Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
I am listed above Huffington Post on Yahoo!
Okay, this is just a bit of bragging, but I love seeing referring URL’s on my website logs, because I can usually see what people search when they get to my site. This one is no different. Someone Yahoo’ed “facebook movie full trailer” and I am listed as the third website in search. I am listed before Huffington Post and Gizmodo and some other websites that I have never heard of. I am even listed before a Facebook Fan page. How epic is that?! It think it’s epic. So, let me now say this…I have experience with SEO (search engine optimization) and how search engines work, so I know that the reason this is happening is because the user’s search matched my title for the post word for word and for other sites it only matched select text in the story. None-the-less, I find this cool. Click for full screen view.
Anyone own websites and have you seen this before and though “this rocks?” Comment! Enjoy the weekend.
Full Facebook Movie Trailer
I want to see this even more now…
Employees Hack Facebook
Don’t know about you, but I love me some good ole hacking! In this case, hacking your own company. Good on you Facebook, good on you!
So, let me explain. Rather, let TechCrunch explain:
One of the senior engineers at Facebook responsible for SRE (site reliability engineering) challenged Facebook employees to try to compromise him and gain access to Facebook’s administrative system via information obtained from him.
Guess what, I am betting the senior engineer is regretting this, because the employees succeeded! Wanna know how? Well, they hacked the engineer’s HOME wireless Internet. Yeah…they went all out and tracked his house to get his WPA password and after that they were able to sniff his network. After that, all passwords that flew across the network, including Facebook passwords, could be viewed in plain text by the employees. They won. Facebook lost.
The engineer responsible for starting the challenge posted on some comments, saying:
I’m the engineer who made the challenge and I want to clear up some misunderstandings. First, we perform tests on the integrity and security of our site all the time. Second, in this particular case, the challenge demonstrated the effectiveness of Facebook’s security systems, not the opposite, Despite months of work and hundreds of hours of effort by a team of specialized security engineers, the team was NOT able to access Facebook’s administrative or corporate systems. While they were able to access my personal Facebook account, they were not able to use this information to access any other account on Facebook. Finally, challenges like this are a great way for us to apply our best thinking and skills to identify risks to our systems. We think our efforts should give users greater confidence in Facebook and its administrative systems, not less.
So, will your employer let you hack them? Try it out, see how they take it. Let me know in the comments what you think of the Facebook hack and if you will try it on your own boss. 
Original Post: http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/05/employees-challenged-to-crack-facebook-security-succeed/
Stir the Nation – Episode 11
In today’s episode of Stir the Nation, Tyler and Roy have a long discussion on whether a company linking to their Facebook profile in ads is professional. We would love your thoughts on it, so give us a call. We also talk about Trending Topics and Harry Potter.
Direct Download: Stir the Nation – Episode 11
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Call us: 443-494-9797
Official Website: http://stirthenation.com
Email us: info@stirthenation.com
Facebook Copies Twitter Rollover
On Twitter, you see a sort of pop-up when you hover over another Twitter user’s name. It displays their name, location and other follower information.
I discovered Facebook now does the same thing. Take a look:
I think Facebook needs to stop copying Twitter.
Is this happening for everyone when they rollover a username? Let me know!
Stir the Nation – Episode 10
In this episode of Stir the Nation, Tyler and Roy talk about gun rights, the weirdest things we’ve ever eaten, leadership, the upcoming Facebook movie, Google Me and how to use your vuvuzela at college.
Direct Download: Stir the Nation – Episode 10
Stories we talked about: leadership, Google Me, Sivers.org, Vuvuzela at college
Advertise with us: http://stirthenation.com/sponsor/
Call us: 443-494-9797
Official Website: http://stirthenation.com
Email us: info@stirthenation.com
Tyler: @tylrsmllr
Roy: @roynaim
Jake: @JakesTutorials
Facebook Uses BitTorrent
You’ve heard of BitTorrent right? The protocol that allows you to transfer huge files over the Internet? This protocol is usually used for illegal purposes, such as obtaining software, music and movies. But, there are great practices to BitTorrent, and Facebook is a good example of that.
Don’t know what BitTorrent is? Let me let Wikipedia explain:
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and it has been estimated that it accounts for roughly 27-55% of all Internet traffic (depending on geographical location) as of February 2009.
Thanks Wiki! So, it allows you to move large files in a short amount of time. Facebook utilizes this. Wanna know how?
According to Tom Cook of Facebook’s systems engineering group, the daily code updates for Facebook used to cause a lot of trouble until they discovered BitTorrent. Cook gave a talk at the Velocity Conference this week titled ‘A Day in the Life of Facebook Operations’ where he explained how effective BitTorrent is for server deployment.
“BitTorrent is fantastic for this, it’s really great,” Cook said. “It’s ‘superduper’ fast and it allows us to alleviate a lot of scaling concerns we’ve had in the past, where it took forever to get code to the webservers before you could even boot it up and run it.”
With their BitTorrent-powered distribution system Facebook is now able to send a few hundred MB to tens of thousands of machines in just one minute. The internal Facebook swarm turns every server into a peer that helps in distributing the new code, which gets it updated as quickly as possible. Without BitTorrent this process could take several hours to complete.
That’s how. Thanks TorrentFreak!
So, do you think that the BitTorrent protocol will finally be put to even better use other than piracy? I think so! Kudos to Facebook for using more open source software and infrastructure.
Your thoughts?
The Way It Should Be – Episode 16
In this episode of The Way It Should Be, Shawn and Tyler talk about the BP oil spill and how the government is trying to be more transparent and social. We talk about WikiLeaks, a website devoted to uncovering government secrets. Then we wrap up with a few thoughts to ponder. It’s all on this week’s episode of The Way It Should Be.
Direct Download: Episode 16
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The Way It Should Be is a production of Knights Entertainment and Tyler S. Miller Media, Inc.
Week in Review – Episode 6
Episode 6 of the Week in Review Podcast. This week, Tyler discusses how we should appreciate technology, Google Voice, Conference Calling with Skype, Google Chrome, and quitting Facebook. It’s all on this week’s episode of the Week in Review podcast for tylersmiller.com. All talking point posts appear below.
Direct Download: Week in Review – Episode 6
Topics Discussed:
http://www.tylersmiller.com/google-voice-review/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/conference-calling-with-skype/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/the-way-it-should-be-episode-14/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/sync-bookmarks-over-the-internet-with-google-chrome/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/learn-to-appreciate-technology/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/today-is-quit-facebook-day/
Feedback: contact@tylersmiller.com
Today is Quit Facebook Day
http://www.quitfacebookday.com/ is the official website for quitting the social networking site today. At time of posting, over 28,000 people have signed up to quit Facebook.
Why are we quitting?For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn’t do a good job in either department. Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.
Have you run into this before? Do you think Facebook respects your data or are they just trying to make money from it? Oh, and that excerpt was taken from the We’re Quitting Facebook website. They also state:
There are alternatives to Facebook. Understanding what is best for you will depend a lot on what you need out of your social graph on a daily basis. For some, a combination of services like email, Twitter and Flickr might work. For others, a Ning group or a specialized social site like Akoha might be an option. If the entire population of Brazil can use Orkut, we think that there’s hope for you to find a new home on the web. Wired, ReadWriteWeb and others have recently called for an open alternative to Facebook, and we’re personally excited about the potential of the Diaspora project. At the moment, there aren’t a lot of great options for direct replacement, but know that you’re not alone. When there’s a market need, it’s not long before better options appear. In our minds, the best thing to do is to contribute to that need – and that’s what Quit Facebook Day is about.
So…there are alternatives to Facebook, as you can see. But are these alternatives enough for you to give Facebook the boot?
Today is national Quit Facebook Day…will YOU quit Facebook? Sign up here: http://www.quitfacebookday.com/ and quit Facebook at your leisure.
As for me…I’m sticking with the social giant. I have nothing to hide. I post content that if made public, is alright. I am responsible about my postings, and therefore am not quitting Facebook.
Let me know if YOU do.
Mark Zuckerburg Talks Privacy
Robert Scoble sat down with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg.
Here is their conversation:
Week in Review – Episode 3
This is the Week in Review podcast for tylersmiller.com. This time on the show, we talk about Hollywood, Twitter, The Way It Should Be podcast, wireless security and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg. That’s all on the Week in Review podcast with Tyler S. Miller.
Direct Download: Week in Review Podcast – Episode 3
This week’s discussion posts are:
http://www.tylersmiller.com/the-way-it-should-be-episode-11/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/secure-your-home-wireless-network/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/whos-your-favorite-computer-manufacturer/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/force-twitter-followers/
http://www.tylersmiller.com/hollywood-can-remotely-disable-your-outputs/
Thanks for listening to the Week in Review podcast!
I’d love your feedback: contact@tylersmiller.com
Facebook Privacy Spoiled Again
Numerous times in the past month, Facebook has been unreliable to their users in terms of user privacy. Private messages were being sent to the wrong people, profile information was being shared, and privacy settings have been changed. By default, your profile was almost completely open to people you are not friends with. Now, Facebook has come out with a whole new security bug.
The bug exists in the Preview My Profile feature. I use this all the time to see which groups of my friends can see what information. And that same feature was used to view live chats and friend requests of other people.
Mashable reports:
Facebook Chat is now down for maintenance. The feature was presumably disabled following a report that exposed a Facebook security bug that allowed users to access and view friends’ live chats, friend requests and friends in common.
The report indicates that access to this personal information was accessible via Facebook’s privacy settings, with the Preview My Profile feature creating the loophole to access the private live chats of friends.
The video from TechCrunch reporter Steve O’Hear below recreates the exploit.
Facebook writes, “Chat is unavailable as we work quickly to fix a bug reported to us. It should return to normal soon. Because of the bug, people could view friends’ chat messages and friend requests for a limited amount of time if they manipulated the “preview my profile” feature in a specific way. We’ve fixed that issue and took down Chat as soon as we became aware of it. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Facebook CEO Sucks at Coding
Credit: TechCrunch
So, apparently Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg still codes at his billion dollar company. The thing with this is that it’s a scary thought, because in 2001 when he coded, his websites sucked. You can see his glamorous works of coding here: See here
(click on the Kirtland Society link on the left), here and here for examples. If you don’t want to go through all the flashing text, scrolling words or messed up frames, you can enjoy this screen shot I so kindly took for you.
Click the image for a full view…be warned it only gets worse from this point on.
So, my thoughts on this goes as follows: Zuck, quit coding at Facebook. You can learn a bunch of stuff in that amount of time, but probably not enough to code for a website that serves 400 million users. Oh, Facebook.
The Way It Should Be – Episode 7
This week on The Way It Should Be podcast, we talk about Homeland Security and cellphone sniffers, followed by another Facebook horror story. A 16-year old is suing his mother after an account breach. We finish up with a few book recommendations and be forewarned that this week, we go off on a lot of tangents and mini-rants…all in good fun of course. We hope you join us for The Way It Should Be and send us your feedback: podcast@tylersmiller.com.
Thanks for listening!
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Direct Download: The Way It Should Be – Episode 7
The Way It Should Be is a production of Knights Entertainment.
Twitter Surpasses 105 Million Users
The Chirp Dev conference has begun and it began with a bang…Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announces that Twitter has over 105 million users world wide. They gain around 300,000 users daily and receive 600 million search queries. Hopefully their new ad sponsored searches will create some revenue for the company, who has not implemented ads until this point. Most of Twitter’s traffic still comes from third party applications. The exact number is 75% comes from applications with the rest actually coming from Twitter.com.
The 140 character service still has a lot of users to gain before beating social network service Facebook, who flaunts an astounding 400 million users worldwide. Facebook is slowly taking over the world, and Mark Zuckerburg is making $3 billion a year. Hey, Mark, mind sending some of that my way? Kthxbye!
Here is an image, courtesy of Mashable depicting Biz Stone giving a keynote with Twitter’s user numbers.
Credit: Mashable
Harassment on Facebook Goes to New Level
The Story:
A 16-year old is suing his mother for breaking into his Facebook account and posting harassing content.
The mother wanted to check in on her son and make sure he was keeping things appropriate on Facebook and to see if friends were posting anything questionable. The mother is fighting the charges. She thinks that parents should be able to track children online…and I guess that means breaking into their accounts is now alright. The mother, Denise New, had the following to say:
“I read things on his Facebook about how he had gone to Hot Springs one night and was driving 95 m.p.h. home because he was upset with a girl and it was his friend that called me and told me about all this that prompted me to even actually start really going through his Facebook to see what was going on.”
My Opinion:
This is total crap. Parents have rights and there are lines that should not be crossed. Many parents get upset by children’s actions, yet the parents did the same or worse when they were younger. They don’t want the child to get into trouble, but at the same time, children and teenagers need to learn from their mistakes. There is a fine line between a parent being involved and a parent being too involved. Hacking into a social network account is definitely crossing the line. I am friends with my mom on Facebook and that gives her enough access to allow her to see what I’m up to. She can automatically see wall posts and comments…and she can do all this without hacking into my account. What this mother did was ludicrous and overstepping her bounds. In some ways, I hope the 16-year old wins the case, because parents don’t need access to everything their children do on the Internet. There still exists the system of asking the child in person if such and such has happened.
That’s my opinion…what’s yours? Should parents “hack” into children’s accounts to see what they’re up to?
Facebook Connect comes to iTunes
It has been rumored that Facebook Connect, the global tool Facebook created to connect your websites and services to the biggest social network in the world. It allows you to share information and recent activity from other services onto Facebook to alert all friends what you are doing. Putting this in iTunes would allow you to share recent purchases, reviews and other things you do with your iTunes account and program. This rumor can almost be confirmed because in recent months, Apple has begun moving their services to Facebook Fan Pages. iTunes and the company have pages and offer a built in iTunes store to browse recommendations and featured items. So, this only seems like the right move for Apple to combine their popular iPod and iPhone program with the largest social network. Facebook now has over 400,000 million users worldwide.
TechCrunch reports:
To be clear, you can already share songs on iTunes using both Facebook and Twitter (the feature was introduced last September). It sounds like this integration would make this easier, and there’s obviously the possibly for Apple to leverage Facebook’s social graph in much more interesting ways in the future.
Facebook Connect is coming to iTunes if you like it or not. The world is now revolving around Facebook and it’s popular Connect feature. You will continue to see Facebook Connect being integrated into more websites across the Internet and you can expect Facebook to keep getting a bad rap for keeping and analyzing user information and data like other powerhouse Google.
Get Rich Quick…but only if you’re Facebook
Facebook has over 400 million users, and all of those users see advertisements on every one of their pages. Most users ignore these advertisements, but some actually do click them. And when users click these ads, this creates ad revenue for Facebook. This year, it is projected that Facebook will make $1 Billion in ad revenue! Last year, they only made $710 million…which is nothing compared to the $1 billion. I usually carry $710 million in my pocket as change. 
But, seriously, that much money off of advertisements…holy crap.
As Facebook improves its performance advertising algorithms, hires more staff to deal with brands, and really pushes Facebook Credits as a platform (and takes a 30% cut). Those factors combined make it very possible that Facebook joins the $1 billion club in 2010.
I wish I had one billion dollars to my name, but sadly I am not Facebook. :(
It still has a long way to go before it reaches profitability levels that can rival those of tech giants like Google. If it can crack the social media revenue nut though, it could pave the way for monetization for thousands of other websites and apps.
So, if you are an awesome computer engineer…you could go make a load of money by working for Facebook OR Google. Obviously they are loaded with the $$, but what do they do with all of it?
Do all employees get personal golden pools in their backyards? Does Mark Zuckerburg have a different car for every day of the year? Possibly…
Your thoughts on Facebook’s money situation!?
Original Post: Mashable