iMod: Cape Town blog by Chris M. Mozilla Firefox. Welcome to Facebook! Facebook, By The Numbers. Your Facebook Friends Are Watching You—Did We Just Move Closer to 1984? George Orwell’s novel 1984 begins with Winston Smith, the main character, seeing posters saying BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. In 2010, that could be replaced with FACEBOOK IS WATCHING YOU. Or rather, YOUR FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK ARE WATCHING YOU. You and your friends can now post where you are and share this information, if you so chose.
Facebook showed off the power of this new location feature at a launch event this week with a giant projection of a U.S. map showing where people were checking in just moments after Places launched. Facebook only showed people’s first names, but their databases know your last names and so much more about you. Of course, there are many important differences. In a post yesterday, MG said “Places is actually pretty great — potentially”, but he acknowledged “the friend tagging thing is troubling to a lot of people (particularly because of the somewhat confusing three states.)” But, I want to focus on users who opt-in to allow tagging. Fair point. CapeTown/bloggers.