The Facebook Blog

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от Chris Hughes 31 октомври 2006 г. в 00:09

Gone are the days of gawking at celebrities on people.com without being able to share the link with Facebook friends in two clicks. No longer do we live in a world in which we're required to shuffle through email addresses or scour through AIM buddy lists in order to share the glorious content of an article on theonion.com.

Starting today, there are links to share on Facebook planted all across the Internet, from the articles at Time to the videos at Photobucket.

Look for links like this all over the Web, making it easy for you to share.

The idea is that when you're reading or watching something that you think is cool, you don't have to copy and paste the URL back into Facebook in order to share the link with your friends. Instead, with one click you get to check out a preview, choose how you want to share it, and then distribute it. You can share content with anyone, even people who aren't on Facebook yet.

These links are only the beginning. They will continue to pop up on more sites in the coming weeks. And you don't have to be a highly trafficked website in order to get these links on your pages. In the spirit of equal opportunity, we've written out instructions on how to add the link to any site on the Internet.

If you haven't yet checked out the sharing functionality on Facebook, you can get more information on it here.

Chris, the project manager for Share, has had a 34.75% decrease in productivity due to videos posted on his friends' profiles.

Sharing Is Daring

от Chris Hughes 27 октомври 2006 г. в 01:24

This Share Box will pop-up whenever you Share something. You can Share items from Facebook and from other sites.

Ever since this whole Internet thing got started, people have been sharing stuff left and right. In the late 90s, music on Napster and flashy chain mail was all the rage. These days, it's more likely to be a video mashup of someone aging or photos from last night's party that no one ever remembers being taken.

Regardless of what it is you want to share, starting today you can do it efficiently and easily on Facebook. Now when you find something on the Internet that you think is cool—articles, photos, videos, and so on—you can paste the link into a field on the My Shares page and then choose to send a preview of the page directly to friends or post it up on your profile. Same goes for stuff that you find on Facebook—you can click on a "Share" link that sits next to all content and send it around to people or post it up on your profile for all the world (well, everyone who can see your profile) to see. To get started, check out our tutorial.

The Share bookmarklet in the bookmark bar. When you're on other sites, you don't have to copy and paste urls in order to share them.

One of the best things about this new feature is a "bookmarklet" tool we've developed. You can drop this tool onto the bookmark bar at the top of your browser and then click on it whenever you run across something cool outside Facebook. You'll be able to check out a preview and make some choices and then send it along, all without leaving the window with the content that you wanted to share in the first place.

This is what will show up in your Mini-Feed when you share something by posting it to your profile.

When you share something directly with your friends, it's completely private, like sending them a Facebook message. When you choose to share by posting something on your profile, it's something that you are choosing to make public, so it shows up in your Mini-Feed, and may create a News Feed story for some of your friends.

The addition of Share does not change your privacy settings in any way. As always, no one will be able to see any information about you unless your privacy settings allow it. If you want to change your privacy at any time, go to the My Privacy page. Also, we've updated our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy as a result of these feature additions.

As a mark of due respect to all the kindergarten teachers of the world, go forth and share.

Chris, the project manager for Share, loves that he can be meta and share Share with the world.

Thanks For Contacting Facebook!

от Paul Janzer 17 октомври 2006 г. в 09:32

I think it's time to let the secret out about Facebook. This isn't a one-man show anymore. When you write to Facebook and address the message, "Dear Mark Zuckerberg," he's not the one reading it. But don't worry, we are.

"We" are the Customer Support Team. As I see it, our primary job is to be the voice of the user within the company. For starters, we're all users ourselves. Alright, fine, that's an understatement. Most of us are addicts. Seriously, we're going to organize meetings. Maybe even start a Facebook group.

More importantly, we spend our time communicating with you guys about the site. Since I started here, I've been in direct contact with thousands of Facebook users. People aren't scared to speak their mind…and we love it. It's great to be involved with a product that means so much to so many people.

We use these interactions to help improve the Facebook experience. If you report a bug, we'll work with the engineering team to get things resolved. We listen to your feedback and suggestions and work with the Product Designers to improve the site. Customer Support heard the requests for more News Feed privacy, and we passed this feedback on. Hopefully, you are happy with the new options that were built in.

Despite my questionable decision to wear aviators that night, I don't think this photo actually merits an abuse report. But this is what it would look like if someone reported it.

Beyond our role in explaining the product and collecting feedback, Customer Support also plays an important part in protecting the site from abuse. We review all the content that has been flagged for review via the "report" links you see all over the site. It's really important to us that the site remains a comfortable spot for people to interact. If you see something that you find to be abusive, report it and we'll take a closer look.

Feel free to contact us with any questions, concerns, suggestions, feedback, confusion or anything along those lines at the Facebook Help Center. I can't promise you that we'll be able to make everything just the way you want it, but we'll sure as hell try. At the very least, know that your voice is being heard.

Paul, a Customer Support Rep, is currently answering an email addressed to Mark Zuckerberg.

For Every 1,000 People That Join This Group...

от Chris Cox 09 октомври 2006 г. в 22:20

As a developer of News Feed, I can tell you that we weren't intending to build a platform for global activism. The idea was that if a bunch of your friends did something, you would want to find out. Since News Feed launched, a group can now grow from 1 to 100,000 members in a day. Participation means more exposure, and if the issue is a good one, that means more participation. You do the math.

At some point, a kind soul at New York University started a global group called, "For Every 1,000 people that join this group, I will donate $1 to Darfur."

He clearly intended to raise visibility on an issue that lives under the rug. To get people asking questions, writing letters, telling their friends, maybe even giving a dollar themselves. At least pulling up a map of Africa.

Within a few days it had nearly half a million members, about 5% of Facebook users. The group grew quickly and broadly enough that almost everybody using the site that week got a News Feed story about the group on their homepage.

None of the participants were elected officials, paid representatives, advertisers, or experts in their field. There wasn't an organized campaign, nor was there a sponsoring organization. But for a while it was the fastest growing group on the site, and to this day it's one of the largest. It was unprecedented.

Of the fastest growing groups on Facebook today, October 9th, number one and two are about raising awareness on how to fight breast cancer. All day people have been joining, more every minute. Not just members, but donors too. Who started it all? People with computers. What did they have to do to be heard? Take the time to explain the issue, and then choose a picture. Why the success? People care. The causes speak for themselves; and when there are important causes suffering from lack of visibility, it's exciting to see a place where issues can surface without requiring the endowment of organized media.

Chris, a Facebook Engineer, will give a dollar away. And if 100,000 people join...anything might happen.

Musings of Another Facebook Engineer

от Jon Warman 02 октомври 2006 г. в 21:24

Clearly I had the Hackathon spirit long before I worked at Facebook.

We call it a Hackathon. A week in advance, we start hoarding snacks under our desks to prepare for an edge-of-your-seat night crammed with feats of engineering strength. We watch the clock until finally someone jumps on the nearest table and yells, "Hackathon!" Everyone--engineers and executives, managers and marketers, sales and support reps--drops everything to work on something new for the night. We think, we talk, and we create.

Like Facebook users, Facebook employees are never short on ideas--just time. A Hackathon is a veritable gathering of the minds; it is an opportunity to jumpstart the projects that might otherwise get left behind. Besides, who isn't nostalgic for the nights spent cranking away on an idea or four with a pot of black coffee and a case of Red Bull?

Most of the time, when the sun rises over the Facebook office, it sets on a Hackathon idea. That's fine; no one would have enjoyed the My Pets page anyway. However, sometimes great things happen. They can be innovative, like Wall-to-Wall, useful, like the Birthday Calendar, or a fun combination of the two, like the Friend Game. On rare occasions, a Hackathon provides the spark for something epic, like NCAA Tournament Pools.

Jon is a Facebook engineer by day, a table dancer by night, and a Devil's advocate all the time.

Welcome to Facebook, everyone.

от Carolyn Abram 26 септември 2006 г. в 01:47

Mark would have written this post himself, but is busy helping out with everything going on right now, so I've been asked to explain why we're launching this expansion.

You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again; here at Facebook, we want to help people understand their world. We started at one school, and realized over and over again that this site was useful to everyone—not just to Harvard students, not just to college students, not just to students, not just to former students. We've kept growing to accommodate this fact.

This includes your friends who graduated pre-Facebook (yes, there was such a time), your friends who don't have school or work email addresses, and your friends whose schools don't give out email addresses. Now you can all connect.

This doesn't mean that anyone can see your profile, however. Your profile is just as closed off as it ever was. Our network structure is not going away. College and work networks still require an authenticated email address to join. Only people in your networks and confirmed friends can see your profile.

We listened to what you guys had to say and built extra privacy controls that we launched last week. If you're uncomfortable with regional users being able to see you on Facebook, you can always change your privacy settings to prevent people from finding you in searches and communicating with you. Also, we've built out a bunch of tools that will help verify new users and prevent spammers from bothering you. You can read about these tools here.

Facebook is still yours, for you and your friends (all of your friends) to connect with each other and share information.

Carolyn, Facebook's resident blogger, is expecting instant notoriety and perhaps a few Facebook groups to arise from this post.

Will you be my friend?

от Carolyn Abram 23 септември 2006 г. в 19:28

My friend must be a Bird-
Because it flies!
Mortal, my friend must be,
Because it dies!
Barbs has it, like a Bee!
Ah, curious friend!
Thou puzzlest me!

-Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson's take on friendship: kind of obscure to me. Facebook's definition: less so. I just wanted to open with a poem.

Since my last post, I have received and rejected over eighty friend requests from people I don't know. It's not because I'm a terrible person, and it's not because I think all of my would-be friends were sketchy people; it's because I wasn't comfortable with people I didn't know seeing my information.

Quails. Emily Dickinson. Friendship. Metaphors. Facebook.

This has been my policy for some time now, especially since I came to work at Facebook and learned more about what Facebook's philosophy of information flow really meant. It meant that I could actually let my friends know what was going on in my life. It meant that I knew what was going on with them, even when we were no longer at school together.

Because we like to increase information flow and "help you understand your world" we interpret your friends as, well, your friends. Friendship on Facebook is, in and of itself, a privacy setting. You can have the tightest possible privacy settings, yet your friends can still see all of your profile and what you've uploaded. Only your friends get News Feed updates about you, and you only get News Feed updates about your friends.

Knowing these things, I've become selective as to whom I accept as a friend, and I've even removed several people I barely knew, and others that weren't a part of my world anymore. I still have a lot of Facebook friends, but they are all people I know and want to keep knowing. It's hard to do at first, but once you've pared your Facebook Friend List down to people you actually care about, you'll find you can comfortably share your life with them.

Carolyn is one of many Facebook bloggers. She majored in poetry and still doesn't understand Dickinson.

Musings of a Facebook Engineer

от Bob Trahan 18 септември 2006 г. в 23:48

I've been a Facebook user for some time now – I was one of the lucky few Harvard students counted amongst its very first users. That said, even though I've used Facebook for years, I still obsess over every single word that I put in my profile. (Right now I'm in a bit of a minimalist phase – it's like every word counts triple. I got an ulcer last time I changed my favorite quote.)

I've been moonlighting on a pet project that I hope will inspire my friends to scour my profile with the same passion I put into creating it. Or at least it will make them laugh as they wonder, "Who is this clown who listed 'Living in the future' as one of his activities?" I also think everyone could use something fun right now, so I took the time to finish this, and we're releasing it now for you to enjoy.

Tick tock...

The Facebook Friend Game.

The game is very simple – a trivia question, five friends to choose from, one correct answer, and the clock is ticking. As always, this maps to your privacy settings, and since only your friends are involved, the actual content is protected by your Limited Profile privacy settings. If you uncheck 'Personal Info,' the friends on your Limited Profile list will never see you in the game.

For now, there is no running score. My hope is the game will serve as the basis for more meaningful social interactions. Sooner or later, you'll learn something interesting about a friend, or end up getting a trivia question about an inside joke or shared experience. When that happens, there's no reason not to drop the game and go interact with your friends.

Suggestions are always welcome – send them here.

Bob Trahan created the Friend Game and is a ninja master

The Race Is On

от Ezra Callahan 15 септември 2006 г. в 15:32

The campaign season is in full swing for this November's elections. A lot of you have already added candidates and campaign issues you support to your profile with our Election 2006 feature. This is a great way to make your voice heard and engage with candidates before you cast your vote.

The new Election Pulse page shows how each race is shaping up on Facebook for this November.

We've set up a new Election Pulse section that has a rundown of all the gubernatorial and congressional races. There you can see state-by-state how each candidate is polling with the Facebook crowd. Check out the tightest races here.

If you haven't gotten involved yet, click on the Election tab when you edit your profile. You can search for candidates you support by state, party and office, and join campaign issue groups that matter to you. Check out how candidates are filling out their profiles, and drop a message or a wall post on the people you're pulling for this fall.

Remember to register to vote; the Facebook polls won't matter unless you show who you support on election day.

Ezra Callahan works on Election 2006 for Facebook.

An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:

от Mark Zuckerberg 08 септември 2006 г. в 02:48

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Somehow we missed this point with News Feed and Mini-Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I'd encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Today (Friday 9/8) at 4pm edt, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Mark