that's totally shit

Its basically spam mail, at least myspace has the decency not to stoop that low.

boo

Wow, Thats really gross. I do my best to block all the adds/apps I can on facebook, too.

Um, I think it's not quite as devious as all that.



Rather, if you have a friend who posted a status message that said, "I totally loved Dark Knight," then you'll be more likely to see that message in your news feed if the advertiser is paying for those sorts of messages to be promoted.

"Normally, information that you put on Facebook is sent to the people in your network who would find it the most valuable. But the algorithm that Facebook has implemented to determine your closest friends can easily be translated into a marketing tool, with Facebook charging advertisers to get your positive messages about their products sent to as many people as they would like."

Then of course theres the fact that if you upload anything to facebook (photos, videos and so on) you automatically release ownership of those images and videos giving facebook the sole right to distribute it and sell it to 3rd party companies.

I've always hated facebook with the white hot passion of a thousand suns, and this just makes me SOOOOOOO glad I never signed up for an account

well no but its still under handed.

Facebook and myspace are both pieces of e-shit.

Yeah, I agree, it's still lame. I just wanted to clarify what they're doing - because at first I read your post and thought, "No way! That's insane!"

Facebooks problem is that they've had vast amounts of investment and have been valued extremely highly but they've actually pretty much failed to make a profit. With websites like myspace there was always an advertsing element to it but with facebook it was almost a way to get away from advertising but because moneys come into to picture they have to find a way of earning money fast so they are stooping low.

I miss scrabble. That's the reason I signed up for an account there.

I remember a few weeks ago lots of facebook people got spam from "Charles Festa"...

That darn festa.

One thing that pissed me off recently:



A few months ago I heard they were keeping track of what you were doing on other sites and posting it to your newsfeed; e.g., you rented a movie at Blockbuster and that was posted on Facebook. There was an uproar, and they made it easier for people to opt out of all that - which I immediately did.



Well, apparently some of the settings got changed around again, because I bought something at Overstock and then got a message on Facebook saying asking me permission to post it on my newsfeed. NOOOOOO!!!! I had already said I didn't want that crap!!

Is that on the new version? I reverted back to the old one almost immediately.

What? really? How do they know what you're buying online?

Kitten - try Wordscraper. It's by the same guys who did Scrabulous, but they changed a lot of things to try to evade prosecution for copyright infringement. For instance, it randomizes the board and the points or something like that - but you can set up your own board and make it exactly like Scrabble, then use that as your default.

Oooo! Thanks Ladykat!

smitten kitten on Aug 25 '08 at 6:19pm

What? really? How do they know what you're buying online?



If you're logged on to Facebook and go to another site in the same browser window (I was using different tabs at the time), and the site has some agreement with Facebook, that's how they get the info.



I don't keep myself automatically logged onto Facebook for that reason, but if you're using Facebook while doing other things, you're screwed.

I remember hearing about that, I'm pretty sure they got alot of complaints had to admit they were wrong and shut it down, but the fact they can see what were buying is scary as hell.

Oh good to know. I never stay logged in and now I'll make a point of keeping it that way. I don't even have my name on there I'm Smitten Kitten. I have internet paranoia, lol.

stubby43 on Aug 25 '08 at 6:24pm

I remember hearing about that, I'm pretty sure they got alot of complaints had to admit they were wrong and shut it down, but the fact they can see what were buying is scary as hell.



I thought it was shut down or something, but not entirely. I think they just changed the automatic default. Because this happened on July 11.

Internet paranoia is probably a good thing. I don't have enough of it.

Facebook wants to steal your identity. Be wary.

Yeah, I'm now blocking anyone questionable from flickr too. There are so many weirdos out there.

In the long term I wouldnt be too worried about facebook because their going to collapse, theres alot of evidence to suggest that were in another internet bubble at the moment because theres big money trading on companies with hyper enflated values which have had very little in the way of proven earnings in fact alot are only running because of cash injections.



Theres been very little to suggest that social networking is a viable buisness option because audiences bounce to the next cool thing very quickly (well thats one of the reasons) if a closed internet appears then that will change very quickly (closed internet meaning the company pays for the top download speeds whilst everyone including start ups are in the slow lane).

Regardless, I just went and changed a bunch of my privacy settings. Yeesh.

I don't like the idea of facebook having the sole right to any image you upload. Would deleting the image void that right?



Creeeeepy.

People look at me as some kind of freak when I tell them I don't use Facebook. It really has become synonymous with modern life to have some kind of online presence, and Facebook is definitely the standard - at least amongst the people I know. Even the most computer illiterate technophobes seem to be able to 'poke' and whatever the fuck else goes on. I really cant see it going away any time soon.

If you take an image down they no longer own it.



Very important change you need to make to your privacy setting:



go on privacy click on news feed and wall, click on actions on external websites and select Don't allow any websites to post stories to my profile.

Oh I dont doubt that theres a demand for social networking theres a huge demand and its going to be around in this form as long as the moneys good but what I'm wondering is how long people are going to be willing to support something which has yet to be profitable.



Facebook has so far done pretty badly at earning money, myspace has done alot better because it was able to diversify its brand and establish its self as an important part of the record industry (and now a label), facebook doesnt really have those options open to them so unless something radically changes I cant see facebook lasting.

this got me wondering about how sites like facebook actually make money, because it just doesnt seem like the revenue from advertising would ever cover the costs of bandwidth/staff etc. Take youtube for example:



As of Q1 2008, YouTube is not profitable, with its revenues being noted as "immaterial" by Google in a regulatory filing.[4] Its bandwidth costs are estimated at approximately $1 million a day.[4] It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000, and that around 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

From the wiki page



If it's not profitable, why bother with it? Someone please break it down for me...

Its kind of complicated but companies like youtube and facebook work out their value based on their share of the audience and what info they have on their users, think tescos with club card points the more you know about your customers the more you can tailor the products to their needs (in tescos case the data will show if branding something at their high end range actually increases purchases).



The difference between tescos and facebook is that tescos is actually using the data whilst facebook is in a roundabout way selling data.



Both youtube and facebook are propped up because its hoped they'll be profitable advertising platforms, the problem is whilst youtube probably will eventually be profitable facebook looks unlikely to achieve it.

i have too many accounts that i neglect

I was just looking to see if Facebook sold it's data, and whilst it could if it wanted to (it's in the small print), the official word is they have 'never sold information to third parties' - which I find hard to believe but there you go.



From my half arsed 10minute internet search, all sources seem to say that Facebook makes shitloads from advertising, whilst the Wiki says pretty much what you are saying. How can something be valued at $3 billion, yet not have a viable long term business model? Bonkers

whats really amazing is that youtube makes money off of other people's work. that's the brilliant/pimp like nature we all must strive to attain.

it doesn't even manage that though

I should of been a bit clearer with my statment about selling data, what facebook does is design bespoke advertisements for the user and the company in the hope that it will be far more effective than normal adverts, for example my facebook knows I live in the north of england and is constantly trying to sell me tee shirts with northern slogans (I've no idea what I ignored it).



As for the advertising I need to do a bit more research then because thats pretty conflicting (though my stuff I've picked up from wired and wiki).



With alot of these start ups the enitr buisness model is based on the idea that they'll get a high valuation then off load it to someone else, thats what digg.com has been trying to do for years (their deals collapse usually because they want more money than their worth at that moment in time) Facebooks pretty unusual because its not been looking for a get out, in fact its been resisting it.



I have heard that facebook wants to be the internet equivilant of the TV network, instead of searching the net you'll get all your info and media off of facebook feeds but this is very unlikely to take off.



As I said before facebook will be successful if the internet stops being neutral.

well you can tell the difference between the ads and real stories, they look different

BUT I FCKING LOVED THE DARK KNIGHT!!1!!!11!one!!!eleven!!!1!

Yeah but puma you can tell the difference now, what that is basically saying is that its going to look like your friend posting not an advert.