Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

This latest video from the Onion is all kinds of hilarious.

Same Blog, Different Place

You could be reading this in one of many places.

Some are viewing it on the site (The Geek Whisperer), others on my Facebook profile, some on Jason’s (TheLisnakFactor) Facebook profile, or perhaps you are reading on an RSS reader. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people reading this on Facebook have never actually visited the main site.

Facebook is trying to build their own Internet kingdom where an increasing volume of information passes through their servers; servers that are beyond Google’s all seeing eye (Wired). Information is exceptionally valuable, and as targeted marketing becomes more prominent, information will become an exceptionally precious commodity.

The growing Facebook – Google conflict aside, this presents an interesting challenge for me because comments from readers come in from different places, and never touch one another.

Some people comment on the blog. Facebook readers never see them.

Some of my friends comment on my profile. Regular blog readers never see those, and neither do Jason’s friends.

Some of Jason’s friends comment on his profile. I didn’t even realize he was feeding the blog to his profile until he emailed me and let me know that one of his friends took issue with my take on the X-Man, Storm. Chances are that none of you ever saw the exchange that ensued; unless you are friends with Jason on Facebook.

It’s difficult to provoke dialog when those who are speaking can’t hear one another.

I wanted to use my Facebook Screw image again.

Personally, I prefer the comments when they are left on the blog where everyone can read and respond. However, at the end of the day, I choose to feed the blog through Facebook (Jason too) and I love receiving comments on any forum. I do this to inform and provoke dialog, it’s just awkward to reply to different conversations on the same post.

This is one of instance of Facebook’s lock & key control interfering with usability. I strongly suspect this will grow into a more significant issue as Facebook continues to expand.

Facebook Username

Facebook now allows you to set your username for the domain of your profile. Before last night your username was an assigned number. 

If you are on Facebook, I recommend logging on and setting a new username for yourself, while good ones are still free.

Ice Out Scrubs on Facebook

When they did it, I have no clue. However, Facebook now affords individual users a far greater degree of control over who sees what in his/her profile. This is really good because if your life is still interesting, you might not want to share all of those interesting experiences with, say, your family.

It also lets you limit the portions of your profile that people can view. So if you are stuck friending a person you don’t really care about, you can restrict them to the basics.

I recommend you play with the “Custom” privacy settings on your profile, and on individual photo albums. Set it however you want, just make sure you are comfortable with it.

Facebook doesn’t really protect your privacy, even with these added features., so be mindful of what you post. You never know who is mining the data or looking at it.

Facebook Manners

This is a fairly funny video created by a digital media agency. It’s a good example of where online adverting is heading.

I’m far too tired to write any more tonight. Back tomorrow when my brain is functional.

E3 Highlights – A Good Day for Microsoft

Brace yourself, this post is entirely about Microsoft and I only say nice things.

There are a ton of new developments in the video game world emanating from the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo).

While there are far too many things to cover, here are some of the highlights that have me pretty excited:

Metal Gear Rising on Xbox 360!

Metal Gear is a nutty franchise that is so damn fun. I’ve been holding out on buying a PS3 for a while, but when I do eventually buy one, it will be in large part because Metal Gear 4 is exclusive to the system.

Metal Gear is coming back, and it is already looking crazier than ever!

Project Natal – Microsoft Moons Nintendo

Microsoft is attempting to out-Wii Nintendo. Project Natal is a motion based control system for the Xbox 360, but unlike the Wii, it has no controller.

It’s a set top box equipped with an RGB camera, depth sensor and multi-array microphone, and coupled with proprietary software, it aims to allow users to play games and navigate the Xbox 360’s menu using no controller at all.

(Take a moment to collect all of the little pieces of your blown mind before your continue reading)

If it works and video game designers actually implement the technology in fun and unique ways, this will be incredible. If it fails, it will be another big gaming hardware blunder to add to the list – I’m looking at you Powerglove.

How could something look so fun, yet suck so bad?

Xbox Live Goes Social

Alpha geek Felicia Day, announced that Xbox 360 would open up a Twitter and Facebook interface beginning this Fall.I’m extremely curious to see how this plays out.

You can expect more posts on Metal Gear, Project Natal, Ms. Day, and Twitter/Facebook’s migration to gaming over the coming months.

What Do You Do With the Jerks?

Here is Brian Cuban’s open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The big question is what should Facebook do with hate groups?

Should Facebook allow fully open discussion and let the fringe have free reign, or do they draw a line? If they draw a line, where is it?

This grew out of a problem with Holocaust denial groups.

Let me first say that Holocaust deniers offend me on so many levels (If you are a Holocaust denier and you are reading this, I want you to know that I am not on your side. I think you are a stupid asshole… but you probably don’t care).

That being said, I am a free speech proponent and I am willing to stand behind that freedom, even if I hate what you’ve got to say. I say let these jerks have their little spot of digital property on Facebook. Facebook cannot possibly police all offensive groups, and not all offensive groups are going to be as clean cut as Holocaust deniers and KKK members. The existence of these groups makes me sad, but defending their right to exist protects and preserves the most important right on the Internet.

Without free speech the Internet just doesn’t work.

What do you think?

A Facebook Group for World Leaders

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now but kept forgetting:

http://www.theatlantic.com/a/facebookhumor.mhtml

It’s a riot.

I am almost done with finals and papers, then I will be blogging with a vengeance.

Take Your Business Opportunity & Shove It

I love it when people from high school that I never communicated with in any capacity friend me on Facebook. It’s totally awesome to get a friend request, look at the name and think, “I have no idea who this person is…” but I accept anyway out of some stupid sense of politeness. Plus, my life rocks and my Facebook profile reflects that!

What I love even more than hearing from people who were barely connected to me in the past, is getting messages like this from them:

Hey David! How r u doing? This is a shot in the dark but i was just wondering if u knew anyone who is looking to make some extra money. My business team is aggressively expanding right now despite the economic time and I know a lot of people are in the process of looking for other ways of making money. If u know anyone that would be really helpful.
Hope all is well and thanks a lot!!

Unfriend!

She was right about one thing in that message, it was “a shot in the dark.” It was a really poorly written shot in the dark. Seriously, that was the first time that this person has ever communicated with me at all. Ever.

That’s the third message along those lines that I have received from former high school classmates who I didn’t really know. One of them began with the words”

David, you are smart guy with good business sense…

Then he proceeded to ask me if I wanted to “invest” in his real estate scheme.

Unfriend!

The other message was an invite to become part of an “exciting business opportunity.” Of course it was a pyramid scheme.

Unfriend!

If you were thinking about trying to get me to become part of some get rich quick scheme, please take your business opportunity and shove it.

Google vs. Facebook

Google has been quietly competing with Facebook since December 2007 with Google Profiles. Google Profiles links back to Google Reader, Google Maps, Picasa, and Flickr among a few other applications. Plus, I have no doubt that they will further integrate Profiles into other applications.

Google has amped up the competition with Facebook by promoting Google Profiles as a person finder. Google is essentially saying to all of us, “If you want to come up when people search your name and look for you, build a Profile (and use all of our other applications).” (If you don’t have a Google Profile you will still come up in Google search).

If Facebook is primarily being used to connect with friends, maintain those connections, and share information and photographs, Google Profiles can do all of that too.

I am interested to see how this growing competition plays out.

If you care, you can see my fairly bare-bones profile here.

Facebook’s Demographics Shift

A few years ago Facebook began as a networking tool for college students. Since its inception it has been firmly viewed as the turf of teens and twenty-somethings, however that is no longer the case.

According to statistics from Facebook, they have experienced a profound shift in their demographics:

The biggest growth in terms of absolute new users over the last six month came amongst users 35-44. Over 4 million more US women 35-44 and nearly 3 million more US men 35-44 used Facebook in March 2009 compared to September 2008.

Another fun fact is that women over 55 is the fastest growing demographic on the social networking site, expanding at a rate of 1.5 million people per month.

As the demographics of Facebook change, the manner in which people use it will too.

How will businesses and marketers use Facebook to spread the message? Or maybe the better question is how long will it take them to realize that Facebook isn’t just for kids anymore?

How will older users interact with each other on Facebook? There is no doubt that their reasons for joining and real world uses are and will be different than their younger counterparts. 

Will teens want to join a social network that their parents are on? Will Facebook become viewed as old and untrendy in the process? 

In my mind, these numbers raise many more questions than they answer. The only thing that I will say with confidence about them is that these changes will have a lasting effect.

No One Ever Likes Facebook Redesigns

Every once in a while Mark Zuckerberg’s crew at Palo Alto update the user-interface for Facebook. Immediately after, hundreds of thousands of Facebook junkies go nuts about how much they “hate the new Facebook!” They blog, twitter, and even start Facebook groups to air their discontent. This literally happens every single time they change the user-interface.

I reluctantly joined Facebook back in 2005 because I became tired of explaining to people why I wasn’t on Facebook (behold the power of peer-pressure). Since joining I realized that it is actually a very useful communication tool. It is an easy way to keep track of my friends since it never changes. I’m not talking about the user-interface. What I mean is that phone numbers and email addresses change, but the Facebook profile is fairly static. If a friend changes his/her job, their email address will change, but I can always find them on Facebook. It was exceptionally useful in the months after college graduation. 

I use Facebook mostly as a tool for communication and occasionally as a toy. 

Maybe it is the way that I use it, but I don’t have a problem with the new user-interface. So long as Facebook doesn’t adopt another draconian privacy policy, I’m happy.

As far as the discontent goes… Facebook will take notice and will probably change a couple of the things that people are really screaming about, but I suspect the new user-interface is here to stay and the angry users will just get used to it. Unless people start closing their accounts in protest, I doubt there will be much change.

Facebook Doesn’t Cause Cancer

Facebook doesn’t cause cancer. Those who make such claims while clinging to the professional title of “scientist” are hacks.

There are plenty of bad things you can say about Facebook, this is just not one of them.

If you require more information of the subject Dr. Ben Goldacre has done a great job of laying out proper arguments regarding Facebook and cancer.

I’m not going to write more because I honestly can’t believe that it became necessary for anyone to write a rebuttal to such a ridiculous claim in the first place: http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/the-evidence-aric-sigman-ignored/

The Facebook Screw (Updated)

Here’s a post by popular demand – Seriously, I have received emails about this from about half of the people I know.

Here is a rough translation of Facebook’s new terms of service:

They own everything you ever post, can do whatever they want with it, wherever they want, at any point in time between now and when our Sun goes supernova, an asteroid destroys us, or our galaxy gets TKOed by the Andromeda Galaxy. There is nothing that you can do about it unless Facebook changes their terms of service on their own. Canceling your account does not cancel the terms of agreement either.

If you have had your account for a while and agreed to a terms of service way-back you may be wondering why you weren’t given an opportunity to review their new terms of service and either accept and retain the account, or reject it and remove it for good.

I know I am.

If presented with such an option I probably would have retained the account. Facebook is a key communications tool for me, so I might have kept it in spite of these insane changes. At least I would have felt some manner of ownership over the decision. Instead they just forced it down my throat and didn’t even bother to send me a note explaining the change. It’s pretty screwed-up.

What will Facebook do with all of our data?

Probably mine it and sell it to marketers. It is the only option that makes sense.

The only content on there that I have a big problem with them retaining permanent ownership of are my photos, but I don’t really think they are going to do much with my New Years Eve photos, or my spectacular (if I do say so myself) photos of Zion National Park. It’s the principle of privacy and ownership of my own data that matters most to me.

This kind of bullshit is what will make-way for the next generation of web services. Services that recognize that we are web users, not web consumers. That we are the ones creating the content and we are not going to be abused.

Here’s how I think this is going to end:

Facebook will have to backdown. Most other sites terminate ownership of content when the user deletes the account. Facebook will revert to that model because this has become a really big scandal. They attempted to do some damage control and it clearly fell flat. There only option is to bend to the wishes of their users. If they don’t they will do more irreparable harm to their relationship with their users than they already have.

A little ethical behavior can go a long way.

Update:

It turns out that I missed this last night before publishing my post:

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54746167130

… can’t catch everything.

Facebook has reverted back to their old terms of service – for now. They will be rewriting them with user input and in plain language.

Will they still be as opressive?

We shall see.

Yeah, I smell a pork product of some type…

I know I haven’t written in a while, and I’m mostly a little bit sorry about it. To make amends, I give you bacon. Bacon on your Facebook. Bacon on your blog. Bacon on TheGeekWhisperer.

Use this site to put this tasty morsel all over the interweb: http://bacolicio.us/. It wont disappoint.

This is the example they used on their site:
http://bacolicio.us/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism

I don’t know about you, but I’m already having fun!