I’ve never enjoyed reading mountains of textbooks for things that could easily be summed up into short Facebook statuses.
From Cool Material: If Historical Events had Facebook Statuses
I remember in Facebook’s early years, a friend of mine, Ian, told me about it and I signed up. He told me how huge social networking was going to become. I actively disagreed. I didn’t see the value.
Back then, I had 2 friends on Facebook for almost two years. No one was using it. And it wasn’t that interesting. I logged in every day and my news feed never changed. Facebook was like a failed Hi5 (which apparently still exists).
It didn’t have all the capabilities or applications it does today and Mark Zuckerberg barely had any “friends”, but then something happened. It exploded over night and within a very short period of time I found myself with hundreds of friends.
Then people who I knew who couldn’t tell the difference between a browser and CD-ROM were on Facebook, like my mother.
Here we are today. Facebook has become one of the largest, most popular websites on the internet rivaling even Google for daily visitation.
Now their making a movie about the creator’s story.
Of course what would a big-time motion picture be without some parody in the blogosphere?
Added:
Well, I’d have a hard time selling that statement. But you should be careful when using it.
It’s not mere coincidence that my last post was regarding Facebook’s charmingly lengthy privacy statement and this one is about Facebook’s privacy issues.
It all comes out
Recently the internet has been abuzz of Zuckerberg’s early IM conversion regarding privacy. Here it is below:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Of course this conversation is completely out of context and for all we know it was a big joke. At the time of his posting this Facebook was still a relatively small website and did not have a lot of social power. It may not have been on his mind to be so careful about things he said to friends.
On the other hand, the Facebook community has been continually rallying against privacy policies changes, usually accusing Facebook of attempting to sell personal data to third parties.
I figure Facebook will continue to do what it does best and beat it’s hornet’s nest of a privacy policies until eventually it stops getting stung. Of course it’s a big nest with lots of hornets.
The recent Facebook controversy has made me seriously consider the level to which I will use the website. A friend of mine has completely removed his account because of it.
I doubt many of you will follow that lead, but you should, at the very least be ever mindful to the personal information you are giving away.
Because you also have to bear in mind that if Facebook owning your personal life isn’t enough, the fact that Facebook’s website are hosting in the States means your information belongs to the Department of Homeland Security whenever they want it.
The New York Times has compiled a great set of info-graphics that illustrate the length of Facebook’s intricate privacy policy statement.
Concerned about your privacy on Facebook? Dig in for a long read. It’s a pretty comprehensive document.
Not particularly shocking, just amusing.
From The New York Times: Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options
Everyone talks about how much they dislike Stephen Harper but few people take the initiative to do anything about it.
Someone created a Facebook Page for this onion ring and their social experiment is to determine if this onion ring can conjure up more supporters than Stephen Harper
I am proud to say that an onion ring has more fans on Facebook than Stephen Harper does. As I write this there are 30,136 people who are fans of Stephen Harper. There are 73,600 fans of this onion.
I only noticed this tonight, but it seems like Facebook has added functionality for tagging other Facebookers.
Over the weekend Facebook released an update for their website that allows users to select a vanity URL for their profile. Luckily by the time I managed to get about to choosing my Facebook alias GregPike.ca was still available.
Facebook has always been strict to make sure people don’t create profiles with silly names, or even names of businesses or groups, and that will remain the same. But moving forward as of June 13th People will be allowed to use aliases.
Your alias will have to be alpha-numeric (plus periods) and it can be used as a direct method to access your Facebook profile page. That is, you will no longer need that 9-digit id in your Facebook web address.
For more information visit the Facebook Blog.
From eWeek: Facebook to Allow User Names Beginning June 13
The Notificator was a system for passing public messages circa 1935.
The Notificator, circa 1935