Finding the right people to follow on Twitter can offer a real competitive advantage in many lines of work. Some people are very good at it, they are super connected and they find great people to follow. Now a new service built on top of Twitter lets you ride the coat tails of those well-connected people and easily follow whoever they add as friends on Twitter, too.

Thorsten Zoerner is an IBM product marketing manager based in Germany. He's built a wonderful little service called RSSFriends that really fills a niche and makes some very powerful things easy to do. RSSFriends offers an RSS feed of new people that any Twitter account begins following or anyone that stops following a designated account. Here are three ways I've begun using this service.

Sponsor

1. Finding the Friends of the Famous & Influential

I don't want to creep anyone out, but if you're someone I think is really interesting and has interesting taste in friends - I may be getting an IM now with the Twitter username of everyone you start to follow. For the past week I've been tracking a number of interesting people with RSSFriends feeds run through the RSS to IM service Notify.me. It's pretty interesting.

I get a handful of messages throughout the day that say things like "Person X that you are tracking just made friends with Person Y." Then I look at Person Y and in many cases, I start following them too. It's pretty great.

2. Show Off Your Taste in Friends

[...]

Tue Feb 23, 2010 10:45 am

Last year, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada investigated Facebook as a result of several complaints.  Then the Privacy Commissioner made some recommendations, Facebook followed them, and all in all, both sides remained quite friendly.  Only now another probe's been launched, and the privacy advocate sounds less patient this time.

This investigation was prompted by another user complaint, and Assistant Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham (who led the original inquiry) explained in a statement, "The individual's complaint mirrors some of the concerns that our Office has heard and expressed to Facebook in recent months."

Apparently the complaint came as a result of the reworked privacy controls that Facebook introduced not too long ago.  As more than a few bloggers noticed, Facebook's recommended settings would in certain cases cause users to share more information than they had in the past.

Facebook may not have too much to fear, however.  As we noted in June of last year, Canada's privacy commissioner is only able to make recommendations, and not collect fines or create laws.

Plus, since the privacy controls changeover is pretty well in the past, it's hard to see any point in making a fuss over it now.

Anyway, according to the official statement, "The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada will investigate the complaint it has received, while continuing to follow up with Facebook as it introduces new changes to its site."

Facebook hasn't yet responded to the new development.

Related Articles:

/> [...]

Sat Jan 30, 2010 09:15 am

This is a fun story.

Andrew McLaughlin, formerly Google's top lobbyist and currently the Deputy CTO in the White House, where he advises President Barack Obama on Internet policy, apparently was aghast to find his contacts exposed by Google Buzz.

Buzz is the social Web services that leverages Gmail users' contacts. By default, Buzz was built to expose users contacts on their Google profile.

This didn't sit well with many people. Privacy group EPIC complained. A class-action lawsuit was filed.

The FTC is looking into the matter. Google made many changes to assuage users concerned about their privacy. But some damage had already been done.

Take McLaughlin's case from Andrew Breitbart's Big Government blog.

McLaughlin's Buzz profile, which has since been made private after he appealed to help from Google and others on Buzz, includes almost 30 Googlers, including product managers, Google senior lobbyists and lawyers. The blog noted:

So, is he now shaping such policy by conferring outside of official White House e-mail channels with the scads of Google lobbyists in his Gmail li/> [...]

Fri Apr 02, 2010 10:35 am

---

Um, Your Microphone is On: How a Raleigh Bakery Screwed the Pooch

Share |

Nothing we say online is private. If you post something to your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Flickr page, the world can know about it. When you communicate via a social media portal, it is the equivalent of being at a crowded party with a microphone. Everyone has a microphone at this party, but not everyone is using theirs. So when someone approaches you at this party and whispers in your ear that you've done something to offend them, try not to call them the "C word" by shouting through your microphone. You see, the record will scratch and the party will come to a halt. People don't like to be offended, and when you offend one person online, you offend A LOT of people online. Here's what happened on Tuesday with a little Raleigh, NC bakery that has been a shining example of how a small business should NOT do social media.

Crumbs, Cakes, and other "C" Words

Crumb is a lil' bakery with attitude. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. In fact, this Indy article seems to make the bakery feel like just the type of hip/edgy/tasty place we need in The Triangle. Heck, just the description of the cupcakes make them sound like some of the most awesome things ever: Chupacabra, anyone? (Stout cake with raspberry tequila filling and Patrón XO buttercream. WHAT?!?) But for as well as the proprietors of Crumb seem to understand making delectabl/> [...]

Fri Jun 04, 2010 08:20 am

---