Posted by
Jill Cowan on Thursday, April 10, 2008 06:41 pm
Has anyone seen all the crap Mark Zuckerberg’s been slipping past general notice lately? Facebook has been so slow recently–probably as a result of the all new, definitely not redundant in any way, “Facebook Chat“– that we didn’t even want to link to it at all. Also, we have this crazy hunch that you already know how to find it.
“Facebook Chat” is only the absolute most recent of the new “developments.” Other slick additions include the “People You May Know” feature, (which you can find wedged inconspicuously between “Birthdays” and “Invite Your Friends”) and something that allows your friends to actually recommend that you friend people they’re friends with. Thanks to these new features you can finally shoot that excruciatingly hot girl or guy you vaguely knew in high school a friend request without letting on that you’ve been stalking them for months.
Because, you know, if the almighty Facebook says we should be friends, who are we to argue? We’ve got a (virtual) connection. Do you feel it, baby? It’s in the Air(Bears) …
Facebook [Website]
Facebook Chat: Now We’re Talking [Facebook Blog]
Posted by
Krista Lane on Sunday, December 23, 2007 08:26 pm
We love (and hate) Facebook. And while the Clog is technically part of the media, we certainly aren’t any of the news outlets chatting about Mark Zuckerberg.
This week, the Chron featured our favorite Zuckerberg as a “Face of Business 2007,” noting that despite lower membership than rival MySpace, the Facebook enterprise has certainly grown and appeared in the news the most in the last year.
On principle it seems we shouldn’t give the Harvard dropout any more attention than he deserves. After all, Zuckerberg sold out to Microsoft, opened up Facebook to any stalker with an e-mail address, and launched the utter failure that was the Beacon advertising program (and we already wrote about that). However, this time of year the streets of Berkeley are barren and Stanford’s gone medieval.
While we wait for something more exciting to happen, maybe we’ll collect more Facebook friends (or not) or pore over Google Analytics. Unless, of course, you have better ideas (not including listening to Hubert Dreyfus).
Faces of Business 2007: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook [SF Gate]
Stanford professor’s Palo Alto choir keeps Gregorian chant alive [SF Gate]
The Clog likes to read The Economist because it makes us feel smarter and hey, let’s face it—look smarter too. It was our surprise, after scanning headlines, when we came upon a story about a little somebody named Mark Zuckerberg. You know, Czar of the Holiest of Holies: Facebook.
The article highlights Zuckerberg and mentions how bloggers liken him to Apple’s Steve Jobs and Facebook to the next Google. He’s near the top of his career.
But’s he’s not looking for an exit, says The Economist. It’ll probably be a battle between Apple, Google and Facebook for which company will rule the world. We’re not making this up. Zuckerberg told the mag “that he can, and should, change the world.” Facelife, anyone?
In comparison to social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook aims to primarily strengthen pre-existing connections—not to create new ones necessarily.
The article even refers to an “academic researcher” to prove that Facebook is classier. The researcher remains nameless, but we’re already seen her work. Yeah, Economist just referenced a rough, informal, web-based essay by Berkeley graduate student Danah Boyd:
bq. First, it is currently considered classier than, say, MySpace. One academic researcher argues that Facebook is for “good kids”, whereas MySpace is for blue-collar kids, “art fags”, “goths” and “gangstas”.
Sound familiar? Oh, Economist, we totally got there before you.
The rest of the article disintegrates in a way. After setting up a premise of the next big thing, it strays from its beginning to say, “Oh wait, we didn’t really mean that Facebook might possibly could be the next big thing. Maybe.” It concludes that
# Zuckerberg hasn’t had the opportunity to spew out crazy, world-changing ideas like Jobs.
# Advertising sucks on Facebook.
# It’s “awfully easy for one ‘next big thing’ to be overtaken by the next.”
Aww, what a cop out! Fine. We’ll just go back to our preppy Facebook lives and back to using random pages on the Internet as sources for our content.
Image Source: Elaine Chan and Priscilla Chan
Book value [Economist]
Earlier: Facebook=Good, MySpace=Bad?
If you haven’t noticed already (and who hasn’t, with the News Feed stronger than ever), Facebook introduced new applications that users can add to their profiles. On Thursday, the Facebook Blog left a cryptic message about its Facebook Platform:
bq. You may have heard that we just unveiled the next evolution of Facebook Platform. Our new stuff will be going live sometime tonight, so definitely stay tuned on the site and on the blog for more information tomorrow.
And then it rained applications. Everbody and their mothers (because they can use Facebook now too) are adding the latest doodads to their profiles.
After an intense coffee session, we decided to test drive a random smattering of applications. Not because we’re cool or anything, but mostly because it’s summer and we don’t want to clean out the fridge just yet.
Music Applications
uPlayMe tells everyone what you’re listening to and makes you look like a douche in the process. We were gung-ho until it asked us to complete “just two easy steps”:
bq. Step 1) Create a uPlayMe account (do this below, its easy!)
Step 2) Get our awesome uPlayMe software (next page)
No.
iLike lets you add music to your profile. Apparently you can also get free mp3’s.
Through the application, we updated our profile to say we are going to the Daft Punk concert. This makes us cool.
It also suggested free mp3’s to download based on our music preferences listed on our profile. None of them looked appealing, and so we didn’t even bother.
As it stands, the application is a bit confusing, but it looks promising. Plus, eight of our friends just added it.
Other Applications
Extended Info is straightforward. It allows you to add more information to your profile, like new favorite categories to fill out or even a self-created survey. It’s very bare bones, but it made us happy.
HotLists is essentially an extension of the Interests section on your profile, but in a picture-format. Nobody has time to read words anymore. In the year 2000, everything will be in images and symbols.
It’s a little unnecessary, but we were excited to see 22 different images relating to our search for “porn.” We then cried when “emo” came up with 26 results, the no. 1 being Girls Gone Wild.
30 Boxes Calendar, we assume, is similar to a Google Calendar. We don’t know because we kept getting error messages and it took forever to load. And we were so optimistic.
Personally, we think the applications are fun to mess around with. They definitely give us something to do (i.e. figure out how the hell these things work) during summer.
However, it seems the launch was a bit hasty. Many of the applications still have kinks to work out, and it would have been better to delay the release to make things run smoother. Either that, or Facebook should have released the applications under a beta testing caveat.
The Facebook Platform makes us hate Facebook less than the News Feed, but we’re still pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg is trying to suck our souls.
Facebook Platform is here. [Facebook Blog]
Application Directory [Facebook]
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