d e e p t ! (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} diffdrummer) wrote,@ 2009-09-10 13:12:00 |
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Today's Ultimate Question
"How many roads must a man walk down?" Bob Dylan pondered in pop, back in '63. In Douglas Adams' H2G2, mice - hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, responsible for the creation of the Earth asked the same question to the super computer Deep Thought as The Ultimate Q & A to reveal the truth about Life, Universe and Everything because they failed to come up with the real ultimate question. Come 21st century we have to modify this query a bit since walking is no longer the norm for going places and connecting with people.
"How many social networking sites should I create a profile and friend the same people, over and again?"
I remember the time when it all(the fancifully called Web 1.0) began for me, the moment of truth when you realize that there is more to internet than just email. In 1999 AD, I joined millions of others who were discovering(/had discovered) brand new free world of internet publishing. Virtual Publishing houses were offering megabits of free space at a time when most of us carried our data in floppy disks in limited kbs. I chose Y! Geocities because Yahoo had a Page Builder application which allowed drag and drop without any html. It was my first social network. Of course I am not forgetting Yahoo's chatrooms before it became all pr0n. Yahoo was such a pioneer, what has happened to you Yahoo!? Bits to bits, dots to dots, dashes to dashes, I did shed a tear when recently Geocities moved on to the Great Yonder, even on the internet death happens, dear ones pass away.
What had started with Geocities, AngelFire, Tripod trickle is today at Facebook, Blogger and Twitter torrent. These days, Live Journal doesn't even make the cut. But it is Facebook that really scares me. It is the reason I felt the need to break the blogging break. I need some answers, perhaps some of you might be able to provide those.
Now straight to my question, how does friends suggest on Facebook work? It creeps me out just knowing what it knows about me.
My history with Facebook is a long(by current social networking site standards) and an empty one. I got a FB account in '05 when it opened its doors to commoners. Since none of the people I knew were around in FB back then, I encrypted (a better word for forgot) the password in my mind and lost it, joined Orkut which was flush with homies.
Fast forward four years, the junta is moving on to FB, so I decided to unlock my Facebook account, to see what the buzz is all about. FB sends the forgotten password to my email account and I am in. The first thing that's on my face at Facebook is the Friends Suggestions. How does it know the people I know?
Let me give you the details. The email account I used for creating the FB id is not a personal one, but the one I use for buying, selling on Ebay, Craigslist and the like. There are no personal friends on its contact list. I have no friends on my Friends list at FB. I had not filled my employment, education or location details while creating the account and I do not use my real name as the user name. In short I was anonymous as I could be or I thought so, still out of the 10 or so people FB suggested, three were people I know. It is almost sure that Facebook snoops into your inbox, but does it spider out its search to every other inbox in touch with the first one?
Facebook with its enormous volume of personal information(for starters, you told FB 25 random things about yourself) might hold us all for ransom if it feels like it. Ha, how I love issuing portending prophecies. We have already seen certain chinks in FB's character armor in Feb 09. No wonder Google feels threatened, Facebook is comfortably riding on its blind spot – holding data which Googlebots have no access to.
Personally I feel it is the right time to be a Digital Rebel, to stay away from the web mayhem unleashed by Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other similar internet pandemics. (How to become one could be the next post, stay tuned :P) Meanwhile if you know the answer to today ultimate question posted in bold red font, please leave a comment.
"How many roads must a man walk down?" Bob Dylan pondered in pop, back in '63. In Douglas Adams' H2G2, mice - hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, responsible for the creation of the Earth asked the same question to the super computer Deep Thought as The Ultimate Q & A to reveal the truth about Life, Universe and Everything because they failed to come up with the real ultimate question. Come 21st century we have to modify this query a bit since walking is no longer the norm for going places and connecting with people.
"How many social networking sites should I create a profile and friend the same people, over and again?"
I remember the time when it all(the fancifully called Web 1.0) began for me, the moment of truth when you realize that there is more to internet than just email. In 1999 AD, I joined millions of others who were discovering(/had discovered) brand new free world of internet publishing. Virtual Publishing houses were offering megabits of free space at a time when most of us carried our data in floppy disks in limited kbs. I chose Y! Geocities because Yahoo had a Page Builder application which allowed drag and drop without any html. It was my first social network. Of course I am not forgetting Yahoo's chatrooms before it became all pr0n. Yahoo was such a pioneer, what has happened to you Yahoo!? Bits to bits, dots to dots, dashes to dashes, I did shed a tear when recently Geocities moved on to the Great Yonder, even on the internet death happens, dear ones pass away.
What had started with Geocities, AngelFire, Tripod trickle is today at Facebook, Blogger and Twitter torrent. These days, Live Journal doesn't even make the cut. But it is Facebook that really scares me. It is the reason I felt the need to break the blogging break. I need some answers, perhaps some of you might be able to provide those.
Now straight to my question, how does friends suggest on Facebook work? It creeps me out just knowing what it knows about me.
My history with Facebook is a long(by current social networking site standards) and an empty one. I got a FB account in '05 when it opened its doors to commoners. Since none of the people I knew were around in FB back then, I encrypted (a better word for forgot) the password in my mind and lost it, joined Orkut which was flush with homies.
Fast forward four years, the junta is moving on to FB, so I decided to unlock my Facebook account, to see what the buzz is all about. FB sends the forgotten password to my email account and I am in. The first thing that's on my face at Facebook is the Friends Suggestions. How does it know the people I know?
Let me give you the details. The email account I used for creating the FB id is not a personal one, but the one I use for buying, selling on Ebay, Craigslist and the like. There are no personal friends on its contact list. I have no friends on my Friends list at FB. I had not filled my employment, education or location details while creating the account and I do not use my real name as the user name. In short I was anonymous as I could be or I thought so, still out of the 10 or so people FB suggested, three were people I know. It is almost sure that Facebook snoops into your inbox, but does it spider out its search to every other inbox in touch with the first one?
Facebook with its enormous volume of personal information(for starters, you told FB 25 random things about yourself) might hold us all for ransom if it feels like it. Ha, how I love issuing portending prophecies. We have already seen certain chinks in FB's character armor in Feb 09. No wonder Google feels threatened, Facebook is comfortably riding on its blind spot – holding data which Googlebots have no access to.
Personally I feel it is the right time to be a Digital Rebel, to stay away from the web mayhem unleashed by Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other similar internet pandemics. (How to become one could be the next post, stay tuned :P) Meanwhile if you know the answer to today ultimate question posted in bold red font, please leave a comment.
