You are here: Home / Archives for facebook

Facebook is Asking Humans to Help Complete Transformation to Skynet

July 28, 2010 By James View Comments

You all laughed and threw things at me when I rented the sandwich board, grew my hair out and lamented the end of days, but now we’ll see who has the last maniacal laugh. 

Facebook has obviously been planting these hipsters in t-shirts around the globe to make us think that Google was the real Skynet. Now we finally know the truth.

What was the one thing that was holding Facebook back from it’s final transformation into Skynet? Obviously it was Facebook’s inability to tap into the collective unconscious of humankind. It was the last thread that was keeping us from being enslaved and forced to spend eternity in indentured servitude on a farm in Farmville. 

Today we’re introducing Facebook Questions, a beta product that lets you pose questions like these to the Facebook community. With this new application, you can get a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics. 

Facebook Questions helps you tap into the collective knowledge of the more than 500 million people on Facebook. For example, if you’re vacationing in Costa Rica and want to know the best places to surf, you can use Facebook Questions to get answers from nearby surfing enthusiasts. Because questions will also appear to your friends and their friends, you’ll receive answers that are more personalized to you.

Check and mate. Once Facebook definitively knows what my favorite shade of purple is we are all doomed. Doomed!

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: collective knowledge, facebook, facebook questions

Facebook’s Unplanned Family

July 27, 2010 By James View Comments

Since it’s inception, Facebook has been all about groups, cliques, clubs etc. When it first started it was primarily focused on college kids. You had to use your university email address when you signed up and you were automatically grouped by your college.

Next, Facebook opened up to high school kids and you were grouped by what high school you were going to. When Facebook eventually opened up to anyone over 13 people were still big on grouping themselves with something, usually their work. Once you signed up and validated your work email address you grouped with all your fellow co-workers.

As Facebook started to grow and become more mainstream we saw a natural evolution starting to take place. Facebook was so good at connecting groups of people that had something in common and allowing them to share information, photos, videos, etc with just those people, it sort of organically became the natural place for families to start connecting.

Families are the ultimate group. Suddenly, your aunts and uncles, cousins and parents, people whom with you might have updated your life separately throughout the year at different times, now they had immediate access to your daily life, you to theirs.

Facebook unintentionally became the thing that we had been looking for all along. Since the birth of the internet people realized its ability to bring people closer together. Facebook stumbled into place with just the right tools, at just the right time to become the de facto online scrapbook for families to keep in touch.

Once Facebook caught on they started making it as easy as possible to connect with your families, even creating Create a Family Group pages.

With 500 million users there are bound to be a couple million critics but say what you will Facebook has just enough features, and is easy enough to use to keep people of all ages coming back.

I live in New York with my wife and my 2-year-old daughter. I’m the only one in my family that lives here. My family is spread out in Colorado, Indiana and Michigan. I know that for me it’s been a wonderful thing that anyone in my family can log onto Facebook and share in the memories we are making with our family. My mothers and sisters can watch videos and see photos any time that is convenient for them.

It’s clear that it didn’t start out to be a family platform, but just like many unplanned families, Facebook started with a college kid and a few too many drinks. Accidents aren’t always a bad thing. 

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: facebook, family, groups, Social Media

Is Mark Zuckerberg the Lord Farquaad of the Internets?

May 30, 2010 By James View Comments

I’m generally not a conspiracy theorist, at least I would never admit to being a conspiracy theorist in public for fear that it would bring swift and terrible retribution, but even I can’t ignore the similarities between Duloc’s Lord Farquaad and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg any longer. The facts are just too overwhelming to not investigate more thoroughly.

Duloc, the quaint little town run with an iron fist of Farquaad and Facebook seem to have quite a bit in common. Namely that they’re both run by creepy, overly confident men who try and mask their “shortcomings” by building giant phallic castles (I’m still doing research on this accusation as I have yet to actually find any concrete evidence that Zuckerberg has built a castle of any sort) whose sole purpose seems to be to try and get people to forget about their tiny appendages.

Mark Zuckerberg: The Lord Farquaad of the Internets?

Fortunately, that’s not where the similarities end:

  • Both Farquaad and Zuckerberg’s kingdoms were built to impress women that ultimately didn’t love the creepy bastards. Farquaad was forced to marry Fiona so he could be crowned King of his Kingdom and Zuckerberg coded Facebook in a “tidal wave” of grief after being dumped by his girlfriend. Both noble gestures but obviously these guys have no clue what women want. Today’s woman wants to feel involved, like they’re important. That’s why I always insist on going halfsies on my dates to Red Lobster. It’s not because I’m cheap, it’s because it allows women to feel empowered.
  • Both “Farquaad” and “Facebook” start with the letter “f”. Not only do they both start with the letter “f” but the “f” on Farquaad’s banner looks shockingly like the “f” in Facebook’s logo. By “shockingly” similar I mean to say that they are both lowercase. I can only take so many “coincidences” before I start believing far-fetched incredulous theories.

…after Zuckerberg quit Harvard his personal life spun out of control, with Parker helping him indulge his fantasies with a stream of “groupies”. Sorkin’s screenplay suggests Parker knew Zuckerberg was driven not just by money or fame but also sexual insecurity. While he is depicted as receiving sex in bars, Parker runs the business.

Does that not sound disturbingly similar to the completely fictional backstory that I made up to fill in Farquaad’s character issues? Doesn’t it?!

The bottom line is, can’t you imagine Zuckerberg lying nude on some type of animal hide blanket while sipping a martini and telling some innocent, likely repulsed and now incredibly nauseous girl that he’s the guy who coded Facebook? Can’t you?!

The bottom line of the bottom line is that if the answer to that question is “yes”, then you are contractually obligated (by terms of a contract that was completely made up by me and agreed to, in principle, as soon as your read the first word of this post) (yes, I know you’re thinking that sounds completely ludicrous but it’s actually a quite common thing in the blogosphere although I wouldn’t expect you non-blogees to know that) to not only believe everything else I have written here but to go on a crusade to get as many people as possible to read this post to persuade them of your new beliefs.

Listen, of course I don’t want to have to take anyone to court but if you read the first word of this post and did not do everything in your power to spread this post around to as many of your friends as possible then you are openly defying the terms of the contract I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Whether I want to litigate this or not my conscious would not allow me to allow you to get away with something so despicable.

If you have any questions or comments about the terms and conditions of our legally binding contract please send $1 to my Paypal account at jamespoling@gmail.com and I will be more than happy to consider answering at least one of your questions.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: duloc, facebook, lord farquaad, mark zuckerberg, shrek

Facebook’s Privacy Guide Explained with a Wink and a Smile

May 27, 2010 By James View Comments

I started writing a post on Facebook’s privacy issues the other day but I never really finished it. I decided to give up because I wasn’t sure I could put into words exactly what I wanted to say. I just posted the article privately so it won’t show up in my feed but you can read it here. It actually touches on what I’m about to say here and what I think Facebook has again missed the mark with in their attempt to clarify their privacy controls.

What I find disturbing about Facebook is the fact that it has basically turned into one large focus group. The problem is, if you’ve ever been on a focus group, not only are you obviously well aware that you’re on a focus group and that your thoughts and ideas are going to be used for marketing purposes, you’re actually financially compensated for your time as well as your point of view.

For me, that’s where Facebook misses the mark and makes me feel a little dirty by going there. Don’t take my word for it, check out their new, revised explanation of your facebook privacy:

We never share your personal information with advertisers. This includes information on your profile that you’ve made available to everyone. Advertisers may target ads to people according to their interests, age group, geographic location and gender, but they receive only anonymous data reports.

In one breath they’re saying they don’t share my personal information with advertisers and in the very next sentence they go on to list all of my personal information they share with advertisers. I don’t know if Facebook is really that stupid or of they really believe that we’re that stupid to fall for that nonsensical doublespeak.

Just because you’re not sharing my name and phone number with advertisers doesn’t give you the right to say that you “never share my personal information with advertisers” when you obviously do. Guess what, my “interests, age group, geographic location and gender” are all part of my personal information whether it’s given out anonymously or not.

That’s what makes this whole Facebook privacy issue so hard to swallow. On one hand Facebook is trying to take the high road by saying they’re not giving out any personal information, while on the other hand they’re running Facebook as a giant focus group and you’re the rat in the cage so to speak and Facebook plans to make as many dollars off of that as they can.

You can’t have it both ways, either you stop monetizing our habits and patterns and personal information or you be more up front that Facebook is a giant testing ground for corporations to use as much of your information as possible to set up marketing strategies for their products.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: facebook, privacy, Tech

Student Uses Facebook to Shed Light on Towing Company’s Shady Business Practices

May 27, 2010 By James View Comments

T&J Towing decided not to actually address the disgruntled car owner’s complaint, choosing instead to file a $750,000 lawsuit against him for slander and defamation

This story epitomizes exactly what gets me so amped about social media. Anytime you hear me talk or write about social media and why I’m so passionate about it you’ll definitely get an earful about how social media gives people tools that allow them to crush it and level the playing field.

This is akin to a religious experience for me. Watching someone amplify their voice with just the right tools at just the right time resulting in someone being held accountable for their actions. In my mind I imagine it’s comparable to the Protestant Reformation when people, for the first time in modern history, began to fathom that they could have a personal relationship with God, that they no longer needed to rely on clerics to manage their relationship with God.

I know that’s an extremely dramatic comparison but I honestly believe that, the religious aspect aside, the ability for one person to be able to stand up and have their voice heard by tens of thousands of people at the push of a button is a wonderfully powerful gift. One person has the ability to call out a much larger, more powerful company with many more resources and hold them accountable for their actions. That, to me, is an amazing concept and one which I will constantly strive to make work on and evangelize as long as I have the opportunity.

Justin Kurtz, a 21-year-old Western Michigan University student, who started a group on Facebook to gripe about the company, now has more than 4,200 members.

It is my firm belief that my car was recently “broken into” but all that was stolen was my arboretums parking pass. This was an act by T&J so that they could charge me $120 to get my car out of impound. Please invite your friends to get justice against T&J!!!

“It’s not like I was making untrue claims or anything,” he said. “It’s not like I had control over anything that everyone had posted the whole time. I told everyone to be professional, don’t post any threats. Just tell your story and that’s what pretty much everyone did.”
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: corporate whoredom, facebook, Social Media

Social Media Statistics and ROI

November 14, 2009 By James View Comments

It’s often hard to get certain types of people to have an interest in developing a serious social media strategy if they can’t see an instant ROI. Many people still look at social media as some sort of free subscription product that should immediately bear the fruit of profits. Those are the people who will eventually wither and fall off of the vine of relativity as new media continues to grow and evolve.

Is social media a fad?

Social media ROI

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: facebook, roi, Social Media, statistics, twitter
« Older Posts