Last month I talked about how a woman was arrested for poking somebody on Facebook for violating the terms of a protection agreement.

Now, according to an article in the New York Times, a Facebook status message left by 19-year old teenager Rodney Bradford has proved to be his alibi, after being charged with a robbery.

The message of Rodney asking where his pancakes were was left at 11.49am. It was one of those typical Facebook messages that pretty much means nothing to anybody but the poster - but it became crucial when he was arrested for a robbery in Brooklyn.

Facebook was called to confirm that those words were indeed typed from a computer at the home of Rodney father, and  when the social network did that, the charges were dropped.

“This is the first case that I’m aware of in which a facebook update has been used as alibi evidence,” Dallas lawyer John G. Bowing was quoted as saying. “We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.”

Although it is funny to think that a status update can be used as an alibi, I don’t think it’s anything anymore to be surprised about. With courts more inclined to take electronic evidence and the fact we carry mobile phones with us everywhere we go, electronic tracking can find out an awful lot about us - not just about where we are.

To some extent, our use of GPS and our relationship with companies like Google and Facebook means that we are always connected up. We’ve seen films like Enemy of the State - electronic devices can make us guilty just as much as they could find us innocent.

Understandably there are privacy concerns - but I guess that’s the price you play for being connected at all times - and maybe like in Rodney’s case it could actually help you.

Being the Facebook junkie that I am, I’ve been playing a lot of the applications as I am generally quite a sad person. However, there was a bit of security news today that perhaps maybe should convince me that I need to be a little bit more careful.

Roger Thompson, chief research officer for security firm AVG, writes in a blog post about an attack which looks more serious than the usual way that social networks can sometimes link to hacked sites.

He says that actual Facebook applications are being hacked - not by the actual developers of the apps but bad guys looking to piggy back on their popularity.

He used an example of an app called CityFireDepartment, an online game where a player is supposed to play a role at being a fireman.

Once you have added the app, instead of playing the game the victim is presented with a fake Adobe licence agreement, followed by spyware downloaded onto the computer if you are unpatched.

At first Thompson and his team believed it was a deliberate hack by the developers, but it was actually caused by a outsider who has an iframe into the source code.

The line of malicious code changes once a day, and calls to a different exploit site.

He said: “Initially, we thought that the applications were deliberately acting as lures, but it now seems to us that they are victims themselves.

“The difficult part for them will be to find and plug the hole that the data snatchers are using to hack the applications.”

He names the other Facebook apps affected as MyGirlySpace, Ferrarifone, Mashpro, Mynameis, Pass-it-on, Filinthe and Aquariumlife.

Some very interesting news from America. A woman has been arrested for poking somebody on Facebook.

You probably need a little more background to the story. According to the Tennessean, 36-year old Sharon Jackson was arrested for violating the terms of a protection order when she gave somebody the poke, which banned Jackson from “telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”

Although police have been called in to stop forms of online harassment, it seems to be one of the first cases where somebody has been taken in simply for poking somebody.

According to the report, police have made copies of the pages where the alleged victim was poked. Because she broke an order of protection by doing it, she can be punished with a jail sentence of up to a year.

Poking is a uniquely Facebook feature and is taken by different people to mean different things. Some people take it to mean flirting -  hence the existence of a group called ’stop with the poking, let’s just have sex’.

Facebook itself says its simply a way for friends to interact with each other, and doesn’t actually have any specific purpose. It’s up to somebody to interpret it any way that they want. But the majority of people take it to mean saying ‘hello’ or nudging somebody for attention.

With the woman who was arrested for the poke, there’s obviously reasons why it happened. She was violating a protection order for one thing - sure it was just an online nudge, but there’s no real difference from calling her up and not saying anything on the phone.

The victim obviously didn’t want attention from the poker, and if you think about it this could be taken to mean something far more sinister - poking, jabbing, knifing?

It is interesting about how social networks are rising up as a form of communication ahead of things like the telephone and email, and is also interesting when it comes to thinking about online privacy, which I have been looking at closely in the last few months.

Ever felt the urge to grow some vegetables? Plant some seeds? Milk some cows? - apparently millions of you Facebook users do.

According to statistics, we are all are a nation of virtual farmers - Farmville is the most popular application on Facebook with a massive 35 million users.

If you haven’t played it before, it’s where you control a computerised farmer whose job it is to tend and grow their own farm. As you plant more crops, get more money and more experience,  you can buy different stuff like tractors, fences and buildings.

I don’t know whether it was just boredom or an example of how dead my life has become, but I started playing it recently. I thought it was cute - I don’t have a games system so maybe I was trying to replace it with something. (I was in a past-life a World of Warcrafter).

It is a strange experience playing this game. I don’t actually know how much ‘enjoyment’ I’m getting out of planting crops and watching them grow, but I keep clicking back on it. Maybe I’m just on Facebook so can’t resist clicking on a link and checking out how my little spiky-haired asian farmer is doing. Alas.

Personally I find Mafia Wars more exciting. It’s written by the same company Zynga, and its a bit like one of those role-playing games you played as a kid where you build up your stats and experience and level up. Here you rob pimps, mug old people, buy big tommy guns and build up Mafia-owned shopping centres.

Anyway, that’s the game I’m mostly on. I’ve got around 21 mafia friends made up from Facebook buddies. I’m not sure what this says about me, but I would say its addictive and as Farmville, its easy to play when you are one click away on Facebook.

There’s similar games to get on the iPhone - but I don’t think that’ll work. Not enough iPhone buddies to be in my gang you see. I like the community aspect- especially when I get presents like shivs and revolvers.

Although you’d think they were big rivals, Facebook said it has listened to people who have asked that it work better with Twitter when it came to sharing its content.

Facebook is releasing a new feature that allows administrators on Facebook Pages (which are used for businesses and organisations), to publish their Facebook updates to Twitter automatically.

It’s been possible for a long while for Twitter users to copy their posts to Facebook profiles, but not the other way round.

However it doesn’t go as far as allowing normal users to copy their statuses to Twitter. Some have speculated that Facebook are worried about losing out to Twitter, especially when it has its own version of real-time updating.

It comes quite soon after Facebook bought the feed aggregating app Friendfeed, which allows users to bring all their social networking sites together.

One of the most amazing stories I’ve heard in a while.

The wife of the new head of the MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service no less, thought that it would be a good idea to expose personal photographs of their family, the location of their flat as well as the identities of friends and close associates!

Looking deeper into he story, it’s probably not as bad as it sounds. For instance, the news of the appointment of Sir John Sawers is not the secret it would likely to have been in the past. His name was known and the government were completely open about his appointment.

Nevetheless, MI6 employees are still bound by strict secrecy guidelines, and you would probably expect anybody that close to the head of British secret intelligence to think twice about opening a Facebook account.

It’s also extremely embarrassing to the government, as it’s only recently that the government released its national cyber security strategy.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, I have doubts over the adequacy of Lord West as Minister of Cyber Security - from what I’ve just seen I have should have big doubts about the technology awareness of the secret intelligence services as well.

As Sophos security analyst Graham Cluley says in his blog post, three quarters of Facebook people allow their profiles to be viewed by any other member, even if they weren’t friends.

For Lady Shelley Sawers, she’s probably learned the risks of Facebook and social networking too late.

Professor Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said that the Sawers family would almost certainly need to be re-housed and the children may require extra protection.

Anyway, in answer to the first question - A real spy wouldn’t really advertise his existence on a social network.

But James Bond probably would, considering he gives his name out to everybody he meets and doesn’t really keep his identity that secret. In fact I’ve searched for James Bond on Facebook - turns out there’s quite a few!

It was getting late and I was surfing around the web on my Macbook as I usually do, and suddenly i picked up a few tweets that concerned Michael Jackson…

It was probably the first time I’ve really been involved in using social networking to see up a news story progress to such a degree. I’ve written before on the power of social networking when it came to events in Iran, I’ve used Tweetdeck to pick on the odd news story, and I’m in charge of looking after our Twitter feed.

But yesterday was different. It was TMZ.com that first picked up on Michael’s death at 5.20pm, and it took a while for the internet to fully comprehend and confirm that he did indeed die.

Of course it was Twitter that had the buzz as people tried to figure out what was going on from various news tweeters,and Twitter users used each other to find out what was actually going on.

As confirmation and more info came out then Facebook started to get buzzy as people I knew suddenly came out with real-time status updates about how they felt about what was going on and commented one each other’s statuses.. Exactly what Facebook was looking for when it first implemented real-time.

Then it was the news websites like Guardian and BBC, which you couldn’t help notice seemed very behind, as of course it’s easier to come out with a one-line statement than to confirm and write copy, especially that late at night.

Being the security hound for IT PRO I also noticed that the security tweeters were also coming out with their usual ‘beware of Michael Jackson spam’ - before they actually came out with confirmation of his death!

I’m not naming names and I’m not your biggest MJ fan, but I thought that was a little low. Maybe wait a bit longer to push your anti-spam agenda? In my head it seemed they were doing exactly the same thing - trying to promote themselves on the back on somebody’s death.

Anyway personal feeling? I felt sadder when Heath Ledger died because he was young and it was like potential was snuffed out. Michael Jackson had his time and we will always have his legacy. Of course, any death is tragic.

Social networkers are leaving MySpace in their droves, while the sites like Facebook and Twitter are going from strength to strength.

According to statistics from Comscore, MySpace had 124 million unique visits and decreased by two per cent, while Facebook is up to 276 million visits - an increase of 16. 6 per cent.

Three senior executives including its chief operating officer have left or are leaving, and Facebook is over twice the size of MySpace.

So why is MySpace doing so badly? I still have an account, but I’m rarely on it anymore - it feels too tacky and young for me personally, and I get all what I need from a social network from Facebook and Twitter.

But that’s a completely personal view… here are ten other reasons why MySpace could be in freefall (or why I think it sucks).

1 The design

I’ve never liked it very much, and it hasn’t really changed in the time I’ve been there. And for some reason, MySpace users have this habit of creating really garish, childish designs which wouldn’t look out of place in preschool.

2 The user base

Is it me, or is MySpace frequented by pervs and 14 year old girls? Especially all those stars, glitter and cheesey pop/R and B theme music.

3 Cam whores

I like Facebook pics because they are natural and of me doing stuff (be it drunk or otherwise). MySpace seems to be a place to post really crap webcam taken pictures of people pouting, or really classy photoshopped ones that have no resemblance to what people look like in reality.

4  Phished accounts

It’s a real pain when Holly 21, from Californina, blonde with big boobs, asks you to be her friend cos she likes getting wild with strangers. Maybe not in real life I guess, but in cyber geek world it’s just irritating.

 5 Bulletins and surveys

I don’t care what you’re first boyfriend’s name is, what your best friend looks like or how much you love Japanese emo rock or whatever its called.

6 It’s got a blog by Paris Hilton

Oh shut up. Why the hell would anyone need to know about your engagement or a fight because you couldn’t get your way with putting on some music?

 7 Chain letters

Nobody cares about these things and nobody believes them apart from idiots. Just don’t post the next link in the chain and die of some unspecified disease - it’ll be better for everybody.

8  Wannabe bands

Sorry wannabe rock stars, but I’m not going to add your unoriginal indie band music or be your friend. I don’t care about half the bands I actually hear every day so why the hell am I going to like you?

9 Random adding

This is what MySpace is for I guess, but being on Facebook so long I’ve realised I have enough friends. And I probably won’t add you because you are younger than my socks.

10 Corporate ownership

MySpace is owned by News International, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sun. Enough said.

Last Friday Liverpool Street Station was forced to close after a reported 13,000 people congregated to take part in a silent disco, organised using the social networking website Facebook.

With a crowd listening to music through headphones, they all broke into dance at 7pm in a scene imitating a T-Mobile advert that was filmed at the station last month. Police had to close the station for more than an hour due to overcrowding fears, while people partied on with antics including crowdsurfing, stripping and climbing of station furniture.

It isn’t the first time this a flashmob (when a large group of people assemble in a public place and perform an unusual action) has caused a ruckus - the social networking phenomenon has made it possible for a while now. Here are five of the best.

 1 Worldwide Pillow Fight Day

This was the largest pillow fight flashmob ever, taking place on March 22 last year. Over 25 countries took part, including London, New York, Paris and even Shanghai. The rules were self explanatory - in London thousands of people brought a pillow to Leicester Square to whack each other for a good period of time. Yelling “Pillow Fight!” at the top of your voice was a necessity. “If this is your first time at Pillow Fight Club - you have to fight.”

Video of the Pillow Fight Club

2  Leeds and London Hyde Park water fight flashmob

These are up here mainly because they went very wrong. An open invitation on Facebook resulted in thousands of pounds worth of damage to the city’s prize winning public garden. According to the council it resulted in trampled plants,ripped up turf and emptied water features. In July last year one in Hyde Park, London resulted in a girl being punched in the face!

Leeds Water Fight

3  The Rick Astley Rickrolling flashmob

Back in April last year, hundreds of people arranged on Facebook before 6pm at Liverpool Street Station to indulge in a rendition of Rick Astley’s trademark hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Some had Rick Astley masks on, and continued with the internet ‘Rickrolling’ trend, where millions of users have been tricked into watching Astley’s 80’s pop video classic.

All together now: “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you!”

The London Rickmob footage

4 Flashmob - The Opera

The first Flashmob opera of the Orpheus story was performed in October 2004 in Paddington Station, London, one of Britain’s busiest railway stations. It was screened live on BBC Three with the aid of a flashmob. Soloists performed around the concourse, to commuters bemusement. Another was performed in Sheffield in 2005, showing a version of Faust.

5 The Flashmob chicken dance

No explanations are necessary, - just watch this video.