. The program runs all month.

The initiative, created by digital marketing agency R/GA, is part of the larger MasterCard Priceless New York program, which aims to differentiate MasterCard by offering consumers one-of-a-kind experiences. New York is the first city spotlighted in the MasterCard Priceless Cities program.

The partnership with Facebook Places also comes as rival American Express launched a program with Foursquare in June that lets card members get loyalty card-like credit when they check in.

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HOW TO: Claim Your Business On Facebook Places

June 27, 2011 By Sarah Kessler Leave a Comment


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Facebook Places is essentially free word-of-mouth advertising for your business. When customers check in, they’ll automatically be telling their Facebook friends about it. If you run a small business with a street entrance, there’s a good chance that it’s already a part of Facebook Places — with or without your input.

By claiming your Page, you have the opportunity to customize that free advertising. It also makes it easy to purchase pay-per-click advertising for your Places page.

Here’s how to get started.


1. Add Your Business To Facebook Places




Open the Facebook app on your mobile phone. Depending on which device you have, you'll either hit "Places" or "Check In" on the home screen of the app. Type the name of your business in the search bar. If there's no listing for your business, there will be an option in the search results menu to add it. You can do so by adding a description and selecting "add."

If your business has already been added to Facebook Places, you can skip this step.


2. Search For Your Business On Facebook




Open Facebook on your desktop and search for your business. Click on the Places result.


3. Claim Your Place




Beneath the image on the Places page there is a hyperlink that says, "Is this your business?" If it is, you can click it to start the verification process.


4. Verify Your Listing




Before Facebook will let you edit the page, they ask for either a business email address or a document that has your name and business' name on it. After you supply either, it can take as long as a week for Facebook to confirm your request.

Important Questions

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5 Creative Facebook Places Marketing Campaigns

January 10, 2011 By Leyl Master Black Leave a Comment


The Facebook Marketing Series is supported by Buddy Media, Power Tools for Facebook. Download Buddy Media’s free whitepaper, “The Playbook for a Global Facebook Strategy.” Learn proven strategies and tactics to manage your Facebook presence worldwide.

Facebook Places, Facebook’s location-based feature that launched in August, allows Facebook users to see where their friends are and to share their locations in the real world. It has also become another powerful Facebook marketing tool for businesses, who can design campaigns around the checkin service to build awareness, grow their fan base and engage and reward customers.

Each time a Facebook user checks in to a particular location on Facebook Places, Facebook broadcasts the checkin to that user’s friends’ news feeds. This is not only viral marketing for the company — it also allows businesses to provide incentives for people to come to their physical locations or events.

Although the service has only been around for a few months, quite a few companies have already begun integrating Facebook Places into their marketing programs. Here are five great examples that illustrate different ways companies can use Facebook Places, from offering simple discounts for checkins to multi-step rewards programs.

1. Discounts for Checkins: Westfield Valley Fair

A simple but powerful way to use Facebook Places is to reward fans for every checkin.

Westfield Valley Fair, a premium shopping center based in Santa Clara, CA, wanted to use Facebook Places to bring more shoppers into the center and to promote its merchants. The company worked with social media marketing company Fan Appz to launch a location-based marketing program that gives shoppers valuable merchant coupons when they check in at the Westfield center.

In its initial campaign, Westfield enticed shoppers with a 15% off coupon at Betsey Johnson if they visited and checked in at the shopping center, which the company reports has driven an increase in checkins. They’ve since introduced a number of other offers, including a 25% off coupon at Gap.

2. Leveraging Events: Electronic Arts UK

Events provide a ripe opportunity for companies to use checkins to promote their brands. Electronic Arts UK, for example, recently worked with creative agency Imperial Leisure Ltd to launch a Facebook Places campaign around the Electronic Arts Christmas tour “Play4Xmas,” leveraging six events at shopping malls across the UK in November and December. People attending the events are encouraged to check in at each event for a chance to win up to 10 games per day.

The Facebook Places campaign has already helped turn fans at the events into advocates, with events to date generating many hundreds of checkins and tens of thousands of free brand impressions in attendee news feeds.

3. Creating Event-Specific Places: Onitsuka Tiger by Asics

Onitsuka Tiger by Asics also used Facebook Places in a brand marketing campaign as part of its sponsorship of the Sydney Bicycle Film Festival, working with retail marketing agency IdeaWorks.

The strategy was to make the Onitsuka Tiger brand a key engagement point at each of the 10 events of the four-day festival. To do this, the team visited each venue to create unique Facebook Places, naming them as “Onitsuka Tiger Check In Points,” so that when festival-goers were prompted to check in, they’d be checking in at the “Onitsuka Tiger Check In Point @ The BFF” instead of at the venue.

Attendees were then asked to check in with Facebook Places at three of the event locations and answer a question on the Onitsuka Tiger Facebook Page for a chance to win a custom bike as well as Onitsuka Tiger gear. The company has shared publicly that more than 50% of attendees at the first event checked in; if this is any indication of the rest of the program, the campaign looks to have been a huge hit.

4. Daily Checkins: University of Kentucky

Just weeks after Facebook Places was announced, the University of Kentucky saw an opportunity to use the collective reach of its student’s networks to build awareness among prospective students.

Working with its ad agency, Cornett-IMS, the university installed giant, wooden Facebook icons in the university’s signature blue on its campus to encourage students to check in at different locations around the school every day. Each student checkin shows up in the students’ news feed, which the university hopes will be seen day after day by thousands of the students’ friends who are still in high school and boost their recruiting efforts.

The university reports that the campaign has already created a good deal of conversation on the campus and its seen a large number of people checking in while on campus and at sporting events.

The university is also using this campaign as a way to educate students about online privacy and responsible use of location-tracking services.

5. Facebook Places Leader Boards: VisitBritain

VisitBritain, the UK tourism promotion agency, and Betapond, a Facebook and social technology development company, recently launched a Facebook Places program that uses a leader board (among other tactics) to promote various UK landmarks and the country as a whole.

The program encourages visitors to check in every time they reach a notable British location and write a review of what they find. This information then automatically updates a “Top 50 UK Places” leader board on VisitBritain’s LoveUK Facebook Page.

Dubbed “a global guest book” for Britain, VisitBritain hopes the leader board will become an influential barometer showing shifts in opinion about the UK’s most popular icons, landscapes and attractions.

The program has already driven tens of thousands of checkins in just a few weeks, with more than 250,000 visits to the Top 50 Places page. VisitBritain’s fan numbers have also spiked by 34% since the start of the campaign.

Getting Started

If you’re thinking about launching your own Facebook Places program, here are four simple steps to get started.

  1. Find, create and claim your Place Page. Search nearby Places to find your business; if it’s not already added, you can add it manually. You then need to “claim” your business so you can edit relevant information.
  2. Merge Facebook Places with your Facebook Page. This ensures that anyone who has “Liked” your Facebook Page will be connected to your Places Page; it enables you to manage offers, links, status updates and more from one location; and adds new features such as maps and checkins to your main Facebook Page.
  3. Encourage checkins. Use your existing social media vehicles to promote your presence on Facebook Places and even consider signage at your physical location. Consider spicing up the competitive spirit of your work force by encouraging employees to check in when they come to work, too.
  4. Reward customers for checking in. Just as you might run an offline seasonal sale or special offer, take advantage of third-party tools to run specials and reward customers who check in with discounts, coupons or deals. Hopefully these five campaign examples will have given you some ideas!
Series supported by the Buddy Media Platform

The Facebook Marketing Series is supported by Buddy Media, Power Tools for Facebook. Download Buddy Media’s free whitepaper, “The Playbook for a Global Facebook Strategy.” Learn proven strategies and tactics to manage your Facebook presence worldwide.

More Facebook Marketing Resources from Mashable:

- The Biggest Brands on Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]
- 5 New Ways to Market Your Brand on Facebook
- Top 5 Emerging Brand Trends on Facebook
- 8 Quick Tips for Developing a Facebook Marketing Strategy
- 4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook

Images Courtesy of University of Kentucky

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Checking In to Gap on Facebook Could Get You Free Jeans

November 5, 2010 By Lauren Indvik Leave a Comment


Gap plans to give away 10,000 pairs of jeans to those who check in to any men’s and women’s Gap U.S. retail location using Facebook’s new Deals feature, which allows users to earn special discounts when checking in to different businesses via Facebook Places on their smartphones.

After checking in via Facebook Places (which can be done through Facebook’s official iPhone app [iTunes link] or by visiting touch.facebook.com if you’re on an Android device), participants will need to show their checkin to a Gap employee for a chance at a free pair.

This is just one of a number of mobile and social media-based campaigns Gap has launched in recent months to get shoppers into its stores. In August, Gap partnered with daily deals site Groupon to offer $50 worth of Gap merchandise for $25, selling 441,000 Groupons in total and smashing previous sales records in the process. Gap also offered 25% discounts to all shoppers who checked in to a retail location via location-based social network Foursquare that same month.

What do you think of the promotion? Do you plan to stop into a Gap store today for a chance at a free pair?

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Top 3 Stories in Social Media, Tech and Business

October 29, 2010 By Christina Warren Leave a Comment


Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.

Facebook is Testing a Places-Powered Deals Service?

According to Nick O’Neill at All Facebook, Facebook is testing a new “Facebook Deals” service that is integrated into Facebook Places.

This would give businesses the ability to provide discounts and specials when a customer checks in to a physical store. Facebook has declined to comment on the purported e-mail from one of the companies testing the service, and there are some inconsistencies in the e-mail’s wording that make us less than 100% sure that this is entirely accurate. However, the idea makes an enormous amount of sense.

For more than a year, we’ve been talking about how the real potential of location-based services is at the hyper-local level. The success of companies like Groupon and the growing number of deals and sponsorships adopted by companies like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt makes it even more clear that this is a trend that is becoming more enticing by the day.

It only seems natural that Facebook would assert its social graph to offer businesses and users a synergistic experience to incentivize checkins.

NOOKcolor Processor Revealed

When the NOOKcolor was unveiled earlier this week, Barnes & Noble did a pretty solid job of laying out the technical specifications of the device, with one exception — the processor.

Engadget has confirmed that the NOOKcolor features a Texas Instruments ARM Cortex A8-based chip running at 800MHz. We still don’t know how much RAM the unit has, but coupled with an IPS-backlit capacitive touchscren and the underpinnings of Android 2.1, this $250 device just might turn out to be the Android tablet hackers and modders have dreamed of.

YouTube CEO to Step Down

WebProNews reports that YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley will be stepping down from his post and assuming an advisory role at the company. Hurley made the announcement at the F.ounders conference in Ireland.

As WebProNews notes, Hurley was the last of the YouTube co-founders to retain close ties with the company after selling it to Google for $1.65 billion. At F.ounders, Hurley said, “Right now I am in the process of transitioning into the role of adviser, stepping down, still being involved in the company but it’s given me an opportunity to work on new projects.”

Google’s Salar Kamngar has been handling much of the day-to-day business for YouTube for the past several years and he is the most likely person to assume Hurley’s position (assuming Google decides to keep the CEO spot).

Further News

Reviews: Android, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Gowalla, Windows, YouTube

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Don’t Get Robbed: Burglars Use Facebook to Pick Targets

September 11, 2010 By Samuel Axon Leave a Comment


People said it would happen with Foursquare, it may have already happened with Twitter, and now the trend has continued on Facebook: Burglars in Nashua, New Hampshire looked at updates from Facebook to figure out when one target wasn’t at home.

Police caught three young men who had used “social networking sites like Facebook to identify victims who posted online that they would not be home at a certain time,” according to local news station WMUR 9.

That said, don’t jump to conclusions. The burglars weren’t using the new Facebook Places location system, despite implications by The Huffington Post and other web publications. Facebook released the following statement published by NECN:

We’ve been in contact with the Nashua police, and they confirmed that they while they have an ongoing investigation and have already made a number of arrests, the only Facebook link was that one of those arrested had a Facebook friend who posted about leaving town in the near future (which is why they believe that home was targeted) and it had nothing to do with Facebook Places. The police confirmed that the other burglaries had nothing to do with Facebook altogether.

These particular burglars performed more than 50 burglaries but they didn’t use Facebook Places, and they may have only targeted one person by looking at his Facebook page. But it goes to show that you should be careful even if you’re using Facebook’s privacy settings to make your updates viewable only to friends.

We’ve heard speculation that burglars would use Facebook status updates to target people in the past, but this time it looks like it’s not just talk. So let this be a warning: Be careful what you include in your social media updates.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Fertnig

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