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Is the Facebook Leak a Big Deal?

Caitlin McDevitt — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:31:00 +0000

Yesterday, many news sites started screeching about a huge leak of Facebook profile data, only to be shushed by the tech blogosphere and Facebook. Here’s what happened: A security researcher named Ron Bowes crawled Facebook’s open directory, scooping out data that more than 100 million users had not secured using available privacy settings. He pulled all of that data—which included names and profile IDs—into his own database.

Privacy watchdog Simon Davies told BBC News that "Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it.” Meanwhile, Gizmodo’s Adam Frucci told everyone to calm down. “Don't freak out: all the data was already available publicly,” he wrote. In accordance, TechCrunch downplayed the incident, noting that all Bowes really did was to prove that “Facebook’s public data is public.”

Facebook swiftly defended itself, making the same point—that all of the data Bowes found was already publicly available in the Facebook directory. And Facebook doesn’t force users to appear in the directory. In fact, it offers clear instructions on how to make yourself disappear from the directory by tweaking your search privacy settings. In a statement, Facebook said:

In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher. This information already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook. No private data is available or has been compromised. Similar to the white pages of the phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook.

So while the whole “leak” may be a bit overblown, it presents a new kind of privacy problem for Facebook. Typically, when Facebook runs into a privacy dilemma—which it does all the time—it tells users that fixing their privacy settings will fix the problem. But, in this case, the damage is already done. Turning up privacy settings on Facebook won’t make the data that Bowes has already collected go away. So, this time, instead of giving users the same old "this is how you protect yourself" speech, Facebook could only wag its finger and tell users what they should have done to protect themselves. Bowes realized this while working on the project. He wrote:

But as I thought more about it, and talked to other people, I realized that this is a scary privacy issue. I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook. Facebook helpfully informs you that "[a]nyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their Search privacy settings" -- but that doesn't help much anymore considering I already have them all (and you will too, when you download the torrent). Suckers!

How To Get More Traffic From Facebook

Caitlin McDevitt — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:28:44 +0000

By now, most publishers have figured out that they're supposed to be using Facebook. And many have already set up pages on the social network, baked tools like the "Share" and "Like" buttons into their sites, and encouraged journalists in their employ to interact with Facebook fans as much as possible. Pretty much all of these actions seem to have positive results (increased traffic, higher levels of engagement), so it's hard to tell what kind of Facebook strategy works and what kind really works.

Only Facebook can peek at the performance of all media companies plugged into Facebook to figure out who is having the most success and why. And, indeed, over the past few weeks, Facebook has watched “the 100 top media sites integrated with social plugins,” in order to flesh out some useful tips on how to boost traffic with Facebook’s help. The company has released the results of the study to coincide with the launch of its new Media page that will offer journalists occasional advice on how to maximize their content distribution using Facebook’s tools and platform.

Here's what they found:

People like to see their friends' faces: "Websites experienced 3-5x greater click-through rates on the Like button when they implemented the version that includes thumbnails of friends, enabled users to add comments (which 70% of top performing sites did), and placed the Like button at the top and bottom of articles and near visually exciting content like videos and graphics."

Subpages can work: "In addition to analyzing engagement on stories, we also examined the effect of creating focused sub-pages and found that they can have substantially higher engagement. For example, stories published from a World Cup-focused Page of one major media company had 5x the engagement rate per user than stories from the company's main Page."

Facebook performs better on top: "Sites that place plugins above the fold and on multiple pages receive more engagement. For instance, sites that placed the Activity Feed on both the front and content pages received 2-10x more clicks per user than sites with the plugins on the front page alone."

Middle-of-the-day posts get the least engagement: "In our analysis of stories published by top media organizations, we found that (a) stories involving emotional topics, passionate debates, and important sports events have 2-3x the activity of other stories, (b) status updates which ask simple questions or encourage a user to Like the story have 2-3x the activity, and (c) stories published in the early morning or just before bedtime have higher engagement."

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Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:28:44 +0000

How Bad Is Facebook’s Accidental Censorship Problem?

Caitlin McDevitt — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:36:41 +0000

Facebook has been celebrating its burgeoning user base since it hit the 500 million mark. But especially as it gets bigger, Facebook needs to get better at monitoring the ocean of content that its many users create. Just last week, Facebook had to apologize to Sarah Palin because it inadvertently removed one of her posts. And over the weekend, a blogger pointed out that Facebook wouldn’t allow him to create a page with the word “Palestinian” in it. Gawker writes:

The Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet tried to create a Facebook page for itself this weekend. Only, it wasn't able to do so—because Facebook won't let users create pages with the word "Palestinian" in the title.

Rex Brynen of the Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet went up against the same difficult-to-comprehend automated Facebook processes that got a Sarah Palin note taken down last week when he tried to create a page for the PRRN:

After contacting customer service and getting an automated reply, Brynen comes the conclusion that the only guideline his page name comes afoul of is that titles must "Not contain terms or phrases that may be abusive"—and the only term or phrase that gets consistently shot down is "Palestinian."

Neither of these incidents seems like intentional censorship by Facebook. Instead, they’re most likely failures of Facebook’s content moderation system that just happen to be getting attention since they’re politically charged. But how often does Facebook’s flagging system fail when it comes to less sensational subjects?

Facebook Says Sorry to Sarah Palin

Caitlin McDevitt — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:12:13 +0000

According to Politico, Facebook has apologized for inadvertently removing a controversial post by Sarah Palin—who has nearly 2 million fans on the site. In the note, which is back up on her page now, Palin calls the planned construction of a mosque near ground zero “an intolerable mistake on hallowed ground.”

When the post suddenly disappeared yesterday, some speculated that it had been removed because it violated Facebook’s rules against hate speech. That’s not what happened, insists Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. “The note in question did not violate our content standards but was removed by an automated system,” he said in a statement.

Facebook does have a system for removing posts when they're flagged by other users, but it's less than perfect. One Tumblr blogger who describes himself as "just another bro" on his account is claiming credit for the note's removal. He had asked his readers to flag the post as objectionable on Wednesday, writing, "Help Report Sarah Palin’s Ground Zero mosque note to Facebook for being “Racist/Hate Speech.” And it seems likely that his readers' collective action may have triggered the deletion. Yesterday, when the post came down, he triumphantly declared that Palin had been "refudiated."

Despite his obvious disdain for Palin, the blogger said that the whole thing wasn't meant as a dig at the politician. Instead he called it "a social experiment to explore the boundaries of Facebook’s government-like Terms and Conditions and the power of the Tumblr community."

Takeaways From the Zuckerberg-Sawyer Showdown

Caitlin McDevitt — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:39:24 +0000

Yesterday, Diane Sawyer of ABC World News sat down for an interview with the always-uncomfortable-on camera-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The interview is pretty long and rehashes a lot of what most people already know about Facebook. But amidst Sawyer’s predictable questions and Zuckerberg’s predictable answers, there were a few noteworthy nuggets. Here's a summary:

On an IPO, Zuckerberg says: "When it makes sense, right. I mean, what we're most focused on is just building these tools that help people stay connected with the people that they care about. And at some point along the path, I think it'll make sense to have an IPO. But we're not running the company to do that. We're running the company to serve more people."

Of The Social Network, the upcoming movie about Facebook, Zuckerberg says: "I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we've worked so hard for all this time," he said. "I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded."

On whether he signed away 84 percent of the company in a contract years ago, Zuckerberg says: "I think we were quite sure that we did not sign a contract that says that they have any right to ownership over Facebook."

On whether or not he hates interviews, Zuckerberg says: Nothing, and blushes.

Facebook Hits 500 Mllion Users

Caitlin McDevitt — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:53:10 +0000

It’s official. This morning, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook now has 500 million active users. InsideFacebook points out that “If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest on the globe, trailing only China and India.” Zuckerberg says that while half a billion is a “nice number,” he’s more impressed by the meaningful interaction that happens on Facebook every day. So, to celebrate the milestone, Facebook has launched the “Stories” App, which lets users share short accounts of their positive Facebook experiences. Facebook explains, “Organized by geography and theme, Facebook Stories illustrates how people are finding what's been lost (from old loves and pets to class rings), supporting others (whether through a wall post or a kidney donation to strangers), and even changing the world through social movements.” While the app is pretty cheesy, it does highlight the fact that Facebook connects a massive group of people in ways that no other Web site ever has before.

Facebook Users Can't Get No Satisfaction

Caitlin McDevitt — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:24:47 +0000

The University of Michigan’s Business School has completed its annual American Customer Satisfaction Index, and—in the first year that social media companies were included—Facebook did very poorly. The Wall Street Journal reports the results: “Facebook came out with one of the lowest ranks of any company measured by the Index – a 64 out of 100. That puts Facebook in the bottom 5% of all private sector companies, and in the same range as the IRS tax e-filing system, airlines and cable companies.”

Is spending time on Facebook really as frustrating as filing your taxes? That’s what the survey results suggest, but I'm not so sure that's really the way that most people feel. And, in fact, usage figures and growth rates point to just the opposite: that people really like the Facebook experience.

Sure, Facebook has made its fair share of mistakes over the years, but it's usually very quick to fix them. That's probably because its users are very quick to complain. Most users want Facebook to look the same day after day, year after year. But Facebook knows that it needs to evolve if it wants to remain competitive. Users also want Facebook for free. But they’re typically not willing to put up with any alternative monetization plans that the company develops. Perhaps it's not that Facebook is bad at satisfying customers, but, instead, that social media customers are just really hard to satisfy.

Maybe the Facebook Movie Won’t Be Boring

Caitlin McDevitt — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:29:14 +0000

Columbia Pictures has released the first-full length trailer for The Social Network, which is due out in October. The trailer includes the first real film footage we've seen yet accompanied by an eerie choir-sung rendition of Radiohead's "Creep." It's dark and definitely makes Mark Zuckerberg look pretty devilish.

How Frivolous Is the Facebook Lawsuit?

Caitlin McDevitt — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:07:00 +0000

Facebook—and most of the media—have been dismissive of a lawsuit brought against the social network by a man named Paul Ceglia who claims to own 84 percent of the company. He bases his case on a contract that he says he signed with Zuckerberg in 2003 to develop the site. But here are a few reasons why his side of the story looks pretty flimsy:

From the Wall Street Journal: “The date of the contract appears to conflict with previous accounts of the creation of Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg built a predecessor to Facebook called Facemash in October and November 2003, but Mr. Zuckerberg didn't register the domain thefacebook.com until January 2004.”

From MediaPost: "Even assuming that the contract Ceglia filed is genuine, that wouldn't necessarily mean that he is entitled to any portion of Facebook, says corporate attorney David R. Lee, a partner in the Silicon Valley law firm White and Lee. One reason is that the contract doesn't appear to contain any details about the software that Zuckerberg allegedly agreed to create. Therefore, Lee says, it's possible that whatever code was created pursuant to the contract wasn't used in Facebook."

From Mashable: "The terms of the contract are weird, and the timing (more than six years after the contract was signed) of the lawsuit is suspicious at best..."

From TBM: "Last year, Ceglia and his wife were charged with grand larceny and fraud, according to the Wellsville Daily. Apparently they took people's money to provide wood pellets but didn't deliver."

From CNBC: "It's been more than seven years since Ceglia claims to have signed a contract with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the statute of limitations for business contracts in New York state is six years."

But wait! Facebook may not be totally in the clear.

From the E-Commerce Times:"The fact that the judge froze Facebook's assets suggests there may be extenuating circumstances favoring Ceglia, Gendelman [of of Tanya Gendelman Law Offices] pointed out…Also, Ceglia may be planning to argue that the statute of limitations didn't start until the contract was breached, which would have set the clock ticking in 2004, said Scott & Scott partner Julie Machal-Fulks."

The "Barefoot Bandit" Rocked Facebook

Caitlin McDevitt — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:53:13 +0000

A teenage fugitive who calls himself the “Barefoot Bandit” was captured over the weekend in the Bahamas after eluding police for more than two years. Colton Harris-Moore committed many of his crimes—which included "burglarizing homes, offices and businesses"—shoeless. While on the run, he acquired stolen cars, boats, planes, and nearly 80,000 friends who followed his escapades on Facebook. The page, administered not by Harris-Moore but someone tracking his progress, has been overrun by comments about his recent arrest. Here’s what some people had to say:

Alex Lev Starting a defense fund, if enough interest is generated, it will be successful! Needless to say every penny will go straight to him! send me a msg. if you are interested to Alex Lev.

Nicole Glaze damn,the police caught him.it was fun while it lasted!

Amy Leigh Alvey Colton, I support you brotha! Good luck man! Youre my hero!!!!!! haha : ) When you break out, I got somewhere for you to stay in Kentucky!!!!!!! just dont steal my car...

David Cameron and Mark Zuckerberg Will Tackle the Deficit Together

Caitlin McDevitt — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:34:43 +0000

British Prime Minister David Cameron and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently engaged in an awkward video chat discussing a joint effort to crowd-source the answer to the government’s biggest problem: an enormous deficit. Can Facebook really help the government curb spending?

Facebook says it can:

In the largest public engagement project ever launched by the British Government, Downing Street and Facebook today announced a landmark initiative aimed at making public spending more effective. Coined ‘The Spending Challenge,’ the initiative marks the first step in the government’s commitment to creating an open and honest dialogue with the 26 million British citizens who actively use Facebook by calling on them to submit their feedback on the policies that will directly affect them in this year’s public spending budget.

The British government expects to receive “informed opinions and actionable ideas.” On Facebook, that’s asking for a lot.

Why Is Facebook Closing the Gift Shop?

Caitlin McDevitt — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:54:26 +0000

Facebook announced last night that it will shutter its virtual gift shop in just three weeks. “Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts,” Facebook product manager Jared Morgenstern wrote in a blog post, “but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts.” He explained that already-purchased gifts will still be visible and suggested some other popular Facebook apps that facilitate gift-giving.

I’m glad that my virtual turtle, wrapped present, and sunglasses won’t disappear when Facebook disables gifts. And though I did occasionally send a friend gifts—like the birthday cupcake and a cute image of a bear and bunny rabbit hugging—I’m not too distressed to see the Gift Shop go. I’m just confused about why Facebook has chosen to shut it down. The announcement makes it sound like Facebook is taking Gifts off the shelves because of a resource issue. But does it really take that much manpower to run a virtual storefront? And even if the Gift Shop isn’t wildly popular, the fact that even just a few easily convinced users, like me, actually do spend a few bucks there sometimes seems like a good enough reason to keep it around.

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Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:54:26 +0000

Google Research Says Online Friendships Don’t Mean Much

Caitlin McDevitt — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:00:06 +0000

Rumors have been swirling that Google (GOOG) is hard at work creating a social network that can compete with Facebook. A recent presentation by Google’s user experience researcher, Paul Adams, proves that the search giant has—at the very least—been scratching its head and seriously thinking about how the social web really works.

The 216-slide presentation titled “The Real Life Social Network” discusses the differences between social groups on and offline. Adams begins with an anecdote of a young woman, employed as a teacher, who is upset when she realizes that her students can see photos of her friends dancing on a bartop because she’s connected to both groups on Facebook. While he points out that “Facebook itself is not the problem here,” Adams does critique the main organizing principle of the world’s biggest social network: the friend list. He likens the concept of lumping lots of people together on a “friend list” to inviting everyone you’ve ever met to a wedding and seating them at tables together. There's bound to be some awkwardness. “One friend group means mixed up conversations,” he says.

Because “friends” in the real world almost never precisely match our “friends” on Facebook, users often end up oversharing by accident or undersharing because they’re hesitant. And Facebook updates that users automatically post to “everyone” are often only relevant or interesting to some people. Adams suggests that if our online social networks more closely resembled our offline networks organizationally, different levels of intimacy and sharing might come more naturally. Google has been in the relevance business for years. Has it figured out a way to better organize our relationships online to make social interactions more meaningful? If so, maybe it can give Facebook a run for its money.

How To Tag 1 Million Photos Per Second in Five Easy Steps

Caitlin McDevitt — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:46:52 +0000

Last night, Facebook introduced a new feature that makes the process of tagging your friends’ faces in photos faster. Here's how it works, according to Facebook:

With this new feature, tagging is faster since you don't need to select a face. It's already selected for you, just like those rectangles you see around your friends' faces when you take a photo with a modern digital camera. All that's left for you to do is type a name and hit enter. Cool, huh?

In the blog post announcing the update, product manager Sam Odio mentioned some pretty impressive stats that prove just how popular the Photos app has become. “Ninety-nine percent of people using Facebook have uploaded at least one photo,” he wrote. Facebook's userbase is somewhere around 500 million-strong, so about 495 million people are sharing their digital pictures on the site. If that includes people uploading their profile photos, however, the figure seems less meaningful. But still, Odio also noted that, “More than 100 million photos are uploaded every day.” It's hard not to agree with him when he says, “That’s insane.” Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, delivered another powerful stat at GigaOM's Structure conference last week. He said that the site delivers more than 1 million photos per second and that he expects that number to increase tenfold over the next year.

Photo credit: Facebook

Pepto-Bismol Seduces Facebook

Caitlin McDevitt — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:59:11 +0000

Just a few days after introducing its official Facebook page, Pepto-Bismol has already won over more than 28,000 fans. While that’s not a very impressive fanbase considering that other pages attract millions, the fact that the page has grown so quickly is noteworthy. And besides, who really wants to publicly declare that they “like” the medicine that “provides fast relief for heartburn, nausea, indigestion, upset stomach, and diarrhea?”

Credit: Screenshot

The folks at Pepto-Bismol probably knew that talking seriously about the yucky stuff associated with stomach ailments would turn people off. So, instead, the tone of their Facebook page is playful. The company jokes that the page is also called “"The Stuff Your Facebook Page." And, in line with the idea that the medicine comes in handy after overeating, the page is hosting a contest in which fans can guess how many hot dogs will be consumed during an upcoming eating competition. Beyond its creative efforts, Pepto-Bismol has also been pragmatic. The company purchased a homepage ad on Facebook today to drive traffic and draw attention to the page.

Some pages on Facebook grow organically. For example, people flocked to the Pringles page on Faebook before Proctor & Gamble (PG) even paid attention to it. Brands like Pepto-Bismol—also owned by P&G—can’t expect that kind of effortless popularity. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't try at all.