What Facebook Knows. Photographs by Leah Fasten If Facebook were a country, a conceit that founder Mark Zuckerberg has entertained in public, its 900 million members would make it the third largest in the world.
It would far outstrip any regime past or present in how intimately it records the lives of its citizens. Private conversations, family photos, and records of road trips, births, marriages, and deaths all stream into the company’s servers and lodge there. Facebook has collected the most extensive data set ever assembled on human social behavior. Some of your personal information is probably part of it. And yet, even as Facebook has embedded itself into modern life, it hasn’t actually done that much with what it knows about us. Few Privacy Regulations Inhibit Facebook Laws haven't kept up with the company's ability to mine its users' data. Even as Facebook has embedded itself into modern life, it hasn’t done that much with what it knows about us. Contagious Information Social Engineering Doubling Data.
How Dropbox continues to win: Pre-loads on devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3. Over 50 million people currently use Dropbox, and users are adding files at a rate of one billion every 48 hours.
But it’s not just viral growth, word of mouth growth, smart branding, and effective marketing. It’s also preloads on devices. That’s a little strange to modern ears, because in some sense it’s reminiscent of the bad old days of crapware: dozens of annoying pre-installed apps on new PCs, placed there simply because a software publisher paid the manufacturer. Why do we need preloads in this age of virality and social media marketing? I asked Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, who leads global biz-dev for Dropbox, exactly that question.
Fjeldsoe-Nielsen — let’s just call him Lars, shall we — told me that he had to fight internally at Dropbox to even open the topic with carriers and manufacturers. “Most people were saying we’re doing fine with user growth right now … why do we need this?” Above: Dropbox is included in Samsung Galaxy 3S onboarding Image Credit: Dropbox “This is gold,” said Lars. Facebook App Lets You Add Enemies Online. Forget friending.
A new Facebook app allows users of the social network to identify and share people, places and things as "enemies" for all to see. The app, called EnemyGraph, lets you list anything with a Facebook presence — ranging from "friends," to foods, to products, movies or books — as an enemy. Since the app launched March 15, it's seemed to appeal especially to users with a liberal bent. Some of its most-selected nemeses so far include Rick Santorum, Westboro Baptist Church and Fox News.
The app was developed by a professor and two students at the University of Texas at Dallas. "One thing that has always struck me is the enforced niceness culture," Terry told Mashable.