Slashdot Mirror

Not really, just because someone has "liked" your page does not necessarily mean that they will see your feed.. Unless, of course, you pay extra to Facebook so that those who "liked" your page will actually see your content. The question always arises, whose business are you building, yours or Facebook's?

Facebook Continues Assault On StudiVZ, Opens Office In Hamburg (February 2010)

George Takei has made similar posts. Facebook wants to charge him for the amusing lolcats and whatever else he posts. When he posts about his book? Yeah, then it makes sense to charge him, but for the other stuff? Not so much.

His current solution was to tell everyone to add his page to their "interests" and then you start seeing his posts in your news-feed again.

Article about both Cuban and Takei's frustrations

You are mistaken.

http://allfacebook.com/files/2012/05/FacebookStockCertificate.jpg

They've pretty much cornered the advertising market with their dominate share of the search engine market and web applications.

Actually, that's pretty far from the truth. If you want the leader of online advertising, you want Facebook. There's some discrepancy in how the numbers pan out, but they all agree: Facebook beats Google fairly handily in the online advertising market.
http://www.allfacebook.com/report-facebook-leads-2011-online-display-ad-sales-2011-06
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/04/facebook-one-third-online-ads/

You actually missed the more troublesome buy in your list: that of flight data company ITA. Because of the way that airlines set up access to their flight and pricing information, it becomes difficult to figure out what you actually get when you search Google for fares.

While you're correct that Microsoft did that to secure their dominant position, it is also what every company does to get a competitive edge. The only time that the acquisitions becomes troublesome is when they are used to gain monopoly power in a market. The only time you could potentially argue that is with the acquisition of ITA. Interestingly, few people seem to worry about it.

Facebook Continues Assault On StudiVZ, Opens Office In Hamburg

Well obviously one of them will be along presently to point out that "nobody knows" how well WP7 is doing since release because Microsoft won't tell us. Since I know, I may as well nip that one in the bud: Abysmal is not an exaggeration. Panglozz has been scraping the Facebook user statistics weekly since November for all the major phone platforms, and has assembled that delightful analytical spreadsheet that tells us week-by-week how it's doing relative to other platforms.

Facebook user stats may not be perfect, but it's a huge sample and lines up perfectly with other reports, which seem to be bending over backwards to avoid stating the obvious truth. The phone is not selling. After six months WP7 total facebook users don't add up to two days worth of increase in iPhone and Android platforms. The user base is not there, and ultimately that's what developers care about. They don't care if it's fun to write apps for the phone. They care if there are users to use the apps - and there aren't enough to speak of. The trend is clearly in decline, so not only are the users not there, they're not ever going to be there. Writing Windows Phone apps is not going to be profitable for nearly any developer, and it's not going to make them famous either. Nokia can't save this.

Some of the numbers we've seen for WP7 are totally bogus. Obviously if nearly three times as many people downloaded the software development kit for WP7 as use WP7 for Facebook, something is amiss. Phone software development is not a 3x more common activity than Facebook posting. Somebody is trying to make it look like the thing is more popular than it actually is - perhaps by including the WP7 SDK with some other tools.

Which makes me glad that Panglozz is keeping track of this for us. It may be a little bit OCD, but it's helpful.

> ...and watch as it reports each time you load a page from a
> "facebook partner"...

Never happens.

100,000 Websites Add Facebook's Social Plugins - May 2010

No, like much of Slashdot I don't use it.

But, according to this, Facebook does ask for your credit card. I don't know how widespread this is.

Of course, you can imagine how valuable having verified information on the product (you) will be to advertisers and investors like Goldman.

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/05/facebook-friend-lists/

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/05/facebook-friend-lists/

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

Okay, first off, the article has a follow-up posted at the top of it saying they made a mistake and were corrected. But for the interest of people who would rather read comments than articles, here's what I've been telling everyone on Facebook who keeps passing around this foolishness:

First off, the claim that Facebook is allowing 3rd party advertisers to use people's photos isn't quite the case. In fact, Facebook Terms of Service (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) state (section 10.2) "We do not give your content to advertisers."

Yes, Facebook may pair up your name and profile photo with an ad that gets sent to your friends, and yes, that can be blocked with the option mentioned in the message going around (Settings->Privacy->"News Feed and Wall"->"Facebook Ads" and select "No One" - or this link might work to get you there faster, since I'm feeling useful http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=feeds&tab=ads )

This is not, however, 3rd party advertisers using your photo. Section 15 of the advertising guidelines for Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php) state that an ad won't even be accepted if the advertiser is using photos for which they don't own copyright.

Now for the useful: A Facebook application that has not been authorized by you or a friend cannot access any information about you other than what's in your public search listing. This means, though, that if you have a public search listing displaying your photo, an unscrupulous advertiser could get your profile photo.

Any application you have authorized will be able to access information it requires to work. Definition of "requires to work" may vary. If you play a lot of 3rd party Facebook games, or do a lot of those quizzes going around, remember to check the Privacy Policies and Terms of Use for the application if your worried (or if you're really worried, don't do them).

Any application your friends have authorized may be able to access any information about you (on behalf of your friend) that your friend can access. To limit what the applications can see, go to Settings->Privacy->Applications and go to the Settings tab (or have another link http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=platform&tab=other ).

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/downloadsquad-and-facebook-users-get-confused-about-facebooks-advertising-policy/ pointed out what more likely happened and downloadsquad corrected their position.

And apparently, as jdigital noted already, even the official facebook blog says that's what happened. So yeah, if you've posted stuff online, somebody may take it and abuse it.. but no, it wasn't Facebook's doing in this case. RTF....Retraction?

You seem to worry much about losing your privacy. Most social networking sites have rather extensive privacy settings, so you get to select in detail what should be revealed and to whom.

The problem of course then is that managing these privacy settings can be quite tricky, if you don't have a clear picture of what knobs you have available to turn.

Here is a rather recent and extensive walk-through of the most central privacy settings Facebook offers:

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

And no one ever was wrong about the next product that would knock Apple out of the lead in a niche:

http://gizmodo.com/384440/rim-engineers-call-touchscreen-blackberry-apple-killer
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/08/songbird-the-open-so.html
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081215/amazons-mp3-store-one-year-in-no-itunes-killer-probably-wont-be/
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/10/facebook-to-launch-itunes-competitor/
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2008/07/dells_ipod_killer_revealed_pro.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027_3-5183692.html