Tag Archives: facebook

Conversations About The Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee

Rumpus: You’ve previously mentioned a master password, which you no longer use.

Employee: I’m not sure when exactly it was deprecated, but we did have a master password at one point where you could type in any user’s user ID, and then the password. I’m not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less. It was pretty fantastic.

Rumpus: This was accessible by any Facebook employee?

Employee: Technically, yes. But it was pretty much limited to the original engineers, who were basically the only people who knew about it. It wasn’t as if random people in Human Resources were using this password to log into profiles. It was made and designed for engineering reasons. But it was there, and any employee could find it if they knew where to look.

I should also say that it was only available internally. If I were to log in from a high school or library, I couldn’t use it. You had to be in the Facebook office, using the Facebook ISP.

via Conversations About The Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee – The Rumpus.net.

Why doesn’t Facebook look like this?

The home page features many new benefits: the publisher toolbar enables users to post content from any page within Facebook, saving time in navigating needlessly through profiles; the streams’ two-tiered filter (content type & content contributers) also creates a more coherent structure with the core elements retaining their position throughout most of the site; and the live feed displays a constant stream of all content posted in a users network, which expands upon mouse over.

via Facebook Facelift – Home & Profiles on Vimeo.

Oh – that’s right, because there will be 1000000 people complaining that they liked it how it was, and 100000 new groups saying to “change it back”.

FFS. Progress, people.

Benny Ling likes this.

So one of the people I follow on Twitter (yes, all 619 of them) pointed out something pretty cool. Being the guy that I am, I had to go check it out.

Pedestrians like this.

Yes. That is exactly what you think it is, if what you think it is is “a Facebook like sticky-taped to the pedestrian crossing button-that-makes-the-green-man-come-on”. (If there’s actually a proper name for that thing, let me know.)

How awesome is that, seriously? Hobartians are so cool. ^_^

It’s funny, because someone went to the trouble of not only printing that in the exact font that Facebook uses, but also the little thumb up icon as well.

In case you’re wondering where you yourself can view this marvel, it’s on the corner of Murray and Collins Streets, directly opposite the green FujiFilm building. Here’s a pic so you don’t get lost:

photo(2)

Note that the purple pin represents the spot where the center of all awesomness is located.

The post part of Blogtober 2009. A post a day isn’t too hard, especially when people like you like them 🙂

Addendum: late? This post isn’t late. 😉

Facebook. It’s not Web 2.0, it’s Stalking 2.0

Facebook. Your friends are using it. Your workmates are using it. Chances are you’re using it. Facebook is already well known one of the world’s most popular social networking platforms, but it’s also rapidly becoming one of the world’s most popular application platforms too.

The popularity of Facebook applications is unsurprising. They’re easy to write, as well as being easy to share and install. However most users remain unaware of what information can be accessed by their applications, and more surprisingly, by their friend’s applications.

Join researcher Paul Fenwick as he examines just how much information he can extract from friends using only the Facebook API.

via Facebook Privacy: Stalking 2.0.

After watching the (somewhat long [30 minutes], I’ll admit), I’m now extremely miffed that I didn’t turn up to this particular Tech Talk held by TUCS.

As a result of this video, I’ve now removed all extraneous apps from my Facebook profile (like, the ones that I’m not using, or haven’t used in a while), and have now locked-down my Facebook account (at least, to the API).

Scary stuff indeed.

This post part of Blogtober 2009. A post a day keeps the stalkers away! 😀

Facebook > MySpace? You’re a racist.

Abandon your MySpace account for Facebook? You might just be a racist.

[…]

Referring to MySpace as the “ghetto of the digital landscape,” Boyd indicated that MySpace users are more likely to be “brown or black” and espouse a different set of ideals in conflict with those espoused by the teens she surveyed over four years. She said that patterns in migration across social networking sites echoed those of a white exodus from cities in the past. Boyd also said that teens who use Facebook are more likely to condescend their MySpace-favoring peers.

via MySpace now a “digital ghetto” | TransCosmic – the ongoing journey;.

WTF.

I am, however, somewhat inclined to agree with some of the arguments – Facebook can generally be seen as the “rich man’s MySpace”, the social network for those who put some sort of value into their personal networks. Facebook is generally considered to be a “better, more refined” version of MySpace, too.