Rosa Goliijan/msnbc.com

When Facebook first announced its new Timeline layout, many people got riled up — they didn't like the change. And now that Timeline has been rolled out to most users, many months later? There still doesn't seem to have been a general change of heart. And scammers are loving the fact that they can take advantage of this attitude.

Inside Facebook reports that "a number of scammers" are preying on people desperate to get rid of Timeline and revert back to the old Facebook Profile layout. The evildoers are doing so by creating Facebook Pages filled with deceptive instructions which promise users the ability to go through such a rollback if only they complete a series of actions.

Actions include clicking various "Like" buttons, inviting friends to "like" a page, watching YouTube videos, downloading files, and so on. While some of these actions may not have terrible outcomes, many could lead to the installation and spread of malicious software.

Considering that the switch to Facebook's Timeline is permanent once you decide to try it, you wouldn't think that many users are falling for the scammers' tactics at all — but Inside Facebook's Brittany Darwell discovered otherwise:

We have found 16 Timeline-related scam pages, which have collectively gained more than 71,000 likes. The largest, with nearly 19,000 likes, has been around for at least two weeks. These pages are among the top search results when searching Facebook for “timeline.”

Yikes! So what can you do to keep yourself safe? Surrender to Timeline — it's apparently here to stay — and realize that hitting a "Like" button or watching a YouTube clip won't magically make you more powerful than Mark Zuckerberg and his team of designers.

Related stories:

• Facebook glitch reveals private photos — including Zuckerberg's
• Facebook: 6 degrees of separation? More like 4
• Turn (almost) any photo into a Facebook Chat emoticon

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

Instagram

A photo on Barack Obama's Instagram page.

President Obama and his staff are quite savvy when it comes to technology — and social media, in particular — so it's really no surprise that there is an account on popular photo-sharing service Instagram in Obama's name. That account was used to share a photo for the first time on Tuesday night, during the Iowa caucuses.

Instagram — which currently requires its members to use an iPhone app in order to post photos — offers a variety of "filters" which can be used to alter images' appearances. It also has options which allow users to easily post photos to a variety of social networks — such as Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook — right as they upload them to Instagram.

According to the profile description on the @barackobama Instagram account, it is being "run by Obama 2012 staff" and invites people to "share a photo from the campaign trail" by using the #Obama2012 hashtag. (As an aside: Obama is known to be a BlackBerry fan, so we wonder if he'll actually use the currently iPhone-only photo-sharing service personally anytime soon. He'd have to head to an Apple Store or borrow a staff member's iPhone, after all.)

The first photo posted from Obama's Instagram account was, according to its caption, of the President speaking "via videoconference to Iowa caucus-goers" on Tuesday night. Links to the image were posted on Obama's official Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook accounts upon upload.

Twitter

Neither this photo — nor the use of Instagram — mark the first time the President has kept up an active social media presence. He already has — and maintains, with the help of staff — accounts on sites and services such as Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Foursquare and more.

Related stories:

• Instagram photography app finally coming to Android
• White House rickrolls bored Twitter follower
• Obama joins Foursquare, isn't even mayor of Oval Office

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

AP file

Judging by Twitter gossip, Fidel Castro must have more lives than your average housecat. Barely a couple of months go by before there is yet another widely spread — and false — report that the former Cuban President has died.

Euronews explains the latest series of rumors included an image of unknown origins, which appeared to show Castro's corpse in a casket. The news site also suggests whoever started the rumor may have done so in order to spread a computer virus, but so far we have not seen any reports of malicious software being linked to the Cuban president this time around.

It's worth noting that in Aug. 2011 — on another occasion that Castro's death was falsely reported — emails with infected video files went around and contaminated anyone curious enough to read something entitled "Fidel is Dead."

As far as we can tell after scouring the news wires and various major news sources, there's not a single confirmed peep about Castro's passing.

So what can you take away from this incident other than the fact that "death by Twitter" is equivalent to "dog bites man" at this point? Just that you should take a second to check on the validity of a claim before adding to the noise. Google before you tweet, folks — it's the new "think before you speak," after all.

Related stories:

• Twitter users shamed for whiny Christmas tweets
• Twitter tests 'Top News' and 'Top People' in search results
• The new Cuba (slideshow)

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

MySpace

Remember your dear ol' buddy Tom Anderson? I certainly hope you do — he was the first friend you had on MySpace.

Anderson left MySpace back in 2009 and nowadays he's seeing other social networks — and sharing his thoughts about them, as well as the site he co-founded so many years ago.

In a recent Google+ post, Anderson discussed the photo-censoring habits of social networks and the importance of removing offensive photos. He specifically called out TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler for complaining about having a profile photo — in which he is addressing the camera with a rude hand gesture — removed from Google+ without any warning before discussing how MySpace dealt with questionable images:

I would respectfully submit that we, the users of Google+ (and Facebook or Twitter) don't need to see you flipping us off, nor do we need to see you naked, or displaying something else generally considered offensive. When a social network let's that stuff slide, it turns into a cesspool that no one wants to visit ... sorta like MySpace was. 

Ouch! That's a pretty harsh thing for a man to say about his abandoned virtual child. But Anderson had a good justification for the criticism:

It was very difficult [at] MySpace to keep up with the "offensive" photos, and we had decent technology and many warm bodies on the case. (In fact, I'd guess the average person would be shocked how much time and resources we had to put into trying to stop that.) [...] Things that seem simple are not as soon as you have 10s of millions of users.

This isn't the first time Anderson has said something about MySpace that made us gasp. Previously he pointed out that "like most of you, [he doesn't] like using [MySpace] anymore" after being questioned as to why he has a Facebook profile.

Related stories:

• Google+ interest on the wane, say search statistics
• Say goodbye to Google's black bar
• How to make phone calls through Google+ Hangouts

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

Paul Allen

As 2011 ends, Google+ is poised to cross the 100 million user threshold by February, a feat that took Facebook four years to do.

Avid Google+ watcher and Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen (not to be confused with the Microsoft co-founder) has become something of an unofficial tracking source for G+ since his prediction early on in July that the then-newborn social network would surpass 10 million within two weeks. 

In a recent post (on G+, naturally), his forecast sees G+ with 400 million users by the end of 2012. His research shows 625,000 users signing up to G+ every day and already past 62 million. But he thinks that rate is going to go up, because if it stays the way it is now, there will be only about 293 million users at the end of next year. Only! But at this rate, 100 million will join by Feb. 25 and 200 million by Aug. 3.

To spur that optimism, he pulls out this stat, which is actually quite a jolt, if it's anywhere near accurate: Nearly a quarter of all G+ users joined in December. Maybe that's due to some recent improvements, such as editing streams, the debut of G+ Pages and enhancements to Hangouts. There was also a big spike in G+ traffic when it opened up to the public, beyond private invitations, in September.

But a 60 percent decrease in traffic right after that tempered at least some of that enthusiasm.

Now though, the outlook on G+ is bullish again. 

A recent comScore report on social networking actually upped G+'s numbers to 65 million around the world, or 5 percent of the global social networking audience.  

Chitika Insights, the "independent research division" of the online advertising network, also saw significant upticks in the past three months, as you can see from this graph, using this methodology: 

Chitika Insights

The graph above shows activity index for Google+ between September and November 2011. The highest level of activity observed receives a value of 100, and the other data points are simply a function thereof. The arrows represent the percentage increase in activity witnessed between month to month data sets, all of which were sampled in the second week of each respective month.

Chitika told us that between September and November, Google+ "saw a 118 percent increase in overall online activity. From September to October Google+ posted the biggest growth figures (55 percent), followed by a growth in online activity of 41 percent between October and November."

The company, which has kept tabs on G+ for awhile, says that this growth may be due to several key factors:

• Google has been successfully integrating Google+ across its wide range of services (Android, Google Apps, Search)
• Google has been heavily advertising Google+ across different channels including television spots and online placements, hoping to connect with a  main-stream audience
• Google has remained dedicated to increasing the functionality and accessibility of Google+ to the public and has plans for rapid releases of new features over the course of 2012

Mind you, Google+ still has a long way to go before it gets anywhere near the 800 million currently on Facebook. But at the same time in its history, at six months old, in 2004, Facebook barely had 1 million users.

And right out of the gate, G+'s turbo-charged entry into the social media sphere blew everyone else away, attaining 20 million users in less than a month, a milestone that took Facebook more than three years to do.

But let's remember: Facebook and Twitter and other pioneers had to build up an audience in which social networking wasn't the norm yet, where only a select few were using Friendster or MySpace. Google+ has the advantage of debuting in a time when social networking dominates the time spent online.

More stories:

• Google+ interest on the wane, say search statistics
• Muppets now ’Hangout’ on Google+
• Google+ adds ’big improvements’ 

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.

Twitter

While Christmas may be over, the fuzzy-wuzzy feelings we got as we watched our loved ones joyfully unwrap carefully selected presents will last well into the next year. Unless, of course, our loved ones happen to be ungrateful brats — like the Twitter users exposed by a comedy writer.

You see, funny guy Jon Hendren — who is known as @fart on Twitter — spent a portion of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day retweeting folks who complained about the things they didn't get from Santa this year.

Some whined that they received the wrong color iPhones, others declared Christmas to be ruined because they didn't get cars, and someone even announced that she would move out of her parents' home if the right gift wasn't waiting downstairs.

Why'd Hendren compile these tweets? Was he aiming for a social commentary about the consumerism-driven society we live in? Was he doing research for a funny article?

No, he was just bored, as Hendren explained to TechCrunch: 

“I was visiting with my family,” says Hendren on the impetus behind his critique. "They'd all gone to bed somewhat early on Christmas Eve night, and I was lying awake playing with Twitter's search function on my iPhone (oddly enough)."

You can check out a selection of Hendren's tweets in the video below, and plenty more if you take a peek at his Twitter account (but be careful, because some of the language in those tweets isn't exactly mild).