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Facebook's Telescope on Human Behavior - Technology Review
One way to describe Facebook is as the most extensive data set on human social behavior that ever was. Every month more than 845 million people record and share traces of their daily lives, relationships, and online activity through their friend connections, messages, photos, check-ins, and clicks. The richness of that information goes some way to explain why the company is expected to become worth more than $80 billion when it floats on the stock market later this year. One research group inside Facebook, known as the Data Team, is tasked with the challenge of mathematically sifting through that data to look for patterns that explain the how and why of human social interactions.
"They want to control what information they are seeing by basically organising their friends – and that should happen organically – you shouldn’t never have to go to some separate place to do so.” He said Facebook’s recently released product, ‘smart lists’ – which helps people arrange their friends into different social groups with greater ease, was a “step in the right direction” and the first time “Facebook users have been given some degree of control over how to filter their experience” on the site. “The next step is, once you have your friend network organised into some sensible lists...you can start selectively broadcasting to those lists,” Parker revealed. Parker was quizzed on how Google+ could ever steal Facebook’s crown and become the social network of choice.
Facebook power users 'have gone to Google+ and Twitter' - Telegraph
Even though they will rely on air cooling, keeping the servers humming will still require 120MW of power, enough to supply 16,000 detached homes, and costing some £45m a year. These power needs will be met by renewable electricity generated by dams on the nearby Luleå river. "The Luleå river produces twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam does, so 50 per cent is exported from our region. There is a surplus of energy, and we can supply more data centres in this area easily," Engman said. He said Facebook's engineers had also been attracted by the reliability of the local power grid, which has been built to supply the area's thriving iron, steel and paper industries, and also by Sweden's dense fibre-optic network.
Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle - Telegraph
(Founder Stories) Mike Lazerow: Facebook’s Brilliance? “Knowing Who They Were Very Early On” | TechCrunch
Mike Lazerow co-founder and CEO of Buddy Media was hooked on Facebook immediately after logging onto Zuckerburg’s social media site during Facebook’s early days. In this episode of Founder Stories with host Chris Dixon, Lazerow discusses Buddy Media’s growth and how it coincided with Facebook launching fan pages for companies and brands. Lazerow’s team thought “companies [were] going to have to control content and need analytics behind that content … so we launched … the Facebook Page Management System.”
Facebook Wins “Worst API” in Developer Survey | TechCrunch
A survey of over 100 developers, previously posted here on Hacker News , aimed to determine which external APIs were the most difficult to integrate into developers’ projects. The winner…or rather, the loser? Facebook . Developers mentioned the Facebook API the most in terms having bugs, poor documentation, never-ending API changes, slow response times, and other headaches.
In the past, we have used the Facebook Like button as a baked-in promotional mechanism to drive referral marketing of deals, and that formed the core functionality of our product (see screenshot below for an idea of how we did it with our SaaS group buying solution for online retailers ). After nearly 6 months of collecting data and experimenting with the Facebook Open Graph API and plug-ins, we have decided once again to use Facebook like how every other business uses it – as an independent, bolt-on, add-on sharing mechanism, and nothing more. We will no longer be giving Facebook VIP status in our product. Here are some problems with Facebook: 1. The Facebook API changes too often.
3 Reasons that We are Moving Away from Facebook as a Platform - Zuupy Official Blog
Facebook HQ: Sandberg in the user operations department. Facebook plans to move into Sun Microsystems' old campus later this year Photograph by Robyn Twomey By Brad Stone On a Tuesday afternoon in late April, 30 managers of Facebook's various business units come together to discuss a matter that preoccupies its famous founder: how to keep their rapidly growing little company from getting too big.
Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg - BusinessWeek
Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook’s vice president of Technical Operations , has been the Palo Alto-based web giant’s public face when it comes to all things infrastructure. And today (May 3rd), he announced that he would leave the company at the end of the summer. After four years running Facebook’s infrastructure, he is handing over his job to Jay Parikh, who joined Facebook from Ning two years ago. Parikh will report to Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s vice president of engineering . Heiliger, who also over saw Facebook’s internal IT needs is going to hand over that aspect of his job to David Ebersman.
Facebook’s Infrastructure Czar Jonathan Heiliger Leaves: Cloud Computing News «
open compute
According to several Israeli business newspapers ( TheMarker , Calcalist ) Facebook has acquired Snaptu for an estimated $60 – $70 million, although some reports peg the price lower, at around $40 million. Update: a Snaptu executive has confirmed the acquisition to our friend Orli Yakuel , but declined to discuss the purchase price or other terms of the deal. Update 2: and the confirmation is up on Snaptu’s blog . The acquisition is apparently expected to close within a few weeks: Earlier this year, we announced the launch of a new Facebook mobile application to give people a great mobile experience on a broad range of feature phones. The Facebook for Feature Phones app currently works on more than 2,500 devices.
Confirmed: Facebook Acquires Snaptu (For An Estimated $60 – $70 Million)
After it was announced earlier this week that Goldman Sachs had invested $450 million in Facebook at a valuation of $50 billion, dozens (hundreds?) of stories were written about why the social network couldn't possibly be worth that much. (See William Cohan's New York Times op-ed, Duff McDonald's "Five Reasons Why I'm Not Buying Facebook" -- not that he was ever asked to get in on the deal -- and "50 Billion Reasons Why Facebook Is Not Worth $50 Billion"
Facebook Is Making More Money Than Everyone Thought - Nicholas Jackson - Technology - The Atlantic
Facebook Wants to Supply Your Internet Driver's License - Technology Review
Although it's not apparent to many, Facebook is in the process of transforming itself from the world's most popular social-media website into a critical part of the Internet's identity infrastructure. If it succeeds, Facebook and Facebook accounts will become an even bigger target for hackers. As security professionals debate whether the Internet needs an "identity layer"—a uniform protocol for authenticating users' identities—a growing number of websites are voting with their code, adopting "Facebook Connect" as a way for anyone with a Facebook account to log into the site at the click of a button.Read about Facebook’s 50 billion valuation this morning? I did but had a hard time visualizing that number. That is why I decided to create a little graph visualizing that number against the market capitalization of some other internet companies.
Facebook’s 50 billion valuation, in perspective [Infographic]
Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (he has other addresses too, so don’t worry if you have a different one). → Learn More