A woman in Minnesota who turns 114 years old today (Happy birthday!) had to lie about her age recently. No, not because she wanted to appear younger, and not because she doesn’t want to admit she was born before every home had a telephone and flying hunks of metal called airplanes got people from here to there. She was trying to sign up for Facebook, which only allows for users 99 and younger. [More]
Facebook Reportedly Planning An App Where Nobody Knows Your Name
By 10.8.14
At the moment where you might be suffering from Facebook fatigue — knowing that that girl from your biology class in high school has a craving for froyo gets exhausting — the social media company is reportedly planning a mobile app that’d be separate from Facebook, and would allow users to interact under pseudonyms. That way you’ll know when a stranger has a craving for froyo instead. Much more interesting. [More]
Facebook Wants To Be Your Source For Healthcare Info
By 10.3.14
Facebook is already a hotbed for your hypochondriac and conspiracy theorist friends to post poorly sourced or blatantly false medical information — like the bogus “Johns Hopkins Cancer Update” that pops up every few months — but the social network apparently wants to be more actively involved in the collecting and sharing of healthcare information to its users. [More]
Facebook’s New Ad Service Lets Advertisers Get Up Close And Personal Everywhere You Are
By 9.29.14
Facebook ads: we’ve all seen a million of them. While some are generic spam, many are very creepily on-target. Until now, Facebook has mostly used its massive hoard of detailed user data for itself, and to sell ads on its own site. But now the site you love to hate is finding a new way to bank on your favorite bands and brands, with a new advertising service that can let companies chase down and advertise to any specific group they want. [More]
Facebook Testing Self-Destructing Status Updates
By 9.11.14
Because your 493 Facebook friends likely won’t care in 50 years into the future (or honestly, 50 seconds from now) that you’re out grabbing fro-yo with your besties, Facebook is testing an option that would allow users to set a time limit on how long those updates appear on your timeline. [More]
If Facebook Is Going To Label Satirical Stories, It Should Be Calling Out Ads Posing As News Links
By 9.9.14
Facebook began labeling certain shared links as “satire,” as a bit of hand-holding for its less-savvy users who can’t tell the difference between an actual news headline and one written by the writers of The Onion. But what Facebook really needs to do is start labeling so-called “native” or sponsored stories on non-satire sites so that your idiot friends might think twice before sharing a story that is really just an ad for some juice company. [More]
OKCupid Co-Founder: You’re Trading Privacy For Free Use Of Facebook & Other Sites
By 9.9.14
We’re no fan of invasive advertising that tracks you across the Web in order to deliver you “targeted” ads that are allegedly more in line with your personal interests, and we get a bit queasy knowing that Facebook and other free sites are then selling your interest data to marketers. At the same time, we realize that free websites still need to make a buck. But where do you draw the line? [More]
Facebook Mobile Users: Beware The Autoplay Videos Eating Up Your Data Plan
By 9.4.14
Perhaps you didn’t even mean to check out Maddie’s Amazing 3rd Birthday Party!!! footage on Facebook, maybe you were just scrolling along on your phone and stopped to read a post below that one. Nevertheless, if you haven’t turned the video autoplay feature off on your mobile devices, that sucker will start playing and could eat into your data allotment big time, as many users are finding out the rough way. [More]
Everyone Stop What You’re Doing And Freak Out: Facebook Appears To Be Down
By 9.3.14
UPDATE: Facebook appears to be back. Continue breathing. In the meantime, we’ve reached out to the company to see what could’ve possibly prompted such a brief, yet panicked outage, and will let you know when we hear back. [More]
IRS Turning Its Baleful Gaze At Company Cafeterias That Churn Out Free Food
By 9.2.14
Do you hear that noise? It’s thousands of forks clattering in the hands of Silicon Valley employees currently enjoying a free lunch. The Internal Revenue Service is taking a closer look at the trend of company cafeterias shoveling free food onto employees’ plates, saying that smorgasbord is a taxable fringe benefit. [More]
Netflix Wants You To Tell All Your Facebook Friends What To Watch
By 9.2.14
Everyone’s got one — the movie that makes you who you are, the one that turned on all the lights in your brain and opened your mind to a new reality, one that can only exist upon viewing that particular film. So when your best friend/boyfriend/wife/second cousin Thurman admits to have never seeing The One Movie Essential To Your Being, you insist they must watch it and be enlightened. And now Netflix wants you to put that pressure on your Facebook friends with a new social recommendation feature. [More]
Your Facebook Newsfeed Was Flooded With Clickbait Garbage. Then This Happened
By 8.25.14
If you’ve used the Internet for more than a few minutes, you know what clickbait is: headlines written to entice you to click on a link, boosting its traffic and its visibility on Facebook. Now Facebook is fighting back…and you’ll never believe how they’re doing it! [More]
The Onion Reacts To Facebook’s Hand-Holding Of Your Idiot Friends
By 8.18.14
Earlier today, Facebook confirmed it was rolling out a system that labels links from The Onion and others as “satire,” so that your idiot friend from high school would (hopefully) realize that the President didn’t run over Jimmy Carter with his car, or that Dick Van Dyke may not have been the Zodiac killer. Oddly enough, the esteemed news source’s response to the Facebook announcement is much closer to truth than it is to satire. [More]
Facebook To Point Out To Your Idiot Friends That The Onion Is Not Real News
By 8.18.14
It’s both hilarious and depressing when I go onto Facebook and see that someone I know is expressing outrage — OUTRAGE!! — in response to a shocking news story they came across online on a little-known news site called The Onion. Just this morning, I awoke to find that several of my idiot friends on Facebook had shared this Daily Currant story as if it were true, and one continued to insist it was authentic even after others pointed out in the comments that it’s a satire site. In order to cut down on the humiliation suffered by its users, Facebook is now testing a “satire” tag… that people will probably still ignore. [More]
Restaurant Owner: Drinking Tap Water And Sharing Dessert Isn’t Exactly Helping To Pay The Staff
By 8.13.14
Sharing is caring, right? Wrong if you’re a diner at a certain Australian restaurant that is now asking patrons who are part of large parties order their own drinks, meals and desserts, because taking up space and not ordering doesn’t exactly help the restaurant’s bottom-line. [More]
Facebook-Shaming Gets Another Dine-And-Dash Artist To Pay Up
By 8.5.14
Even though it’s no different than other forms of theft, it can sometimes be difficult to get the authorities worked up about a restaurant customer who skips out on a meal without paying. But some restaurant owners are having success with getting these dine-and-dash scofflaws to pay up by publicly shaming them on social media. [More]
The Police Do Not Care That Facebook Is Down: Stop Calling
By 8.4.14
Maybe we need to stop writing about the instances where you are not supposed to call emergency services, and instead we should make a list of the times when you are supposed to dial 9-1-1. For example, if you are in imminent danger. If your house is on fire. If someone nearby is having a life-threatening health problem. When you should not dial 9-1-1: Facebook is down. [More]
Facebook Experiences Intermittent Outages, Internet Can’t Even Deal
By 8.1.14
As the clock struck approximately lunchtime on the east coast of the United States, the unthinkable happened: Facebook outages. Oh, no! How could the Internet cope? On a Friday, no less? Let’s all band together and try to get through this terrible time. …Wait, it’s back up? NEVER MIND. Those five minutes of real life were arduous. [More]
