15 posts tagged “social networking”
An interesting little application on Facebook:
Gender breakdown: 43% female / 57% male
Relationship status: 58% single / 42% taken
Political breakdown: 87% democrats / 13% republicans
Geographic distribution: 34 countries, 30 states
Most common zodiac sign: Libra (99 friends)
Favorite music: Jazz (27 friends)
Favorite TV show: Lost (22 friends)
Favorite movie: Shawshank Redemption (17 friends)
Favorite book: (14 friends)
Favorite activity: Reading (32 friends)
No book was listed, which might mean 14 of my friends are illiterate.
The sample was my c. 1,300 Facebook connections, and I imagine it only took information where it was available.
A lot of it was expected: as someone who has been to two dozen countries, having contacts in 34 sounds reasonable. I have been to 10 US states, so having contacts in 30 also sounds reasonable. I have noticed I have a lot of Libran friends, long before Facebook came along. I am surprised about Lost, since I have not watched it since the second season; as well as The Shawshank Redemption featuring on 17 friends’ lists.
What was a big surprise was the 87 per cent Democratic proportion. I admit to having many leftist ideas, but in other respects I am quite centrist. I have friends on both sides of the political divide, as the comments on this blog alone illustrate. I figured Dems would outnumber Republicans, but not to a nearly seven-to-one ratio.
This is unheard of: a form on Facebook actually working.
As some of you know, since August 3, I have been battling Facebook over its false allegations about copyright infringement that appear on my home page there. The copyright owners have never complained about the videos that Facebook deleted, which according to Facebook itself, is a prerequisite for deletion. (This raises even more privacy concerns: who is making the call on things I am uploading, if the copyright owners have not complained?) I have filled out the form protesting my innocence—effectively getting Facebook to comply with American common law about the presumption of innocence—multiple times daily. Each time, Facebook says there is an error submitting the form. (I know this after over 50 submissions.) Sometimes, it will give me a link to a DMCA form, but filling that out results in nothing, either. I just get taken back to the home page, with no acknowledgement, confronting Facebook’s accusations again (the following is an earlier screen shot):
The lesson seems to be: if you submit a form sufficient times, Facebook eventually accepts it. However, ‘sufficient times’ is defined as ‘around 60’.
This is the screen that now permanently adorns my home page on Facebook. It says it can terminate my account if this supposedly bad behaviour on my part continues, even though I have done nothing wrong. It allows me to file a counter-notification, but despite doing so, this notice continues to appear. I have even filled out the form that is linked to the form that is linked to this notice (when Facebook tells me that there has been a problem with the first form). I have done this for a total of around 20 to 30 times over the last 24 hours. Nothing will shift this notice. In Facebook’s eyes, I am a baddie.
Strangely, Facebook has reinstated the video it removed earlier, although this notice relates to that very video. An earlier video has not been reinstated, but there is no way to provide information to defend myself there.
There is no way of reaching Facebook: there is no capacity to add a question to the help section of the site.
Americans have the common law concept of the presumption of innocence. Every American knows that. Every American who doesn’t work for Facebook—once again cementing their image of arrogance that many of us are tiring of.
I will probably now upload my videos to Vkontakte or Vox, and point people here. Unlike Facebook, I want Vox to earn money from views. It’s a pity that Facebook has become one of the worst sites on the web in terms of corporate behaviour. And for anyone thinking it’s going to be a major force forever, let me say that we thought the same thing about AltaVista in 1999. Then along came this service called Google.
Facebook, people don’t enjoy false accusations. It would be like me calling your CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, a pædophile.
As I am a techno-cynic, I loved this animation, by Mike Booth.
Facebook annoys me no end, but it’s a handy tool for reunions. However, no one tests the site and I think it should have a beta tag.
For example, a planned class reunion. I set up the event as I did in August. No problem there.
But what if I wanted to write on the wall?
Can someone tell me why this worked perfectly in August 2008 and does not work today? I mean, it should not be a tough thing for a computer to work out who is posting. It worked fine for Scott and Deb.
Facebook, put a beta tag back on! There are some alpha sites with fewer bugs!
It gets worse. You then reload the page:
I have reported the bug, but till Mr Zuckerberg gives me a cheque, I should not be a Facebook beta tester.
As of today, since I spend more time on Twitter, I have decided to have Loudtwitter repost my Tweets (posts) from that service into Vox. There will be a post in about five hours or so. I am not sure how this will work—it is an experiment for the most part.
As I wrote this post, the numbers have changed again (second image). Still 82 at Harvard but Vancouver and New York have switched places in terms of order, but they have lost a few more people, and the Kiwis are now down under 200.
Didn’t Facebook start at Harvard? Maybe it’s trying to prop up the numbers there to help Alma Mater along, and to credit dozens of my friends with a Harvard education to prop up its reputation.
I mean, if they did produce founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has been arrogant enough over the entire redesign process, then I’d say their reputation has been somewhat sullied.
The Lucire staff seems to be reduced to a single person (about eight of us are there in fact).
The network settings are, effectively, now useless on Facebook. They put people into networks they do not belong to, and the number of people in each one seems random.
I was curious to know if I could map my Twitter followers. Here they are, or as many as the service at Yahoo! Pipes allowed.
I’m surprised that there were no south Asian followers, or at least none that the service could pick up.
I’m hardly even on Facebook that much now—I have since plugged my Twitter into it, which is in turned plugged in to Twitterfeed, which is in turn plugged in to my or my company’s blogs. So I don’t even really need to go into it any more. So it was interesting to reach this landmark:
Today, I decided to join Vkontakte.ru, the Russian rival to Facebook. Facebook is changing its design and some folks pointed out that Vkontakte resembles an old Facebook, so I thought I would give it a try. If anyone wants to friend me there, I am under my real name. It is still not quite as polished as Facebook but it has a familiar interface. It is currently the world’s 30th ranked site (Facebook is 5th), according to Alexa Internet, which helped convince me it wasn’t a spam harvester.
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