This week Twitter announced a new version of its "Who to Follow" feature, making it a far more personal recommendation engine. The way it works, however, is that if you're logged into Twitter in the web browser, any site that calls Twitter code -- like a Tweet or Follow button -- can report your presence on that site back to Twitter. Gadget sites. Car sites. Movie sites. Porn sites. Gaming sites. Any. Site.

We determine the people you might enjoy following based on your recent visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem (sites that have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets). Specifically, our feature works by suggesting people who are frequently followed by other Twitter users that visit the same websites.

The cause for concern here is that it looks like it's opt-out, and not opt-in for existing Twitter users. New Twitter users will be asked on signup, but existing users have to a) know about it, and b) find it and shut it off if they don't like it.

Giving existing users a popup or overlay advising them of it would even that out. (Twitter is sending emails that include some of this and other information, but that's not as effective as a specific modal request, with the default state being off and not on.)

If you trust Twitter and would value more personalized "Who to Follow" recommendations, then you may not care. If you don't trust any big internet company, aren't interested in social recommendations, and basically think your personal information is too high a price to pay for any free internet service, then you have some options.

Log out of Twitter.com

If you rarely if ever use Twitter via the website, one way to prevent Twitter from collecting your data is to simply make sure you're logged out of Twitter.com.

1. Go to Twitter.com in your browser.
2. Tap on the Me tab.
3. Scroll down to the bottom and tap on Log Out.

(As pointed out by @marcedwards, using a good password manager like 1Password, DataVault, RoboForm, etc. makes frequent logins and logouts for privacy reasons far less onerous.)

Opt out of Twitter's personalized recommendations

Sadly, this method can't seem to be done via the iPhone-optimized mobile Twitter webapp,so you'll have to break out the full, desktop browser version of Twitter.com.

1. Go to Twitter.com in your desktop browser.
2. Click on the Account button to open the drop-down menu
3. Click on Settings
4. Scroll down and uncheck the Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits
5. Re-Enter your password to confirm

Tell your browser not to let web services track you

Twitter supports "Do Not Track", a system that users can opt into that prevents web services from following their browsing habits. Again, it would be better to have users opt into "Allow Track" than making them figure out how to opt out via "Do Not Track" but this is currently the hand privacy is dealt.

Unfortunately, not all browsers support "Do Not Track" directly yet, including Mobile Safari on iOS. For desktop Safari 5.1 or later:

1. Click on the **Safari* menu
2. Choose Preferences...
3. Check Show Develop menu in menu bar
4. Click on the Develop menu
5. Choose Send Do Not Track HTTP Header

For information on how to enable "Do Not Track" in other browsers, when and if possible, check out Twitter's knowledge base article.

• Twitter Supports "Do Not Track"

Here's the gist:

The United States Federal Trade Commission has endorsed DNT as a simple way for users to inform integrated web services which offer content across the Internet (such as buttons, widgets, and other embedded features) that they do not want certain information about their webpage visits collected across websites when they have not interacted with that service's content on the page.

The DNT browser setting is now supported by recent versions of major browsers, including Firefox 5+, Internet Explorer 9+, and Safari 5.1+. If you are using Chrome 17.0 or higher, there is a third-party extension that enables DNT.

Conclusion

iPhone users are massive Twitter users and vice versa. If any social network was made for mobile, it was and is Twitter. Because Twitter is so mobile, and because it defaults to making most things public (unless you deliberately make your account private or send a DM), Twitter has managed to avoid a lot of the privacy blunders Facebook and Google had experienced. Until this week.

Security and privacy are always going to be at odds with convenience. It's faster and easier for social networks to simply turn things on, and it's more powerful and feature-fancy for users to let them.

The price is our personal information.

There are arguments on more than two sides about the importance of this, but at the end of he day there are millions if not billions of dollars at stake for the networks and the details of personal and private lives at stake for users. So it's worth arguing about. A lot.

In this specific case, if you're okay with Twitter offering you recommendations based on your browsing habits, leave it on and enjoy. If not, turn it off and rest easy.

Additional resources

• How to delete your Google search Web History
• iOS 6 and privacy: How Apple should draw inspiration from Android for better app permissions
• How to opt-out of (and back in to) personalized iAds
• How to review your social network privacy settings
• Social networking forum

There are several popular social networks on the web and they all have iPhone apps, and many have iPad apps (or the iPhone app can be used in 2x mode on the iPad). Which ones do you use, and if you have both and iPhone or iPod touch and an iPad, do you use them all the same on both? Are there any you prefer using on on iPhone as opposed to iPad, or vice versa? Any you use on one you don't use at all on the other?

I use Twitter almost exclusively from my iPhone and almost never from my iPad (or Mac). It just feels like something I enjoy doing while on-the-go, and my iPhone is always close at hand. The iPad is more of a relaxed reading device for me, so I can see how some might prefer browsing through Facebook there as opposed to iPhone.

I don't use Google+ much (and when I go on, I mostly only see people from Android Central or Google posting -- is that just me? -- but they haven't even made an iPad app yet so you're stuck using the iPhone app in 2x mode if you want to be able to upload anything. Same goes for Path. It's beautiful looking but it's iPhone only still. Instagram is the same way, but at least the camera-centric nature of the app makes that a little more understandable. Still, I would be nice to be able to look at all the amazing Instragrams in an official Instagram app for iPad. Does it bother you if your favorite social network is iPhone only? Or are the iPhone apps in 2x mode fine for you?

I've said many times I'm not a big social network user in general. I don't feel like I'm missing out, I feel like I'm engaging where and when it's really important to me (and not just feeding an endless stream of personal information to a giant advertising company, but I won't get into that rant again here!). Anyone else avoiding social networks as much as possible?

Vote up top to let us know which social networks you use the most, and then tell us why in the comments below, or jump into our Social Network Forum to find all the other iMore members on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and more!

What better New Year's resolution to start with than to check out all your in-app privacy settings, especially where Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are concerned? We know how it goes; you get a shiny new iPhone or iPad app and you just want to use it so you log in through Twitter of Facebook or Google because it's easy, quickly tap through all the set up pages, granting who knows what permissions and for how long, and then forget about it the moment the next shiny app comes along.

MyPermissions.org thinks you should take a few moments to review your settings, revoke or reduce access for those apps that no longer need full, free access to your personal, sometimes private data, and get 2012 off on a saner, more socially secure start.

(I just did mine and I was startled how many old apps still had access to my stuff.)

Source: MyPermission.org

Facebook is the most popular app on the iPhone and we've often said Twitter and iOS go together like chocolate and peanut butter. But social networks rise and fall. Remember MySpace, Jaiku, Buzz... Friendster? And hey, how about Google+ now that it's expanding beyond the techie early adopters, or LinkedIn which seems to always hover neither here nor there.

Which social networks do you use regularly? Let us know in the poll up top and give us the details, including which one(s) you prefer, how often you use them, -- and your profile link(s) if you feel especially social about it -- in the comments below.

Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac applied his ninjary skills to the latest iOS 4.3 beta and came away Media Stream and Photo Streaming, which could just be Apple's next big iOS 5 step in social sharing.

With Photo Streams, you will also be allowed to “invite” other users to view your pictures as you take them and upload them to a service. This service looks like it is connected to MobileMe, and we speculate that “Media Stream” can be directly connected to “Find my Friends.” We think Find my Friends will be another aspect of Apple’s social network, a part of a free MobileMe, where you can choose to view your friends’ “Photo Streams” all on that same map. Apple has a patent on something called iGroups relating to this. This would clearly tie into the Mac and iOS photo app’s Places feature. From looking at the SDK, it looks like “Media Stream” could very well also have a plugin counterpart, like AirPlay, in 3rd party apps.

Apple currently has MobileMe and Ping and Game Center as separate cloud services, the latter two functioning as very specific social networks -- one for music, the other for gaming. Find my Friends is a reference to an extension of MobileMe's current Find my iPhone service and might bring a Latitude-style social location network into the mix. With Google under new management but still up in Apple's business with Android, and Facebook rumored to be eyeing the phone space, Apple will need a stronger online/social component.

There seem to be a lot of pieces to the puzzle and that's part of my concern -- Apple's online and social strategy still seems to be in pieces. Hopefully they're working towards something more unified and Apple-like. A single Apple login that would not only work for iTunes, MobileMe, Game Center, Ping, whatever this new Media Stream service is -- and also let you activate a new phone and download your preferences without plugin into iTunes -- would be killer.

Apple's got that huge new data center coming online and they've got an iOS 5 preview event almost certainly coming this spring. What would you like to see from Media Stream and Apple's online/social networks in general?

[9to5Mac]

Flipboard for iPad just received a fairly big update, including the ability to add feeds from Google Reader, Flickr and more! One new feature of note is the option to post photos and status updates to Twitter, Facebook and other real-time social networks.

Flipboard was initially released back in July and received a lot of early buzz. The app offers a dynamic and unique interface for browsing your social media feeds in a magazine-like format, flipping through "pages" of real-time content from your friends on Twitter and Facebook -- a first of its kind.

Now that they've added more streams of content, the app has far more reach and usefulness for users. Take a look at the full update list after the break, and let us know what you think of the update in the comments below!

[iTunes - free]

• Be informed. Sync with Google Reader to read your feeds, folders and friends' shared items. Star, share and comment on stories.
• Be amazed. Browse all Flickr has to offer, including photostream, favorites, groups, your contacts' photos and interesting photos of the day .
• Be fulfilled. Read full content right away with more beautiful layout. Flip through gorgeous Flipboard Pages from Washington Post, Bon Appetit and more.
• Be social. Flip through your Facebook groups, fan pages, and photos from your feed. Browse your tweets, Twitter favorites, @mentions and lists.
• Be expressive. Post photos, status updates and even Flipboard pages across Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader.
• Be faster. Switch between sections faster using our instant section selector. Enjoy faster performance throughout your Flipboard.

Twitter has just announced that that they've integrated with Apple's social music network, Ping to make it easy for users of both services to share music.

On Ping you can easily link to your Twitter account to instantly find Ping users among the people you already follow on Twitter.

Once you’ve linked the accounts, whenever you Post, Like, Review, or tell your friends why you purchased a song or album on Ping, this activity will also be tweeted to your Twitter followers – complete with playable song previews and links to purchase and download music from iTunes.

When you click on a Tweet that's sent via Ping or that contains an iTunes link, you'll see the song or album in Twitter’s details pane, with the ability to listen to song previews from iTunes, making the experience even richer.

This follows Apple's inability to come terms with Facebook over social integration.

The real question is, will Twitter integration make Ping more relevant? Is it enough to get you to use Ping more? Or to use it at all if you haven't already? Or would Facebook still be a better option?

[Twitter blog]

During the livestream of Facebook's special mobile event today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook for iPhone would be getting a major update, including support for Facebook's new Groups feature and improvements to Places integration -- making it more intuitive and easier to check your friends into a specific venue.

Facebook will also be making the inclusion of photos to a check-in within Places more simple and straight-forward, and introducing Deals for local discounts. All great news for Facebook users who use the service on their iPhone.

Zuckerberg also mentioned that their App Store app is used on the majority of all iPhones in the market today.

UPDATED: The new version is live in the App Store now, go get it and let us know what you think of it in the comments below!

During a press event today, Facebook announced new Groups, which aim to simplify and make social interaction more communal, data portability which sounds like it takes a little of the wall off Facebook's garden, and application control, which should let you better decide who gets your data.

Mashable's got the goods on all of it:

Groups are closed by default (but can be secret or open) and are designed to be spaces where small groups of friends share information, with each group controlled by the entirety of its members — an important new direction for Facebook. The group chat feature is just as it sounds; members can participate in back-and-forth IM conversations with everyone in the group at the same time.

On the data portability front, Facebook has now made it possible to download all of the content and information that you have added to Facebook. This means that you can download your photos, videos, wall posts, conversation threads and status updates.

How -- and of course when -- we'll see groups implemented on the iPhone Facebook app is anyone's guess, as is when -- or if -- we'll see a Facebook app for iPad. We did get Places fairly quickly in the US and more and more countries are rolling out every week, so it could be on it's way.

While we wait and see, what do you think of the changes in general?

[Mashable, Mashable]

Instead of introducing two new, separate social networks with Game Center for gaming and Ping for music, should Apple instead have combined them into one unified social network for users?

Keeping them separate means people who may be interested in gaming but not music or vice versa get only the content and interaction they want, and Apple can fine tune and optimize both separately, each to better suit its own focus. No leaderboards in Ping, no album art in Game Center.

Combining them together would mean Apple users only have one place to go to get everything related to their iOS (or Mac) experience. No separate profiles or friend lists, no jumping back and forth between apps.

Would Facebook be better if it was split into several distinct category sites? Would Twitter? Is Apple better able to compete with those unified, generic platforms by specializing and being distinct?

Many people cringe at the idea of even one more social network to join, how do you feel about two?

Facebook recently announced some huge changes to how, where, and perhaps even why they operate -- and it effects every Facebook users' privacy. Short version: Facebook is "building the social web" by sharing your and your friends' information with more apps, for longer, and via more places outside Facebook than ever before and they're opting you into it by default.

If you're the footloose and privacy-free sort who lives every moment online with little or no care about who knows what about you, then this likely doesn't effect you one bit.

If you're more guarded about your privacy and the privacy of your friends and families, if you're concerned about who gets your information and where, then check out this guide to protecting your information on the new Facebook from Download Squad and get to clicking off those permissions (and no doubt cursing Facebook for not defaulting them to "OFF!" to begin with).

Facebook is obviously huge on the iPhone -- one of the most popular apps of all time -- so we're curious what you think about these changes? Do you worry about your privacy online? Do these changes make you consider scaling back or removing your Facebook presence? Or do you figure the more information about more people available, the harder it will be to find anything about anyone specific?

[via @sethclifford]

The iPhone and Facebook and Twitter go together like chocolate and peanut butter but just like there are a lot of tasty desert combinations, there's a lot of ways to keep up with your social networks on the go:

• The web. Hey, it's where most social networks started and because the iPhone has the excellent Mobile Safari web browser, you can just point it towards facebook.com, twitter.com (or any other social-network.com) and get your status on. Both Facebook and Twitter provide iPhone-optimized versions of their websites as well, though you can tap-through to the full sites.
• App Store apps like the official Facebook app [Free - iTunes link] or any of the excellent 3rd party Twitter apps. The Facebook app really came into its own with version 3.0. Version 3.1 added the much-requested push notifications, though it brought with it numerous, aggravating bugs... Twitter clients on the other hand are many and varied, from the write-centric Birdhouse [$1.99 - iTunes link] to the read-centric Reportage [$1.99 - iTunes link], with the uber-popular Tweetie [$2.99 - iTunes link] and Twitterrific [Free or $4.99 - iTunes link], and push-centric TwitBit [Free or $2.99 - iTunes link] and many others making us the envy of the platform space.

And with either of those options there's still several things you can do with them:

• Share your status. Telling your friends who you're with, what you're watching, where you're going, why you're ticked off, and how it's all some other friend's fault is probably the oldest, most common use of social networks. There are even apps like qStatus [$0.99 - iTunes link] that specialize in updating them.
• Share your photos. Flickr uploads, Twitter pics, Facebook galleries -- people like to show other people their family, funny, even freaky photos and social networks make it easy. Sure you can email a photo to a few people, but you can post it to as many friends as you have
• Share your gaming. "I just walked 3 meters and fell to my grisly death in..." is all over our social status' thanks to games that offer built-in auto-Tweet and auto-Facebook options. Whether it's for your crops, your castle, your drag-race, your FPS, or any other of a dozen games in a dozen genres, they can instantly let al your friends hear you brag (or complain!)
• Combine your logins. Facebook Connect and Twitter's login services let you use your existing social network ID at a variety of other sites, either add-on services/apps to Facebook or Twitter, or other social networks. Hey, some people don't want to have to remember multiple user names and passwords, you know?

We'd love Facebook to fix the 3.1 trunk, we'd love Twitter to add an official push-API, and we'd love Apple to let us multitask them all, but the iPhone remains a premiere platform for social networking and we've only just scratched the surface. Web or App, and what for? Tell us -- how you use your iPhone to keep up with your social networks? (And if you don't use social networks at all, let us know why not!)

UPDATE: Boy Genius has linked to screenshots from China via Germany that show Last.fm and "social". Real or Fake? You decide!

Boy Genius is back with more from the same iTunes 9 leaking source, this time with details on iTunes 9 social network integration and plans for an Apple "social app".

The Apple "social app" is rumored to be some kind of consolidator that would bring all your other social network services together (BGR says similar to Yahoo's OneConnect -- yeah, we don't use it either). Whether it's a desktop app, iPhone app, or both wasn't made clear.

It'll let you share what music you're listening to, connect with "friend's friends" (expand your network and meet new people?) and push status updates to your other networks.

Apple began integrating with Facebook and Flickr in iPhoto '09 demonstrated at Macworld 2009, but rather than simple data sharing or publishing, this sounds like Apple might actually be "getting" social media?

Lastly, the ability to organize iPhone apps in iTunes is said to include the ability to:

sort your applications alphabetically, by genre, date added, and of course, custom arrangement.

Speculation remains high that, if indeed Apple is set to release iTunes 9, it will be at the annual iTunes and iPod Music event in September alongside the new iPod touch, rumored to get a camera this time around.

(Not going to mention Kevin Rose's iTunes 9 wish list from last year, b'okay?)

Big Canvas PhotoShare offers easy uploading and sharing of photos, with comments and all the usual social networking trappings, for your iPhone. How does this fair compared to built in, but social-less services like MobileMe, or 3rd party support for giants like Facebook and Flickr?

If you try it, let us know!

Leah gives us the press blub, after the break!

A picture is worth a thousand words…In a world overrun with technology, it can be difficult to identify truly useful and innovative tools. Seattle-based Big Canvas is cutting through the clutter with its life-logging tool, PhotoShare. Big Canvas’ technology encourages visual conversations and real-time interaction. To date, Big Canvas has introduced two applications, PhotoShare and SmallCanvas.

PhotoShare:

With PhotoShare, users instantaneously upload images from their iPhone. Viewers can comment on photos and be visually involved with family birthdays, holidays and landmark celebrations.

With PhotoShare’s “life-logging” technology, family members won’t miss a minute of holiday memories. Grandparents in Oregon can watch their grandkids in New York unwrap presents under the Christmas tree or light a menorah for Chanukah. PhotoShare is super family-centric for those moments that one or another parent or family member cannot share.

SmallCanvas:

Big Canvas’ second application, SmallCanvas, gives users the power to edit and duplicate images. A social networking drawing application, SmallCanvas users share their drawings and pictures with other iPhone users using PhotoShare technology. The relationship means drawings will be displayed on PhotoShare and can be viewed by thousands of PhotoShare community members. SmallCanvas encourages creative life-logging.