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Facebook Celebrates Turning 12 Today (cnbc.com)
12 years ago today, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, and since then the site has grown at a nearly unbelievable pace. Now, with about 1.6 billion monthly active users, Facebook makes an average of $3.73 in revenue per user worldwide. And as the company continues to grow, engagement is only getting higher. According to an analysis by CNBC, users spend an aggregate of 10.5 billion minutes per day on the social media platform -- that's around $3.5 trillion in squandered productivity, by their estimate. Facebook is celebrating its birthday by marking today "Friends Day" and adding personalized videos to each user's account showing their best moments with friends, or at least what Facebook's algorithms think are the best moments. (Users can opt to share the video or keep it private.) The company's also announced an updated degrees-of-separation metric to make it easier to connect with other users.
Celebrate? Lets mourn our collective privacy. Lets mourn proportionality of outrage. Lets mourn moving on from your mistakes. Lets mourn minding your own business.
when can we get rid of facebook?
I'd say "many happy returns". But in this case I'll simply say "sod off, and may you have no more birthdays - ever".
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
People still use Facebook? How quaint!
Well, I'm no Facebook fan, (have been "wasting" my time here for years on /. instead.)
That hasn't stopped me holding down a job and delivering value to my clients over those same years.
Also, before the interwebs people did crossword puzzles, and other "non productive" stuff.
Plenty of people find Facebook a useful marketing tool also; my wife breeds and sells cats, and plenty of contacts have come via fb.
Thanks for posting! Timothy was about to drive us all nuts.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
At 18 you can kick them out, but if you let them get a BA degree in Afrikaans Translations of Shakespeare, they're going to end up back on your couch.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Only reason I have an account is to communicate with companies that don't have their own login system.
I'm on my second account now my first one was locked.
Apparently I fell awry of their real name policy. For some reason they didn't believe my name was ikate facebork.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
That means that next year, Facebook will be old enough to get a Facebook account, and the entire Facebook computing infrastructure will disappear in a burst of recursion...
With this news, I can now celebrate 12 years of not being on Facebook!
It's arguably the biggest threat to consumer privacy in our age - a Three Letter Agency's wet dream. I have never, and will never, ever use the steaming pile of user-exploiting, privacy-invading, advertiser-serving shit that Facebook has always been, and will always be. I can happily be a consumer, but I will never be a product if I can help it. I am the lone Facebook holdout amongst everyone I know, and proud of it.
Here's hoping we've already reached Peak Facebook...
"Government is like fire; a handy servant, but a dangerous master." -- George Washington
The only reason I have an account is for friends and family - I wonder how many other accounts are purely for this reason?
Huh? Keeping up with friends and family is the main purpose of Facebook.
How a company that will do anything they want with your info, and seriously can't be trusted is held in such high regards.
On the flip side I need to access facebook to keep up with the family, and their doings, Facebook is their social setting.
Remember the days before Facebook, when you had to actually go over to someone's house and hide in the bushes to stalk them?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
But you have a slashdot account... that's SO MUCH BETTER!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I agree.
I think people knew that there was a something. They didn't know that the something could turn out to be anything.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Zuckerberg becomes one of the richest people in the world by building...the biggest waste of time ever devised.
Bill Gates is a prick. But at least his company built something - Windows - that makes people productive.
Andrew Carnegie was a prick. But his companies built railroads that allowed for westward expansion and are still in use today.
Jay Gould was a prick. But he too built railroads that helped to expand the economy.
What has Zuck done, exactly? He created a program that is such a time waster that many companies simply block it for fear of their employees surfing cousin Sally's wedding photos on the company dime. Sure, it has helped to reunite some families and I applaud that. And maybe it helped you find that long lost high school chum from 20 years ago. But maybe if you haven't heard from them in 20 years then they don't really give a shit about you? But I digress....
And the advertising...I mean does anyone really look at those things? If i buy a copy of Car & Driver then I'm really into cars and if I see an ad for car stuff I'm likely to at least read it. But if I'm looking at Sally's wedding photos do I really care about adds for car stuff?
I know that it makes money for Facebook but the whole thing just seems like a giant house of cards to me.