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Facebook Launches Location Based Product
adeelarshad82 writes "Facebook officially launched its 'Places' location-based product, backed by seeming rivals Foursquare and Gowalla. Facebook had been expected to announce a location service ever since it announced the press conference earlier this week. The Places service officially goes live August 19, although an iPhone app will go live on the August 18. According to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Places has been in development for several months. It had three goals, he said: helping share where you are in a nice and social way, to see who's around you, and just discover new and cool places to visit in the future."
And so we know exactly where you are all the time and which adverts to serve you.
I turned this off as soon as I could.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/7046/how-to-prevent-being-checked-into-facebook-places-privacy/
I get social media. I really like most of it. However, I enjoy my fancy stereo and big screen TV too much to let people know when I am out of town or out of my house.
"Oh, I know that dude. He just bought a fat entertainment system and now his facebook says he's out of town for a month. Woot!"
No thanks.
change "Places I check in" to "only me"
and uncheck "enable" in "Include me in "People Here Now" after I check in"
and set "Friends can check me in to Places" to "disabled"
and you're back to good ol' privacy-invading facebook as you know it.
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
I spend my time updating the iPhone app, and then the facebook program isn't available yet if Florida. Not quite ready for primetime.
and abstracted it to 'things'...
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
+1 Minority Report!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...And to target the space laser, of course. We would hate to vaporize the wrong person."
...you are anywhere else but the US it seems. I hate that.
arse biscuits.
So then, does this mean your stalkers will know where you are, and your local burglar will know where you aren't?
http://harridanic.com
...to ignore this. I am SO over Facebook.
Apropos of this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-Schmidt.html
I don't know why anyone would put any real data into a service like Facebook.
It's a large, profit-driven, high-margin corporation. You wouldn't tell McDonald's or Coca-Cola what your interests are, where you live, YOUR POLITICAL OPINIONS, who your parents are and who you want to date, would you?
Stay anonymous. Fill in entertaining bullshit when they ask you personal questions. They think I'm a gay Black Christian Libertarian who wants legal pot and likes chinchillas.
Futurist Traditionalism
It's gonna turn into a hookup tool. Like craigslist adult forums, but very very immediate.
What's this sentence doing in the write up? As long ago as monday, eh?
This really is turning into a great tool for obsessive people. Here's an example; I'm on facebook and I am updated about what new friends my friends have. Why on earth should I know this? It is utterly pointless and makes you feel like a stalker. As for the location business, it's like a ticking time bomb to me until the media focus on a particular crime where the attacker used facebook as a means to gather private information about whereabouts. Facebook is either really stupid, or they think they are invincible.
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You'll wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe
The product isn't the social networking service offered to the mostly unwitting registrants. The product is the data harvested from them and sold to advertisers and other human detritus for their nefarious purposes. The announcement is really "we're going to pump this GPS data out of the data cows and you'll be able to buy it from us". see also: a number of pronouncements from Zuckerberg indicating how much he respects the users.
It just amazes me how much we are willing to give away everything that is related to our privacy.
Advertisement is one of the least things I am worried about. What I am worried about is that nobody really cares about privacy. Not really. Many people think that if you are in public, you do not have a right on privacy. Many people think that if you give it away, it is your right and not a big issue.
However I try to do my best to not only think about my privacy, but about others as well, just as I would think about other peoples freedom and not just my own.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Iphone first, followed by Android and then Windows. Yet Another Company writing catering first only for 3% of the mobile phone owning population, followed up with two of the other smaller platforms, whilst ignoring the market leaders of Symbian (worldwide) and RIM (in the US).
Android is certainly a platform that should be written for, as it's the fastest growing right now, and second most popular in the US. But I fail to understanding putting the Iphone first, or supporting Iphone and Windows, whilst forgetting the two major platforms. All I can think of is that the Iphone and Windows have problem using the touch.facebook.com site with a web browser, so need to have a special "app" written for them.
(Not to mention that a J2ME application would be an obvious thing to do too, since this is really the biggest platform overall, catering for the vast majority of phones.)
Oh, and if you're going to reply telling me that the Iphone is more popular, have the decency to look up actual market data, rather than redefining market sales to mean something completely different, like "mindshare" or "what me and my mates brag about owning".
Then again, since this seems such a bad privacy feature, I guess I shouldn't worry. Iphone users already have to have their posts tagged with an Apple advert "I'm posting with an iPhone!", so why not give away more info too?
Obviously.
it's under construction
What year? 2011? The summary was posted Aug 19, 2010, at ~1PM GMT... There's no place on Earth that's -13 or -14 GMT, so it had to be the 19th when it was posted to the front page.
I have to say I just don't get services like this.
Facebook, like many other websites, tries to strike a balance with its users. In exchange for offering me a range of services, I provide them with data of various kinds which they then use in an attempt to make money from me. I've found it a useful means of keeping in touch with people, sharing photos, and so on, and I've been happy enough to give them what they've asked for thus far as payment for it. It's generally nothing secret - I don't care who knows my age or what town I live in, and if I write a status update, I do it voluntarily because I want people to read it. They can do what they like with it.
But now they want me to get into the habit of telling them where I am. In return for... What, exactly? Geographically targeted ads I don't want? The occasional discount, if I'm lucky? Sorry, this deal's biased too far in their favour. I'm not playing.
I'm increasingly getting the feeling that Facebook's over the hill. Empires rise and fall very quickly on the Internet, because it's so easy to desert something and move on. Facebook, in their arrogance, think they've built a site so sticky that their users won't be able to bring themselves to desert it, no matter how hostile they become towards them. I think they're going to start to find out that, like everybody else before them, they're wrong.
This stuff reminds me of that cartoon where the mice decide to give the cat a present: a pretty, shiny bell to put around the cat's neck. For me? the cat exclaims. Now the mice know when the cat is coming.
No thanks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What products will they advertise for my mom's basement?