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The queen joins Facebook
Posted on November 11, 2010 by Michael
Facebook is one of the greatest tools with which the Internet Age has supplied us. One in every 14 people in the world use it; 90% of those in Indonesia have accounts. It is the reason I can talk about Mark Zuckerberg without linking to who he is. Facebook has become a part of life – whether young or old. And speaking of the latter, Queen Elizabeth has joined up.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has joined Facebook, adding a presence on the world’s most popular social network to the royal family’s accounts on Twitter, photo-sharing site Flickr and YouTube.
The British monarchy’s Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TheBritishMonarchy) does not allow users to “friend” the Queen or to send her messages, but offers updates on royal news and diary events.
By midday on Monday, a few hours after the page went live, 60,000 people had clicked to signal they liked it, meaning they will receive updates on the royal family’s activities in their Facebook news feeds.
The page does not display personal details such as the Queen’s relationship status, interests or political views.
Britain’s royal family prides itself on keeping up to date with new technologies.
I’m not sure the royal family can point to joining Facebook in 2010 and say they’re really on the technological ball, but I am glad to see more and more people joining the site.
Filed under: News | Tagged: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Queen Elizabeth | 1 Comment »
Thought of the day
Posted on October 17, 2010 by Michael
Thank goodness atheist Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to New Jersey schools.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Mark Zuckerberg, Thought of the day | 7 Comments »
More Facebook lies
Posted on May 25, 2010 by Michael
Facebook’s failed privacy policies are an ongoing problem for the company. Now that blogs and other media have helped to bring attention to them, Facebook has taken to lying.
In an open letter published Monday in the Washington Post (whose chairman, Donald E. Graham, just so happens to sit on Facebook’s board of directors), Zuckerberg wrote that Facebook has been “growing quickly” and admitted that “sometimes we move too fast.”
“Many of you thought our controls were too complex,” Zuckerberg’s letter reads. “Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls” — uh, you can say that again — “but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.”
Zuckerberg promised, in “coming weeks,” privacy controls that will be “much simpler to use” — including an “easy way to turn off all third-party services” that can access your account.
The concern is false. It’s a lie. The company is pretending like they’re going to vastly improve things – because any change sounds nice – but they’re going to make slight modifications which still favor the invasion of privacy by default. It may become easier to say “No, don’t take my private info”, but it’s going to remain necessary for people to go out of their way and do it. And that’s the complaint; Facebook just doesn’t get that people are mad because most users sign up with the presumption of default privacy.
Not that the owner, Zuckerberg, cares:
But Zuckerberg is also being dogged by an embarrassing IM thread from when he was a 19-year-old Harvard student, bragging that he’d gathered personal information from thousands of users for the nascent TheFacebook.com. “People just submitted it,” Zuckerberg messaged, “I don’t know why. They ‘trust me.’ Dumb [expletive].” (This comes via Silicon Alley Insider.)
Awesome.
Filed under: News | Tagged: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Privacy | Leave a comment »
For the Sake of Science 