NEW! The 2012 edition of ‘A Parents’ Guide to Facebook’

I am pleased to announce that we at ConnectSafely.org have just released the 2012 edition of our Parents’ Guide to Facebook. It’s already being translated into Arabic and Spanish. Since Release 1.0 of the Guide a little over a year ago (this one is a full 2.0), Facebook has made a lot of changes – including Timeline (the page formerly known as “profile”), more and more “in-line privacy controls” (i.e., pick your audience as you post), and Social Reporting (see this). So the pressure was on for us to get this revision out not long after the first release! Why all the changes? Well, the explanation seems to lie in Facebook’s corporate philosophy. According to my Parents’ Guide co-author Larry Magid in his Forbes.com coverage of Facebook’s IPO this week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote about “the Hacker Way” in his letter to prospective investors, saying that “hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it – often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.” Interestingly, Larry’s own son Will, a fantastic musician, said something very similar from a nightclub stage last week. He said that a song is never done. It’s always being added to as it’s played time and again by different artists. So those of us who follow and document the work of creative people – whether they write code, music or poetry – just have to stay on our toes!

We’ve gotten thousands of requests for paper booklets over the past year, and – thanks to our generous supporter Trend Micro – we’ve been able to fulfill most of those requests. And it looks like we’ll be able to do that again this year. Meanwhile, check out the PDF version and tell us what you think (via admin[at]connectsafely.org).