Brilliant. I mean, worth watching just for the 'Carousel' scene.



Via Urlesque / Brooklyn Mutt

Kent Brewster's on Facebook's design changes, or rather people complaining about them. Shades of, "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold," but a little more in your face. Props for posting it directly to FB, too.

Dear people who whine about interface changes on Facebook:

Unless you are paying money to advertise on Facebook, you are not a Facebook customer. As far as Facebook is concerned, you're not even a human being. You are one of an infinite herd of cows. Facebook (and its faithful ranch-hand Zynga) spreads a thick layer of content for you every morning, you chew it up all day, and they milk you for your lovely creamy clicks every night.

Sure, you might have been calved on the nearby Yahoo or MySpace farms, and you might someday slip under the pasture fence to the greener grass of Google+, but in the end ... you're a cow. Moo all you want about how Facebook went and moved the damn salt lick again; they're not going to listen.

Why? Because you're a cow. Now shut up and consume your content.

Via Joshua Nguyen / Dens

The other day, I noticed a few items in my Facebook stream that I hadn't "Liked". I figured it was a glitch of some sort. Then it happened again today. I went and looked at my pages and there 10 or so pages I was subscribed to I'd never seen before and would never subscribe to. For instance, I found myself a fan of Phil Fischer, a Christian musician that just completed The Tea Party Song and is asking his fans for $113K so he can get it played on Christian radio. I emailed him to ask if he knew how I had ended up liking his page, and will update when I hear back. If you check his Facebook page, this seems to have happened to other people as well.

I couldn't find much else online about this happening to other people, except for this post on Facebook support. If this happened to you or you see any other info about it, let me know because I'm curious.

Yesterday, I wrote about the lack of smartphone/internet/Facebook use by the main characters in contemporary movies and books (I may not have mentioned internet or Facebook or movies, but I meant to). In a discussion that followed, Nick mentioned the idea of a story told entirely in Facebook updates. Almost as if on queue, this video from Maxime Luere. An entire story told through status updates. Well done, too.



Via TDW.

In an article about Google's recent surprise company-wide raise and bonus this about Facebook's staff.

Of the more than 1,900 Facebook employees with resumes on LinkedIn, 300 -- around 15% of Facebook's staff -- list Google as a past employer.

Is that a lot? Because it sounds like a lot to me. Also, the person that leaked the raise/bonus info to Business Insider got fired. They presumably will not be receiving a raise or a bonus. Unless they go work for Facebook.

You Know What's Cool? Is it this? I don't know. It seems like it might not.

You name your post 10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account and not am I going to click, I'm probably going to link to it, too! Click through for back up to all the bullet points. #9 is pretty important, and #4 and #1 are funny. Does anyone know what % of internet users AOL had at it's peak and how that compares to the 400 Million accounts Facebook has right now?

10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided.
9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior.
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy.
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch.
6. Facebook is a bully.
5. Even your private data is shared with applications.
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted.
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account.
2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web.
1. The Facebook application itself sucks.

You know why Facebook doesn't care about your privacy? You know how if you're a credit card customer that pays off your bills every month the credit card company can't make any money off of you? If you lock up your activity on Facebook, you close your circle tight, and Facebook can't use your information to help them beat Google. Why should they care about your privacy?

Hahahaha. The motherfuckers at Facebook are doing it again. You maybe heard about their plan this week to Facebookify the web by making some social sites you're a part of more social. And just like last time, Facebook's default forces you to rely on yourself for your privacy. I don't think most people care. Hell, I don't even think I care. I DO have a pretty strong opinion of how you're supposed to do something on the web, though, and this isn't it.

Want to opt out of instant personalization? Make sure to block the applications:

How do I opt-out of instant personalization?
You can opt-out of instant personalization by disallowing it here. By clicking "No Thanks" on the Facebook notification on partner sites, partners will delete your data. To prevent your friends from sharing any of your information with an instant personalization partner, block the application: Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora, Yelp.

Newsweek Tumblr

I've said it before, but I think in 10 years, it's even odds that people think of Facebook the way they think of AOL now. Since this column is one of the first I've seen to agree, I'm obviously going to link it.

In the world of technology even giants can stumble – or fail. Once upon a time AOL was the reigning online behemoth. At its peak in the 1990s it had 30 million paying subscribers (which at the time was a significant proportion of the online population in the US and Europe) and thought itself big enough to take over Time Warner. There was even a schmaltzy movie – You've Got Mail – based around its email service. Now it's a business-school case study in hubris.

AOL was also a study in corporate strategy from which the Facebook founders learned avidly. Initially they conceived of their service as an AOL-type "walled garden" – which implied trying to keep subscribers inside that controlled space. If one of your Facebook friends sent you a message then you had to be logged in to read it.