Jewish & World News

Facebook removed a page featuring anti-Jewish content, including a photo of murdered Jews in a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen with the headline "Lazy Jews." In response to a formal complaint by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Mia Garlick, Facebook's Sydney-based manager of communications and policy, confirmed Saturday that the Jewish memes page was no longer available.

More and more people are taking a break from Facebook. But not many are getting $200 for the effort. Count Rachel Baier in that exclusive group. The 14-year-old made a deal with her father, Paul. If Rachel stayed off of Facebook for five months, she'd find herself $200 richer.

All those pet cat profiles add up: Facebook has reported that roughly 76 million of the 1.06 billion user accounts on its social network are bogus in some way or other. The company identifies three types of accounts that don't represent actual users: duplicate accounts, misclassified accounts and undesirable accounts. Together, they added up to just over 7 percent of its worldwide monthly active users last year.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah marked his 52nd birthday last week, and 7,000 Facebook users joined an event opened on the social network in celebration of his special day. The Facebook event was organized by several of Nasrallah's young fans. According to Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, the page was quickly flooded with greetings in honor of the Hezbollah chief's birthday.

A new study conducted by chipmaker company Intel finds that British Facebook users are more concerned about looking physically attractive than appearing intelligent. According to the chipmaker, 56 percent of the 4,374 people questioned admitted they’re more concerned about their physical appearance in photos, while those in other European countries and the Middle East care more for intelligence.

Facebook has removed pages created by Hezbollah and its television station, Al-Manar, over incitement to violence, the Daily Star reported Sunday. The social networking giant thus followed recommendations by the US State Department. The latter included Hezbollah on its list of terror organization in 2004; adding it TV station to the list in 2006.

It's been suggested that what you post about yourself on Facebook and other social media sites could torpedo your job application. Now a, in-depth study of employers from six different industries confirms it. The study reveals that many employers are using the Facebook profiles of job candidates to filter out weaker applicants based on perception of lifestyle, attitudes and personal appearance. In other words, it could keep you from making the final cut.

Facebook may be more populous, but Google+ is better-liked. That's the message from a new set of data released Tuesday by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Google+, the 1-year-old social network that pundits declared dead last year, ties Wikipedia at the top of the list of social media sites, with a score of 78 out of 100.

Israelis may not be allowed to travel to Iran, but Israelis and Iranians plan on meeting in virtual reality in the most recent grassroots attempt to build civil society ties between the two peoples. A Facebook invitation to the "ISRAEL ♥ IRAN PEACE & LOVE World gathering" set for 6:00 p.m. Jerusalem time invites thousands of users to enter a virtual Facebook platform where Israeli and Iranians can meet, talk, and "drink." You can join the event here .

Yahoo Inc., the onetime online advertising juggernaut dethroned by Facebook Inc., is suing the social networking giant over 10 patents that include ways to advertise on the Web. The lawsuit filed in San Jose federal court Monday marks the first major patent battle in social networking. It comes as Facebook prepares to go public this spring in one of the most hotly anticipated stock market debuts in years. In a statement, Yahoo said it is confident it will prevail.

Spies opened a bogus Facebook account for U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, NATO's supreme allied commander, and tricked senior British officers and defense officials into "friending" it, allowing access to private email addresses, phone numbers and photos, the Sunday Telegraph newspaperreported on its website. The Observer newspaper said there had been multiple such attacks aimed at Stavridis, and the Sunday Telegraph said military officers and diplomats were told the evidence pointed to "state-sponsored individuals in China."

To hear Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page tell it, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social networking space, with 90 million users registering since its June launch. But those numbers mask what's really going on at Google+.     It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there.

In the wake of a disaster, one of the most terrifying things is not knowing if your loved ones are safe. Contact can be difficult: Landlines can go down and cellphones can lose their charge. Even if you call your mother and tell her you’re safe, you still have a large network of friends and family that might still be worried about you. That’s why Facebook’s new Disaster Message Board makes sense. Right now it’s only being tested in Japan, which is still dealing with the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

Facebook users’ opinions about the 2012 elections may soon go from private to very, very public thanks to a new app that will showcase their views on a giant billboard in Times Square. The app, called 2012 Matters: What Matters Most, will avoid asking users to endorse or reveal affiliations with any particular party or candidate, focusing instead on issues from a list compiled by Reuters.

A virtual peace conference for Jewish and Arab young leaders was held on Facebook. Monday's conference was sponsored by the Yala Young Leaders' group, which seeks to promote dialogue among Israelis, Palestinians and Americans, and the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv. The Yala Facebook page has more than 40,000 members, mostly from the Middle East .

Your last words no longer have to come from your Hospice bed. Now, you can post them on Facebook after you have passed on. The "If I Die" app lets you send your last wishes and post messages to your friends after you have died. It works like this: Install the app, then choose three "trustees," i.e. Facebook friends, you want in charge of verifying your death. You can then record videos and write posts that can be posted posthumously. Once your trustees confirm your death the postings can be sent all at once or posted/sent on a designated schedule, Mashable reported.

A nasty bit of malware making the rounds on Facebook has reportedly made off with the usernames and passwords of more than 45,000 users. Most of those affected by the worm--called Ramnit--are from France and the United Kingdom , according to a bulletin issued by security researchers at Seculert. It is capable of infecting Windows executables, Microsoft Office, and HTML files, according to McAfee.

People are using Facebook these days for a lot more than looking at friends' photos or playing addictive word games. Facebook and other social media sites are quickly becoming a go-to place to find a generous person with a kidney to spare. Damon Brown, 38, found a kidney on Facebook after telling his story on a page the Seattle dad created under the name, "Damon Kidney." His friends and family forwarded the link to everyone they knew and on Jan. 3 a woman his wife has known for years, but not someone they consider a close family friend, will be giving him a kidney. "She said it wasn't really for me," Brown said. "It was for my kids, because they deserve to have a dad around."

As Google works to make its Google+ social network a major competitor to market leader Facebook, the battle between the two could reach a critical point in 2012, analysts say. Facebook, the world's largest social network, and Google, the world's largest Internet company, are increasingly going head-to-head in a battle to be the top social media player and get the big advertising dollars that go with the position.

Social networking site Facebook has grown to become the biggest social networking site in the world with more than 800 million active users, but just how popular is it with users living around the globe? “Facebook currently has more than 800 million active users. With a world population having just passed the 7 billion barrier, that would mean that around 11% of people on Earth are on Facebook,” said market analyst firm Pingdom in a December 28 post on its Royal Pingdom blog, but added that “[T]hat’s of course not necessarily true, as there are organizations and businesses that have Facebook accounts, and some individuals may have more than one, but it’s a staggering number nonetheless.”