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Facebook’s ambition

Facebook’s ambition
Ambition. It’s the one word that kept coming up in conversations I had around the halls today at Facebook’s F8 event. Whenever I heard that word it was clear we were talking about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Compared to last week’s weak moves by Twitter, where its CEO barely even announced anything, yesterday’s moves by Facebook were huge. OK, I heard another few words: “Visionary.” “Scary.” “Huge.” “Unbelieveable.” “Blown away.” “Zuck has balls.” or “Facebook has balls.” “Big moves.” Heck, listen to David Kirkpatrick, who worked for Fortune for more than 20 years and just finished a book, Facebook Effect, about Facebook. Listen to the words he uses: “This is not just another company, it is a transformational phenomenon.” “It is really great, but it is really scary in some ways too.” By the way, after I talk with David I talk with quite a few other movers and shakers in the tech press in that video so you can get a sense of how we all reacted to the news. These are legitimate concerns.

FACEBOOK BOMBSHELL – How DID EVERYONE miss this! #facebook #f8 | At 24.17 minutes into the presentation. I let out a “You’ve GOT to be F#$#$#$#$ kidding me” So I rewound it. No – they’re not kidding. My little marketers heart leapt with joy. First, A question. “When was the last time you updated your Facebook Profile” NO NO NO NO – not status updates, or photos or Farmville. Your ACTUAL profile – you know your favourite movies, books, likes, hobbies etc Yes – you’ve done this – you’ve probably forgotten about it, I mean with all those fields to tend in Farmville. You see, most people did this when they joined up and have not updated it since. I know I haven’t in ages – (I haven’t added in Justin Beiber for example in my favourite artists section… KIDDING!) Next question (sorry I’m making you work hard but trust me – it’s worth it) “How does Facebook make their cash? Hint, it’s exactly the same way that google does… Pay per click advertising. But it’s VERY different pay per click advertising. It’s not based on a phrase that you type ala Google

Facebook Open Graph: What it Means for Privacy At Facebook's F8 Developer Conference today, the company fleshed out its plans to become the social center of the web. With the new Open Graph API and protocol and the ability to integrate websites and web apps within your existing social network, the platform will become more robust than ever before. The potential for this new technology is great — which is why partners like Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft have already jumped on board. But what does all of this interconnected data mean for user privacy? Privacy has always been a bit of a thorny issue for Facebook and its users. Now that sites and apps can better integrate directly with Facebook in more than just a tangential way, the potential for privacy issues grows substantially. What Is Changing? In the past, apps that accessed data from the Facebook APIs could only store that data for 24 hours. While this might sound scary, it doesn't actually impact how developers can use user data, just how long they can store it.

Facebook’s Alternative Internet Vision And Its Search Implicatio I attended the F8 Facebook developer event this morning and might have live blogged it but the public WiFi connection was extremely slow. Maybe that’s a good thing; aspects of what were announced had me confused, especially the privacy issues raised by the announcements. I’m not a developer and this event was geared toward them; much of the keynote was about code and simplifying integration and so on. That aside, the vision articulated by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Bret Taylor, formerly of Google and Friend Feed (acquired by Facebook), is of a more social internet, where relationships between people and things replace links between pages. The “Open Graph” — in which there’s information sharing between Facebook and other sites — reflects a hugely ambitious vision that began two years ago with Facebook apps and extended to Facebook Connect and now evolves to a larger initiative that makes Facebook the hub. Back to the basics. Social PluginsOpen Graph ProtocolGraph API

To Facebook the answer must be no. I am very familiar with the Friendfeed API, so when I saw the presentation today by Bret Taylor, who is now one of the leading guys at Facebook, it felt very familiar. They design clean and simple APIs. This one is no exception. I would be playing with it right now except for two things: 1. 2. This is the problem with corporate platforms and the standard bodies that help them achieve their goals. Anyway, once you get past the political stuff, Bret and his guys implement a nice API. Watching his presentation I was struck with an idea. The actual Bill Gates figures in this story. So now we know what Zuckerberg's megalomania is, and he's brilliant, and hired the right guys (the FF team) to make it happen.

Facebook Asks You To ‘Become A Fan’ Of All Your Interests With f8 only two days away it’s going to be a big week for Facebook news— and the first wave of launches just hit. Today, Facebook is officially rolling out a new class of profile called ‘Community Pages’, which are meant to serve as a knowledge base of sorts for general topics like Yoga (see our full coverage of the new feature here). Alongside the launch of Communities, Facebook is making change that could lead you to become a fan of dozens of Facebook Pages in a single click. When you first signed up for Facebook, the site walked you through a wizard that prompted you to fill in your favorite books, movies, interests, and activities. Next time you sign in to your Facebook account, Facebook will look at your entered interests, find the matching Facebook Pages, and prompt you to link these to your profile. The big change, though, will be that updates from each of these Pages will now show up in your News Feed.

How Facebook's Newest Feature Could Change the Internet - Busine Did Facebook just conquer the Web? Once a mere online yearbook, Facebook has recently grown to become the most trafficked domain on the Internet. But that was just the prelude. Here's the change you'll notice: websites like Yelp and Slate and CNN will start dropping social "plug-ins" -- little Facebook widgets -- into their sites. But wait, there's more. Facebook will allow website developers to collect and use our information when we connect to a site. What does this mean for privacy? What does it mean for websites and advertisers? Facebook, I once wrote, is a bit like a Middle Eastern country sitting on top of an ocean of oil. Zuckerberg thinks public information is the new "social norm."

EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce That Makes Facebook’s News Feed Tick Yesterday at its f8 developer conference, Facebook engineers Ruchi Sanghvi and Ari Steinberg gave what may be the first thorough walkthrough of the underpinnings of Facebook News Feed, the all-important page that users see when they first log on to the site. After giving an overview of the history of News Feed, which has evolved quite a bit since it launched in 2006, they offered some insight into the algorithms that allow News Feed to show you relevant content, collectively called EdgeRank. You may not realize it, but News Feed only displays a subset of the stories generated by your friends — if it displayed everything, there’s a good chance you’d be overwhelmed. Developers are always trying to make sure their sites and apps are publishing stories that make the cut, which has led to the concept of “News Feed Optimization”, and their success is dictated by EdgeRank. At a high level, the EdgeRank formula is fairly straightforward.

Pourquoi je n’utiliserai plus Facebook Jusqu’à présent, Facebook était un « réseau social » qui permettait à ses utilisateurs de se relier entre eux en « devenant amis » pour ainsi partager et publier des informations, des liens et des contenus. Certes, si on publiait sa vie privée sur facebook, on pouvait ensuite s’en mordre les doigts et commencer à se poser des questions : « ma vie privée est-elle menacée par facebook ? », « faut-il instaurer un droit à l’oubli pour protéger les jeunes de leur utilisation de facebook ? » J’ai déjà décrit ce que j’en pensais. J’ai trouvé jusque là qu’il n’y avait pas grand mal à être inscrit sur facebook. En somme, le calcul des avantages moins les inconvénients était positif, surtout si, comme moi, on est soucieux de garder le contrôle de ses publications et que donc on n’a ni souscrit à n’importe quoi, ni publié quoique ce soit qui n’ait été un minimum réfléchi. Mais voilà, cette semaine, facebook a annoncé ses plans et les changements qu’ils venaient de mettre en place. Que faire ?

An Inch Closer To The End Of Privacy (Thanks Facebook!) Le plan de Facebook pour conquérir le monde | slate Vos sites préférés sont désormais tous connectés à Facebook. Sur le site de streaming Pandora, quand vous écoutez une chanson, vous pouvez maintenant appuyer sur le bouton «j'aime» (ou like, en anglais), avertissant ainsi tous vos amis Facebook de votre dernière découverte musicale. Idem pour un film sur IMDb, un restau sur Yelp, un article sur CNN.com, des cosmétiques Sephora, un jeans Levi's, et des dizaines d'autres produits disponibles sur le Web, y compris tous les articles jamais publiés sur Slate.com[et aussi sur Slate.fr: regardez... au bas de cet article, NDLE]. Ces sympathiques petits boutons « j'aime » n'ont l'air de rien comme ça, mais ne vous y fiez surtout pas. Ce sont en fait les prémices du nouveau super plan imparable de Facebook pour ficher la totalité du Web, et il y a de fortes chance pour que dans les années qui viennent, ils s'avèrent une aide précieuse pour aider le réseau social à remodeler le Web à son goût. Expérience personnalisée publicité Profilage volontaire

Whoops -- Facebook Is Once Again Overhyped

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