The Facebook Blog

Mostra i post da 281 a 290.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
We've been getting a lot of feedback about Mini-Feed and News Feed. We think they are great products, but we know that many of you are not immediate fans, and have found them overwhelming and cluttered. Other people are concerned that non-friends can see too much about them. We are listening to all your suggestions about how to improve the product; it's brand new and still evolving.

We're not oblivious of the Facebook groups popping up about this (by the way, Ruchi is not the devil). And we agree, stalking isn't cool; but being able to know what's going on in your friends' lives is. This is information people used to dig for on a daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so people can learn about the people they care about. You don't miss the photo album about your friend's trip to Nepal. Maybe if your friends are all going to a party, you want to know so you can go too. Facebook is about real connections to actual friends, so the stories coming in are of interest to the people receiving them, since they are significant to the person creating them.

We didn't take away any privacy options. [Your privacy options remain the same.] The privacy rules haven't changed. None of your information is visible to anyone who couldn't see it before the changes. If you turned off your wall to non-friends, no one who is not your friend will be able to see a post on your wall. Your friends can still see it; it hasn't changed. Secret groups and secret events remain secret from other people. Pokes and messages remain as private interactions. Nothing you do is being broadcast; rather, it is being shared with people who care about what you do—your friends.

We're going to continue to improve Facebook, and we want you to be part of that process. Test out the products and continue to provide us feedback. Use your privacy settings so you can feel most comfortable using the site.

We hear you, and we appreciate the feedback.

Stay tuned... Mark
You can now see the latest happenings from your social circles on Facebook with News Feed on your homepage.
You've probably noticed that Facebook looks different today. We've added two cool features: News Feed, which appears on your homepage, and Mini-Feed, which appears in each person's profile.

News Feed highlights what's happening in your social circles on Facebook. It updates a personalized list of news stories throughout the day, so you'll know when Mark adds Britney Spears to his Favorites or when your crush is single again. Now, whenever you log in, you'll get the latest headlines generated by the activity of your friends and social groups.

Mini-Feed is a new part of the profile that shows all the latest stuff someone has added on Facebook.
Mini-Feed is similar, except that it centers around one person. Each person's Mini-Feed shows what has changed recently in their profile and what content (notes, photos, etc.) they've added. Check out your own Mini-Feed; if there are any stories you don't like, you can remove them from your profile.

News Feed and Mini-Feed are a different way of looking at the news about your friends, but they do not give out any information that wasn't already visible. Your privacy settings remain the same – the people who couldn't see your info before still can't see it now.

These features are not only different from anything we've had on Facebook before, but they're quite unlike anything you can find on the web. We hope these changes help you stay more up to date on your friends' lives.


Ruchi Sanghvi is the product manager for Feed.

Archivio post (per data)

2009
ottobre (17)
agosto (10)
luglio (10)
giugno (13)
maggio (13)
aprile (13)
marzo (14)
2008
ottobre (12)
agosto (2)
luglio (3)
giugno (6)
maggio (5)
aprile (6)
marzo (2)
2007
agosto (4)
luglio (4)
giugno (2)
maggio (5)
aprile (9)
marzo (8)
2006
agosto (4)

Post archiviati per Blogger

Iscriviti a questo blog