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11 May 2010 23:07

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Tech: The Facebook backlash among techies is heating up

  • Over the past month, Mark Zuckerberg, the hottest new card player in town, has overplayed his hand. Facebook is officially ‘out,’ as in uncool, amongst partners, parents and pundits all coming to the realization that Zuckerberg and his company are–simply put–not trustworthy.
  • Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis • Discussing the apparent Facebook backlash that already seems to be afoot amongst techies. Many are feeling that Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has overplayed his hand with recent his recent moves, and companies once reliant on the social network’s ecosystem, namely “Farmville” creator Zynga, are trying to find alternatives. Calacanis goes further, and suggests that Facebook has stolen key features from other Silicon Valley companies, screwed their users over in terms of privacy, and built their company’s entire basis on lies and unethical behavior, and lost a lot of goodwill in the process. We should note, by the way, that Calacanis is a somewhat controversial figure because of the link-spammy nature of his Mahalo business, but he’s not alone in this feeling. source

10 May 2010 11:08

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Politics: We analyzed Sarah Palin’s Facebook page for some reason

  • What kind of jokers post on her wall, anyway? We were curious, so we decided to dig in, and found that fans of “Going Rogue” and people who want her to run for President are most prevalent, but occasionally, she gets ripped on by her own conservative base. Why? Check out our latest AOL News article to find out. (Photo courtesy geerlingguy on Flickr.) source

09 May 2010 20:59

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Tech: Is “Facebook login” still confusing internet users en masse?

  • YES this thread is STILL getting comments months later source
  • » The backstory: Three months ago, this ReadWriteWeb article somehow hit the magical SEO combination that made it the first item on Google when you search for “facebook login.” Hundreds of people got lost on a fairly tech-savvy site. Techies laugh and get depressed at regular intervals. To this day, it’s still one of the site’s most popular articles ever.

09 May 2010 20:45

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Culture: Well, duh: Betty White was a major ratings win for “SNL”

  • 8.8 the sketch show’s rating last night, its highest since November 2008
  • 88 the age of Betty White; we’re pretty sure that’s no coincidence source

09 May 2010 10:30

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Culture: The Betty White “Saturday Night Live” episode: Full of win

  • Her one-liners are pretty priceless. How did the 88-year-old Betty White get on “SNL” anyway? Facebook, of course. She gives the site lots of credit, but gets in a lot of ribbing in the process. “In my day, seeing pictures of people’s vacations was considered a punishment.” Many of the sketches this time were pretty stellar.

06 May 2010 10:35

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Tech: Facebook feeling the pressure over its latest privacy changes

  • 15 consumer groups aren’t fans of Facebook’s privacy stance source

05 May 2010 10:00

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Tech: Facebook drops a major security ball, and then some. Holy crap

  • We’re looking at your Facebook chats now. We got curious. TechCrunch noticed this major flaw in Facebook’s Gibson this morning, one so massive that Facebook’s chat mechanism is already down for maintenance. In the social networking world, this is equivalent to a zero-day exploit, so we’re very glad that Facebook is at least being quick in fixing it. But still. WTF guys? This is incredibly bad form. source
 

28 Apr 2010 20:46

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Tech: Badly-sourced tweet: Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t believe in privacy

  • Off record chat w/ Facebook employee. Me: How does Zuck feel about privacy? Response: [laughter] He doesn’t believe in it.
  • New York Times technology writer Nick Bilton • Tweeting something maybe he shouldn’t have. The tweet suggests that Mark Zuckerberg’s merely paying lip service to the idea of privacy, which is probably not something which helps his cause right now in the wake of the Open Graph push. Bilton, for his part, is facing a controversy of his own over his apparent misunderstanding of “off the record,” though in his defense, the source later said it was OK to leak the information without using their name. source

25 Apr 2010 10:19

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Tech: Is Facebook’s Open Graph the new Microsoft Windows?

  • Their vision of an open graph of people and things (with Facebook at the center) is becoming reality, and debates by technologists won’t change that. Facebook is taking over our identity and we are going along with that happily. It will take a new technology paradigm to disrupt what Facebook is doing.
  • TechCrunch king Michael Arrington • Discussing why Facebook is in a dominant position in the industry, and why they’re in a position to convince everyone to use their Open Graph and like button mechanism. He compares what Facebook is doing to Microsoft Windows, and suggests that, despite complaints about various details of the concept, they’ve got the market lynchpinned. “Someday, maybe a decade from now,” he writes, “some new technology will rise and allow other companies to threaten Facebook. But until then there is little to stop them. Their march to dominance has just begun.” Do you guys think this is true? source

22 Apr 2010 10:31

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Tech: Is Facebook’s “Like” button a bid for world domination?

  • Some seem to think it’s great. Others think Mark Zuckerberg overestimates his own service. Yesterday’s Facebook announcements were nothing short of epic, showing how Zuckerberg was able to turn his site into a link-servicing platform which allowed for a wider number of sharing opportunities. PC World’s Peter Smith makes a good point, however: Lots of people see Facebook as a time-waster, not a game-changing superplatform. Our opinion: If they can get us traffic, we don’t care what Mark Zuckerberg’s opinion of it is. source