Those who erroneously blamed Facebook for causing political upheaval in the Middle East, now hear this: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a chat on his Facebook page in Arabic.

Read the rest of this entry »

The seemingly never-ending conflict between Israel and its Mideast neighbors has spread to Facebook, as an Israeli hacker who goes by the name of Hannibal posted the email addresses and passwords of 85,000 users of the social network from Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Read the rest of this entry »

The folks at McCann Erickson Tel Aviv found another creative use for Facebook’s new timeline profile, with a helpful message, to boot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Israelis spend more time per person on social media than people in any other country, yet the percentage of Israel’s population that uses the technology doesn’t rank in the top ten.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ranks first for having the largest percentage of the population using social media, yet the country doesn’t make the top ten for the amount of time spent per person using the technology.

Those gems of data appear in a comScore report somewhat misleadingly entitled “Top 10 Need-To-Knows About Social Media And Where It’s Headed.”

The actual list of 10 itself consists of things we’ve heard about already, but the charts that accompany each of these items present the most helpful information.

That said, we’ve got the list below for you, but you’ll want to pay more attention to the niftiest of the charts that we’ve surrounded this post with. And do let us know in the comments section what insights you glean from the comScore data.

Netanyahu Roll doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like Rick Roll, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the subject of an amusing meme that resulted from a photo uploaded to his Facebook page.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Facebook event invitation helped organize a protest over high housing prices in Israel. Simultaneous events took place in two other Israeli cities: Jerusalem and Holon. Protests are now in their third day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Israeli government officials used Facebook to help prevent scores of pro-Palestine activists from boarding planes going from Europe to Tel-Aviv to support a “Welcome to Palestine” solidarity event.

The activists had planned to visit the West Bank to back the Palestinian fight for independence and protest at Israeli travel restrictions to and from the disputed territories.

A black list was compiled by the Israeli government to track activists on Facebook, who touted their travel plans on to visit the West Bank, in order to attend the campaign.

Over 300 protestor’s names were sent to Euro-based airlines by Israeli officials and the drive resulted in some 20 people actually being able to make it to Israel but who were detained at the airport.

A reported 310 of the activists were held by Israeli officials in Tel Aviv for questioning, of those 69 were outright denied entry to the country, four were immediately sent back to their homeland and 65 were held until return flights could be arranged.

Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told the Associated Press that the list was comprised of people whom would be considered “provocations” upon arrival. “These people announced on their Internet sites that they planned to come here and cause disruptions, and told their friends. We were able to contact other foreign ministries and simply give them links.” Barring entrance in such cases is “accepted practice in any country,” he added.

Meanwhile organizers of the Pro-Palestine event were up in arms over the bully tactics that were executed by Israeli officials, accusing them of throwing a wrench in a campaign that was scheduled to be a peaceful gathering. The group released a statement calling the moves to prevent activists from reaching Israel “provocative, blackmailing and illegal.”

The Israeli government is keeping close tabs on the online shenanigans of those who plan on using Facebook and other online social networking sites in order to rally anti-Israel events.

The latest episode involving Facebook is not the first time that the Middle Eastern conflict has spilled over onto the social networking site.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair posted anti-Arab and anti-Islam remarks on his Facebook page, according to the Ha’aretz newspaper.
Read the rest of this entry »

Based on recent information provided by web analytics firm comScore, Facebook’s market share in some countries is extremely high. However, if you look at the overall population of some of these countries, it is very small.
Read the rest of this entry »

Israeli couple Lior and Vardit Adler have jumped on the Facebook-inspired baby names bandwagon, naming their baby Like.
Read the rest of this entry »