Archive for December 5th, 2007

Mark Zuckerberg apologizes for Facebook Beacon

Dec 05, 2007 in Facebook

After the crushing wave of bad press from bloggers, journalists, and nervous brand managers this week over Facebook Beacon, founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has publicly apologized over Facebook’s handling of the ’07 Beacon Crisis. In a last ditch attempt to save face (ziiing!) Zuckerberg took this morning to write to the people who matter the most, Facebook’s users. Published on the social network’s main blog you can read it in all its glory but to sum it up Zuckerberg basically says Facebook handled things very poorly and can and will do better. He apologizes for Facebook not reacting fast enough to the outcry (more about that below) and announces that Facebook has now enabled a way to completely opt-out of Beacon.

For those of you sitting here scratching your head wondering what the hell Beacon is, you’re not alone. Despite the outcry of a very loud minority that consists mostly of media publicists and PR managers over the potential privacy invasions of Beacon most users have never even heard of Beacon and don’t care. A recent poll on Facebook showed that only a minor 29% of Facebook’s users had any clue what Beacon was or does. Regardless though, and for the better of everyone, you can now choose to not participate in the feature you had no idea you were participating in. To opt-out of Beacon simply go here and disable it.

How Zuckerberg Stole Christmas

Beacon was a feature of Facebook’s new Social Ads movement to enable sharing of information and activities of Facebook users outside of Facebook. Its opt-out features were apparently not up to snuff though as they would still submit to Facebook your activities even when you declined to share them or had logged out of Facebook completely. This upset many users to the point where some even said Facebook was ruining Christmas by sharing purchases of gifts bought by users on third party sites with their friends on Facebook. Ouch. When someone points fingers at you and says you’ve ruined Christmas you know the game is over.

Before you get too Grinchy though just opt-out and we can all move on. Facebook made a mistake. A big mistake. But they’ve made a lot of great things too — let’s not forget that.

Likeness

Dec 05, 2007 in 3 Stars, Facebook, Just For Fun

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Likeness is one of those super simple no-brainer applications. You install it, take a 15 second quiz and it tells you which of your friends you are most like.

The simplicity of the app makes it fun and easy to use, with very little investment of your time.

There are a few things that are annoying. The application makes me feel like it was quickly written with the intention of marketing their Super Wall. After every quiz, the app will prompt you to invite your friends… and the interface looks like it was designed by a South American spider monkey. But hey… it works.

Likeness Facebook Application
Hey Jamie, we’re “Twins”!!!

The quizes are quick and fun, featuring a single question and 10 answers to be ordered from best to worst.

Example: Pet Peeves (penny pinchers, emo, stubbornness, bad drivers, people who flake, rudeness, poor hygiene, excessively flirty, indecisiveness, messiness)

Most are fun to take and you’ll quickly find many friends that have already taken them. But some just won’t make sense for their best to worst ordering.

This app is worth checking out… chances are, your friends already have.

Update – Dec 5 2007 6:40pm

This application will spam notifications to all your friends (that have it installed) of your “likeness”.

This is just from one of their tests…

Likeness Faceboook Application Spam

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Hugs

Dec 05, 2007 in 4 Stars, Dating, Facebook, Food and Drink

Rating: ★★★★☆

Everyone Needs a Hug!

Hugs Monster

Hugs by Hugsalot Inc (Brett Keintz, Robert Fan, and Dan Ackerman-Greenberg) is about as simple of an application as they get. But that’s the ingeniousness of it. Hugs are universal, and everybody needs a hug now and then. Hugs for Facebook helps deliver those hugs by sending virtual hugs to your friends profiles.

It works like this. Add Hugs to your profile and select the friends you wish to hug from the Hug Friends tab. Click send and voila! That’s the magic of hugs. Anyone can give them. And anyone can use this application.

Hugs goes a little bit further than real hugs though by keeping track of all the hugs you’ve sent, and all the hugs you’ve received. But when it comes to hugs, who’s keeping score anyways? Your friends receive their hugs as requests and others will see who you’ve hugged in your Facebook News Feed. There’s also a profile box that shows how many hugs you’ve received — maybe this is to earn those lonely profiles some sympathy hugs?

Hugs Request

The Result

Hugs is a great application for Facebook, it’s so simple everyone can use it, there’s no learning curve to figure out how to hug someone. It’s just human nature. Better yet it won’t lead to any possibly embarrassing situations like the KissMe app that can land you into some steamy trouble if you’ve got a jealous mate. So go brighten someone’s day, or even just your own and give someone a hug! Hug your friends, hug your family, hug your lover, hug your crush, or hug a lot of strangers like the guy in the FREE HUGS campaign video. It doesn’t matter.

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The only problem with Hugs is that you will probably see an “Error while loading page from Hugs” message a lot because too many people are trying to spread the love. I experienced this a lot trying to send hugs. Some people are hug hogs! Just keep re-trying.

Also, can someone please explain to me why Hugs is listed under the Food and Drinks category of the Application Directory? Seriously — wtf?

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