Facebook

Stop Using Fake Names on Facebook

For many good reasons, anonymity is important on the Internet. It’s handy for unfettered discussion, whistle-blowing, and dissent under oppression! For the general preservation of privacy, it’s nice to go nameless. But Facebook isn’t the internet. And using pseudonyms on Facebook is stupid, irritating, and misguided. And it’s making the site worse for the rest…

What’s the Most Shocking Thing You’ve Ever Learned Through Facebook?

Maybe you discovered a friend from high school recently had a baby. Maybe your girlfriend is in a few too many of some other guy’s recent photos. (You know what I’m saying?) Hopefully you’re not like this woman, who discovered through Facebook that her daughter had died. What’s the most shocking information you’ve ever gleaned…

It Just Got Easier to Chat with Your Facebook Friends on Android

Facebook just announced two updates to its Android apps, Facebook Messenger and Facebook for Android, with both of the updates dealing with improvements to chatting with your friends. Messenger will now hide a buddy list “hidden to the right” of the app, which can be revealed by swiping left. It works like the Facebook app’s…

Facebook Testing Automatic Photo Sync for Android

Facebook is testing a new photo sync system which automatically uploads photos taken on Android handsets to the web. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is: Google+ already features an instant photo-upload feature which uploads all your shots to the cloud. Like Google’s system, Facebook’s new feature ensures your pictures remain private, placing them…

Thumbs Up Paperclips Let You Like in Real Life

If it’s nearly impossible for you to tear yourself away from Facebook and deal with the real world, perhaps these amusing thumbs up paperclips will help ease the transition away from your phone. They’re even multi-purpose, letting you express your like of a given document, or dislike by simply flipping it over. For example, the…

Facebook’s Richest Employees Have a Secret Rich People Fun Club

While the rest of America grapples with an 8 percent unemployment rate and a generally MySpace economy, the New York Times reports Facebook’s top 250 richest staffers gather to talk boats, art, and generally being unimaginably rich. Sounds fun! The Times’ claim undergirds an important aspect of Facebook’s IPO disaster: you can be insanely rich,…

Bad Comments On Your Facebook Picture Make People Think You’re Uglier

Warning for the cripplingly self-conscious: a study from the University of Missouri has shown that crappy comments on your profile picture can negatively affect how attractive people find you not only in a physical sense, but in a social and professional one as well. At least in people who try to gauge attractiveness from nothing…

I Applied to Grey Poupon’s Members-Only Facebook Page… and Was Denied (UPDATED)

Grey Poupon, widely known to be the condiment aisle’s fanciest dijon mustard, isn’t just snooty its advertisements. The brand’s Facebook page actually screens Facebook profiles before accepting friends into its “members only” social circle of fancy fans. The Society of Good Taste (as they call themselves)is a “discerning Facebook page dedicated to the spread of…

Zuckerberg Rambling About Nothing for 30 Minutes Earned Facebook $7 Billion

Do you want to know what power is? Power is going up on a stage, yammering about very little for half an hour, and boom, a few days later your company is worth nearly $7 BILLION more than it was a few days ago. On Tuesday, Zuck took the stage at geeky strokefest TechCrunch Disrupt.…

Facebook Could Help Hide Your Identity

When you think of privacy protection, chances are Facebook does not immediately spring to mind. But anonymity researchers are suggesting that social networks may hold the key to better anonymous online interactions. Existing anonymity tools, such as Tor, work by routing a user’s internet traffic through a random chain of other computers called a circuit.…

The latest OS X Skype update integrates with Facebook. Those so-called friends are harder to ignore than ever. [Skype]

These Nipples Got the New Yorker Banned from Facebook

When Justin Timberlake ripped off part of Janet Jackson’s top at the end of the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII, thus exposing her nipple, old ladies fainted, and the FCC smote CBS for its moral failure. But there’s a new Nipplegate in town, and this time the transgressor is the smut rag known as…

That Pretty New Facebook Friend? Probably Taliban

In the good ol’ days of spy vs. spy, the honeypot was a tried and true method espionage technique, laced with danger, intrigue, and sex. These days—as Australian soldiers have found out the hard way—all it takes to seduce your way to state secrets is a Facebook friend request and a Google image search for…

Do You Facebook-Stalk Your Exes?

Sometimes they unfriend you. Sometime they don’t. Always you want to see exactly everything that they are doing. Don’t you? Image via Conrado/Shutterstock

Are You Facebook Friends With Your Coworkers?

The Gizmodo family is a tight-knit bunch. We work together, we drink together, and then we like to post the pictures of our antics on Facebook and “like” them all at once. But certainly not all work cultures are like ours, and not all bosses and coworkers as, well…fun. Do your coworkers send you friend…

After months of deal-closing and regulatory whatnot, Instagram has officially been assimilated by the Facebook Borg.

Facebook Limits Publicly Available Stock to Save Its Share Prices

Regardless of whether it made the correct decisions or not, the fact remains that Facebook’s stock isn’t fairing well. Which is why Zuckerberg and co have decided to batten the hatches, ditching a secondary offering and playing it safe when it comes to stock. The Wall Street Journal explains: https://gizmodo.com/facebook-handled-its-ipo-exactly-right-5940311 In a regulatory filing Tuesday,…

Facebook Handled Its IPO Exactly Right

Andrews Ross Sorkin wrote a piece for the NY Times that was just ridiculous. He put the blame squarely on the back of the CFO of FB. Talk about getting it 180 degrees wrong. It’s easy to dump on the Facebook IPO as its stock price continues to fall and fall and fall. “Facebook messed…

The Annoying Thing Facebook Is About to Do with Your Phone Numbers and Emails (UPDATED)

Today, temporarily, some users with access to Facebook’s Power Editor tool got a glimpse of a new targeted ad system the social network is prepping to roll out next week. InsideFacebook is reporting that a powerful tool granting premium advertisers access to users’ phone numbers and email addresses, as well as their user ID, has…

Wolfram Alpha Will Tell You Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Your Facebook Page

Go here and type “facebook report.” What you get in return is a treasure trove of statistical insights about your Facebook profile, which is certain to send you into a narcissistic spiral you’ll never recover from. Wanna know how many links, photos and updates you posted? Wolfram’s got all that. Curious what time of day…