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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.

The Facebook Platform Kill Switch, What It Means Today Facebook officially announced the option for allowing users to completely opt-out of the Facebook Platform and prevent applications from gaining access to their information. While many developers are rightfully concerned about the feature, we’d like to take the opportunity to thoroughly address how the new “opt-out button” functions and what it will mean for developers. Prior to jumping into what the implications of the new button that lets you turn off the Facebook Platform and block all applications, we thought it would be useful to share how to block the Facebook Platform under the new configuration. It’s pretty easy to get to the button which says “Turn Off Platform”. Step 1: Click on “Edit Your Settings” under “Applications And Websites” on the new privacy settings page. Step 2: Click on the link which says “Turn off all platform applications” Step 3: Click on “Select All” and then the “Turn Off Platform” button For Users For Developers So will this kill application growth?

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

Today Facebook, Tomorrow the World | Epicenter  With a dizzying array of announcements this week, it seems almost inevitable that the web will become, at least for the near future, an extension of Facebook. Like it or not. In some ways it’s a great development, making it simpler to connect what you read, watch and listen to. But there’s a nagging suspicion that when Facebook says it’s simply reacting to changing norms about how public we want our lives to be, that it’s actually forging that condition, not reacting to it. And when I say forging, I intend both meanings of the word. The question is whether you are actually using Facebook to keep in touch with your friends and family — or whether Facebook is just using you. With a few deft maneuvers, Facebook is aiming to make itself the center of the internet, the central repository and publisher of what users like and do online. Facebook’s main lever to get all this data funneled to them is a simple “I Like” button, which websites can embed on their pages with very little effort.

Facebook May Share User Data With External Sites Automatically Imagine visiting a website and finding that it already knows who you are, where you live, how old you are and who your Facebook friends are, without your ever having given it permission to access that information. If you're logged in to Facebook and visit some as yet unnamed "pre-approved" sites around the web, those sites may soon have default access to data about your Facebook account and friends, the company announced today. Barry Schnitt, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook, told us in an email that "the right way to think about this is not like a new experience but as making the [Facebook] Connect experience even better and more seamless." The proposed change was first written about by Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch, who called it Facebook's Plan To Automatically Share Your Data With Sites You Never Signed Up For. Here's the language Facebook used to describe the draft policy: Pre-Approved Third-Party Websites and Applications. Do you buy all that?

Google+ Platform Blog Facebook Warns of New E-mail Scam [ALERT] Facebook's Approach To Innovation Is The Secret To Its Success How Facebook fixed the site: they turned it off and on again. Literally | Technology I found it, Mr Zuckerberg! Photo by Sir Mildred Pierce on Flickr. Some rights reserved Ever been on the phone to IT support and they told you to turn it off and then on again, and that sorts it out? Facebook last night had that sort of problem. As Robert Johnson, its director of software engineering, explained in a slightly shamefaced blogpost, the site was offline for about two-and-a-half hours – its worst outage in four years – due to some technical changes that Facebook had made. It wasn't only the site itself which went belly-up; the Like buttons (which connect back to Facebook) vanished on 350,000 sites too, and the API which powers its OpenGraph system had serious problems. The logistics of running a vast network like Facebook mean that you don't stick all your servers in a single place, of course. Sometimes, things go wrong in the cache as values go out of date; but that's no problem, usually, because you can overwrite them with correct values from the centre. Back to Johnson:

Apple and social networks under fire over iPhone privacy Apple and social networks are under fire for distributing several social media apps through Apple’s iTunes store that harvest iPhone contact information without users’ permission. iPhone apps from social networking sites – including Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Instagram, Foodspotting, Path and Yelp – are reported to access the iPhone address book. In a letter to Apple, two US congressmen have called on Apple to explain why it has not blocked the apps, which violate Apple’s user guidelines. The Apple guidelines say: "Apps that read or write data outside its designated container area will be rejected." They also say: "Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission." The social networking apps' practice was discovered by an app developer in Singapore who noticed his contacts had been copied from his iPhone address book, without his consent, by a social network called Path, according to the BBC. Email Alerts

Why Zuckerberg Should "Share" the Facebook Kingdom Facebook is worth $75-$100 billion. If we broke that down by user, it would mean that each individual is worth $118.34. Or, if we're looking at it in terms of revenue from 2011 - $3.71 billion - each user is worth $4.39 in revenue per user per year. The world over is reacting to the fact that Facebook has now put a dollar value on 845 million users' personal data. The status update has more than 70,000 "likes" and 6127 shares, but only 128 comments. There's a common, understood practice in the Facebook culture. Zuck didn't "like" any of the comments that anyone posted. "Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society," Zuckerberg writes in his IPO letter.

My Yahoo! Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer, BNP Paribas Masters: Where to watch live, betting odds and live streaming info Rafael Nadal will face Roger Federer for the second time this season in the fourth round at the BNP Paribas Masters at Indian Wells on Wednesday (15 March). Nadal will have a chance to avenge his 2017 Australian Open final defeat when he takes on Federer. It is the earliest the two are facing each other in a tournament since their third round meeting which was their first ever at the Miami Masters in 2004.

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