Gastonia native's obit: check out my Facebook page

Edith Anne Shuford Summey died May 1 of complications from open heart surgery, but judging from the obituary that ran in Sunday's Observer, the 69-year-old Gastonia native had a blast of a life. She loved scuba diving so much that she had two obit pictures -- one standard "dressed up" picture, and a second of her underwater in full scuba gear.

And, in keeping with the spirit of the times, her loved ones used her obit to invite everyone to check out her Facebook page, where you can click on a link to her website, which displays tons of pictures from her scuba-diving trips all over the world.

Looking at her pictures -- yes, those are really big sharks she's shooting -- you come away thinking: "What a great life!" And what a great use of social networks. Sharing at its best.

I sent her a friend request, just for the heck of it.

New Facebook privacy settings rolling in

So after all the fuss and furor over Facebook's privacy policies, the new privacy controls are rolling into users' Facebook pages. The alert hit my Facebook page yesterday, letting me know I had access to the new controls, and I finally got around to checking them out today.

My first impression? More of the controls have indeed been more conveniently grouped on a short series of screens, just as Facebook promised. But when you get right down to clicking through them, they didn't feel much different in substance from the old options. I also couldn't help but notice that Facebook's recommended settings, which would allow "everyone" to see my status updates, photos, posts, bio and family and relationships information, were a lot more public than the ones I'd previously customized. (I'd locked down everything except "bio and favorite quotations" so that only my friends could see).

Still, having all the information laid out in a more easily digestible format made me a little more comfortable with sharing, so I left the "instant personalization" feature on. (I'm nosy, I guess. I wouldn't mind seeing what my friends are finding interesting on sites I tend to visit).

I think because I labored through the old settings to customize them, perhaps that left me with less "new" to do when the new ones hit. And for whatever it's worth, I think Mark Zuckerberg's right -- people will share more eventually. But only if it's their choice, and only if they feel they're being dealt with honestly.

Have the new settings showed up on your page yet? Do they make you feel any more secure about what you're sharing and what people can see?

BP Twitter spoof building huge following

Have you seen the fake BP public relations tweets about the oil spill in the Gulf? I've been peeking in on @BPGlobalPR for the past couple of days at the satirical, sardonic and seriously un-PC tweets the account's creator has been sending out. (Animal lovers be warned: this person apparently never asks "is this in bad taste?" before hitting 'enter.')

Take one recent tweet. "Due to public outcry," it read, "our 'Spill or Be Spilled' Flash game will be taken off our BP Kidz Klub website. 'Smack the greasy manatee' stays."

Or the latest one (so far) today: "The oil leak was caused by a natural gas explosion, or sea fart, which is now having silent but deadly consequences. #bpseafart"

Some say this is all in extremely poor taste. Others call it dark humor at its finest. Either way, it's definitely a good example of how easily a company's brand can get hijacked on social networks. The spoof account has more than 97,000 followers, compared to fewer than 9,000 for the real BP Twitter feed, @BP_America. The real BP, apparently choosing to ignore the spoof, is tweeting serious-sounding updates about the effort to stop the oil spill.

People have been speculating about the identity of the spoof's creator, with some guessing it's a professional comedy writer type. Whoever it is, I suppose it won't be long before he or she's signing a book deal, a la Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons.

Just one more example of how, in the age of social media, anybody can grab the microphone, and God only knows what they'll choose to do with it.

Facebook unveils simpler new privacy controls

Well, the Facebook guys have unveiled their new privacy settings -- the simpler, more common-sense ones aimed at answering their many critics who accused them of trying to move too much personal information into the public realm.

Facebook heard, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement on the company's blog, and now Facebook is taking action. He rolled out a three-point plan. It says, in essence:

--There will be a single control to set who can see content you post. It will apply to new products Facebook launches going forward, so no need to have to figure all this out again. (Hallelujah!)

--They're reducing the amount of basic personal information that must be visible to everyone, and they're removing the connections privacy model, which automatically linked personal information like your hometown or work history or hobbies to other public pages on those subjects.

--They're creating an easy control to turn off all third-party applications. That includes turning off the "instant personalization" feature that stirred so much fuss. That would have allowed other sites, such as radio site Pandora, to look at your Facebook page and use your personal information (hobbies, habits, tastes) to customize its offerings to you.

Unless I missed it, one important thing the blog post doesn't seem to say: whether the most restrictive privacy settings will apply by default in all cases, allowing you to go to greater openness only if you so choose.

Without that, it would seem Facebook is leaving out one critical piece of the puzzle. Just my initial thoughts here. Read Zuckerberg's blog post and let me know what you think. Are they doing enough to satisfy your concerns?

Waitress fired for Facebook rant says no more publicity

Well, my little story in Monday's paper about former Charlotte Brixx pizza waitress Ashley Johnson sure did cause a stir.

The article about Johnson, who got fired after ranting about a bad tipper on Facebook, seems to have touched a nerve with readers. Well over 300 commented online. Some said she shouldn't have vented about her employer on Facebook. Others said Brixx's action was too drastic.

They weren't the only readers interested. The story seems to have gone viral, running on sites ranging from the Boston Herald's to Australia's Sky News to London's Daily Telegraph. Fox News and Inside Edition have asked to interview Johnson, not to mention several local TV and radio stations.

But Johnson, who initially contacted the Observer about her firing, told me in an e-mail last night that she has been stunned by the publicity and is reluctant to say anything else. She seemed a little hurt by some of the negative things people have said about her.

"I don't want to address the situation anymore," she wrote. "I'm getting more bad publicity than I ever dreamed of."

It seems with Facebook becoming a part of daily life in the digital age, everyone with a job and a boss fears writing the wrong thing in an unguarded moment. Johnson's story, I think, resonated at least in part because of those reasons. As one lawyer told me, it's best to think of your Facebook posts the same way you'd think of standing on a street corner with a sign and a Sharpie. If you wouldn't write it on the sign for fear of your boss hearing about it, don't write it on Facebook.

Note: Johnson's not the only waitress who has vented about bad tips online. Facebook has an entire page devoted to just that, with wait staff dishing out horror stories (and insults) aplenty. Warning to the faint of heart (or wallet) -- some of it's pretty brutal stuff...

Can 'startup culture' catch fire in Charlotte?

Ben Vandgrift, a software developer, has done the Big Company thing.

He worked for IBM and Sun Microsystems. He even worked for the Charlotte Observer. But a few years ago, he decided to go solo. His current project, a dating website called Flowmingle, hasn't exactly put Match.com on the run, though. He's considering revisions.

Though life as a tech entrepreneur has its headaches, he doesn't sound like he's going back to Corporate anytime soon.

"It's so incredibly liberating," he said. "Once you get bitten by that bug, where instead of working on other people's vision you're working on your own, it's very hard to shake."

And these days, with big companies shedding employees, many smart people are finding themselves with skills in search of a market. Often, they turn to freelancing. Vandgrift is hoping he can help people like that through his latest venture, Start Charlotte (@StartCLT on Twitter).

He and his partners are taking an office space suite at the Area Fifteen business incubator in Optimist Park and turning it into a membership-driven co-working hub. They hope to attract freelance Web designers, software developers and other creative tech types. It's still a work in progress, but he hopes eventually he'll have enough members to leverage the kind of discounted group rates corporations enjoy for services such as health insurance or accounting.

That, he argues, would leave the members free to create and collaborate, and hopefully, form the kind of startup culture that breeds innovative companies like Google or Facebook. Beats working from home, he says. "Some people can handle working off of the couch for eight hours a day. I can't."

Interested? Drop by Area Fifteen at 15th Street and North Davidson on Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., when Vandgrift and his collaborators will be holding an open house. Or you can visit the Start Charlotte's website or e-mail Vandgrift at ben@startcharlotte.com.

Why black folks love Twitter

Study after study keeps showing it: African Americans love Twitter. One of the latest comes in the form of an Edison Research study of more than 1,700 people. The study says about 25 percent of all Twitter users are African American. That's nearly double the percentage of black people in the nation's general population.

Translation: the Twittersphere is disproportionately black. But why? The Business Insider blog offered a few ideas:

• Blacks and Latinos are more likely to access the Internet from mobile devices, and Twitter lends itself better to mobile usage.
• Black celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal and P. Diddy use Twitter heavily, and rank among its most followed accounts.
  
• Twitter's most popular among 25-34 year olds, and the median age of African Americans is 30 years old (at least according to the 2000 Census).

Those are just some thoughts. I'm going to do a story on this for the newspaper, and would love any thoughts, feedback or insight you guys might want to offer. Shoot me a tweet or e-mail me at efrazier@charlotteobserver.com.