I thought Facebook had fixed the privacy settings, but Slate manages to show President Obama’s Facebook feed:
January 23, 2010
January 6, 2010
Behold the awesome power of Facebook groups
The editors at the National Post poke some fun at their opposite numbers over at the Toronto Star:
We know about the Star editors’ foray onto the big exciting Interweb because of the newspaper’s front-page headline on Monday: “Grassroots fury greets shuttered Parliament.” The breathless story suggests Canada is on the verge of some kind of violent 1917-style revolution — a “growing public uprising” no less, complete with “protest rallies” from coast to coast, and young activists full of unhinged, wild-eyed rage. The evidence for all this: 20,000 people joined a Facebook page called “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament,” which urges Parliament to “Get back to work.”
[. . .]
For all we know, that 20,000 figure is up to 50,000 now, thanks to the Star publicity. Or maybe even 100,000. Who knows? But for the sake of context, let’s look at some other causes that also got a six-digit response: Almost 300,000 people have joined a group encouraging rocker John Mellencamp to quit smoking. Another hundred thousand people have joined a group encouraging random people to move to Finland. A whopping half-million people have used the power of Facebook to declare that they enjoy the television program 90210.
And then there’s our personal favourite: A group called “If 100,000 people join this group, Laura will name her son Megatron” recently met its goal. Congratulations, Laura, on the birth of your Transformer. We bet you didn’t know that he’d become the subject of — what does the Star call it? — oh yes, a “growing public uprising”!
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November 20, 2009
Those inevitable “new word” lists
David Harsanyi falls into the trap cunningly laid for him by the devious wordmongers at Merriam-Webster:
Like other books Americans have a duty to own — the Bible or “Atlas Shrugged,” for instance — the dictionary does not require an absurd marketing ploy to sell itself.
Yet, every year a barrage of cockamamie “word lists” are unveiled by publishers seeking to bring attention to the evolving English language.
In the end, these lists establish two facts: 1) We are unable to invent any new words of value. 2) If you put a list together, a columnist will probably write about it.
One needn’t be William Safire, though, to be unsettled that the word “philanderer” is a major mystery to so many people. According to a new list by Merriam-Webster, “philanderer” (a national pastime, meaning to be sexually unfaithful to one’s wife) was one of the most searched words of the past year because of the crush of politicians and celebrities busy hiking the Appalachian trial.
The word receiving the highest intensity of searches over the shortest period of time was “admonish” (to express warning or disapproval). It was triggered by a crude outburst of a South Carolina congressman and the subsequent moralistic “admonishment” of him by Congress.
It’s not the lists themselves that bother me . . . it’s the blatantly contrived nature of the words appearing in most of the lists. “Unfriend”? Bleargh.
There is, admittedly, one trend that could prove to be a bright spot. The newly minted “teabagger” gives us hope that crude sexual terms will now regularly be applied to politics, where they can do the most good.
Perhaps “felching” will come to describe how the media gathers material for their coverage of the White House. Oh, wait . . .
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November 12, 2009
“Mafia Wars” developer got too much into the spirit of the game
I hate to say it, but I’ve worked for folks with nearly this little class, so I readily believe him:
From the beginning, the profitability and viability of popular Facebook social networking games Mafia Wars and Farmville were predicated on the backs of scams, boasts Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in this video. “I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues,” he crows in the clip to a gathered bunch of fellow scumbag app developers.
In games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, YoVille and Vampires Live, you know, some of the major sources of all those garbage announcements cluttering up your Facebook, players compete to complete missions and level up. By leveling up, you can complete more difficult missions and fight off weaker opponents. You can wait for your various energies to regenerate naturally over time, or you can purchase with real money in-game boosts. Or, you can complete various lead generation offers, many of which are of the “answer page after page of questions and opt in and out of receiving various kinds of spam” variety. Some of them install malware and adware that is impossible to remove. And some of them secretly subscribe you to monthly recurring $9.99 credit card charges.
Couple this reckless profiteering with in-game incentives for recruiting more players into your network and a constant blast (if you let it) of promotional messages to your friends, and it’s like Amway discovered Facebook and threw a gangster-themed house party.
