Bird’s Eye: Why Facebook? Because if it were a country it would be the third largest in the world. Because it’s breaking new ground, and that makes it interesting. Because forewarned is forearmed, and even four arms may not be enough to defend yourself.
* Facebook: The Real Presidential Swing State – Technology Review
Facebook and Internet campaign strategies grew up at the same time. In 2003 and early 2004, when Facebook was a new dorm-room plaything, Howard Dean’s presidential campaign pioneered Internet fund-raising. By 2008, Facebook had crossed the 100-million-user mark and was coming to dominate online social networking; that year, Barack Obama’s campaign wielded a custom social-networking site that helped win the White House A Facebook cofounder, Chris Hughes, helped build that site.
Now, in 2012, Facebook is central to the upcoming presidential election.
* Facebook Processes More Than 500 Tb Of Data Daily CNET News
Here’s a breakdown of how much data flows through the Facebook machine each day:
- 2.7 billion likes made daily on and off of the Facebook site
- 300 million photos uploaded
- 70,000 queries executed by people and automated systems
- 500+ terabytes of new data “ingested”
Since Facebook uses this data to build its user experience, it wants teams from across the company — whether they sell ads or build functions — to be able to access any of the data as needed. Parikh said this keeps the creation and improvement of Facebook features as fast as possible.
* 5 Design Tricks Facebook Uses To Affect Your Privacy Decisions TechCrunch
Cory (boingboing) says, “On TechCrunch, Avi Charkham provides an excellent side-by-side comparison of an older Facebook design and the latest one, showing how the service has moved to minimize the extent to which its users are notified of the privacy “choices” they make when they interact with the service. The Facebook rubric is that people don’t value their privacy (“privacy is dead, get over it,”) and we can tell that because they demonstrate it by using Facebook. But really, Facebook is designed to minimize your understanding of the privacy trades you’re making and your ability to make those trades intelligently.”
* 10 Incredibly Simple Things You Should Be Doing To Protect Your Privacy – Forbes
This post is for you, guy with no iPad password, and for you, girl who stays signed into Gmail on her boyfriend’s computer, and for you, person walking down the street having a loud conversation on your mobile phone about your recent doctor’s diagnosis of that rash thing you have. These are the really, really simple things you should be doing to keep casual intruders from invading your privacy.
