Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at how Stuff Works and with me
Speaker 1: according to its profile on Facebook, is writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Will you be my friend? Sure? So, yeah, Today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Facebook in general and the recent Facebook
Speaker 1: redesign in particular. UM. In case you have been under
Speaker 1: a rock for the last four years, here's the brief
Speaker 1: overview of Facebook. It's an online social network, uh debuted
Speaker 1: in two thousand four and it was originally UM geared
Speaker 1: for college students, so that's what the For the first
Speaker 1: several months of development, it was pretty much just college
Speaker 1: kids using this to to build up groups of friends
Speaker 1: and keep in contact with each other and find out
Speaker 1: what each other are doing and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And then eventually Facebook opened it up to the public
Speaker 1: in general, and everyone and their dog got a Facebook page.
Speaker 1: And I'm not kidding there are dogs with Facebook pages
Speaker 1: and cats as well. They don't discriminate. Um. And then
Speaker 1: in August of two thousand six. So two years after debuted,
Speaker 1: Facebook announced that it was going to open up uh
Speaker 1: some of its programming to developers, and a year later,
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, they actually allowed developers to use
Speaker 1: Facebook as a platform. And then that's when you saw
Speaker 1: this explosion of of applications hit Facebook. So, um, if
Speaker 1: you are the person who has the zombie pirate, armored
Speaker 1: night Scribulous uh Facebook profile, you know exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about here, unless, of course, that yours is one
Speaker 1: of the ones affected by a Scrabulous you might be
Speaker 1: you might be surprised to know there's there was a
Speaker 1: basically a knockoff of the game, the popular Scrabble brand
Speaker 1: crossword game by Hasbro UM And you might say, why
Speaker 1: are you using the trademark name, Well, that's uh, somebody
Speaker 1: did a knockoff these two guys in India, um basically
Speaker 1: because Hasbro didn't have their own version of Scrabble on there.
Speaker 1: And you might say, why do I care about this program? Well,
Speaker 1: Scrabulous became huge. It was a very very popular way
Speaker 1: to network with with other Facebook users with friends and family.
Speaker 1: Speaking from personal experience, been playing Scrabulous for for months
Speaker 1: with different family members across the country, and UH, Hasbro
Speaker 1: got a little jealous, and all of a sudden, everywhere
Speaker 1: you turn on all these websites after Scrabble UH made
Speaker 1: its debut and Hasbro is announcing a lawsuit against the
Speaker 1: creator Subscribulous. It's on every news site everywhere from the
Speaker 1: United States to everywhere else in the world. It's amazing
Speaker 1: how a scrap bowl game became the talk of Facebook
Speaker 1: for you know, a week or more, right, actually months, really,
Speaker 1: because if you've been listening to other podcasts or if
Speaker 1: you've read the news, you probably have seen things about
Speaker 1: about this story. But really, let's let's let's try and
Speaker 1: keep this in mind. Describulous is just one of many
Speaker 1: programs that's on Facebook. In fact, I read one in
Speaker 1: one source that there are now more than twenty four
Speaker 1: thousand programs on Facebook. That's a lot of programs. And
Speaker 1: the redesign kind of addresses this issue because here's here's
Speaker 1: how these programs work. Developers create their own applications, UH,
Speaker 1: they host them on their own servers, and then it
Speaker 1: links to Facebook. And if you subscribe to one of
Speaker 1: these applications, if you if you install it within your
Speaker 1: profile page, you give that developer the right to look
Speaker 1: at your information. Now, Originally Facebook said we just want
Speaker 1: developers to look at whatever information they application needs to
Speaker 1: know in order to ron. So maybe that's just the
Speaker 1: number of friends you have or your profile name. But
Speaker 1: the problem is that there was not really a way
Speaker 1: to enforce that. So technically developers were getting as much
Speaker 1: information as they wanted that was available on your profile.
Speaker 1: So that could be your birthday. Even friends who had
Speaker 1: set their profiles to private, if you UH installed an
Speaker 1: application on your profile, the developer would be able to
Speaker 1: look at that person's profile as if he or she
Speaker 1: were you. So there were some major privacy issues early
Speaker 1: on with this UH, with all these programs coming up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I saw a report not too long ago about
Speaker 1: a student who had been asked to give up even
Speaker 1: more information, including his social Security number, and it got
Speaker 1: him in a lot of trouble because it allowed UH,
Speaker 1: it allows identity theft. So basically, once they've they've lulled
Speaker 1: you into a sense of secure where you're willing to
Speaker 1: give up some information. You know, there are some people
Speaker 1: who are let's say less scrupulous, not scrupulous scrupulous than others, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, are are starting to ask for more information
Speaker 1: under the guys of hey, well we need this to
Speaker 1: make your make the program work. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: there have been people who have been fooled into thinking
Speaker 1: that somebody is going to use this for a good purpose,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a bit of social engineering on
Speaker 1: their part to get some information they probably shouldn't otherwise have.
Speaker 1: And and even on a more benign level, that it
Speaker 1: could mean something like selling your information to advertisers so
Speaker 1: that you could be the the the target of targeted advertising.
Speaker 1: And uh, I don't know about you, but I think
Speaker 1: most people probably feel they see enough commercials as it is. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so yeah, this was a big problem and that was
Speaker 1: part of the reason Facebook was looking into its major redesign.
Speaker 1: And another part was just that if you go to
Speaker 1: a Facebook page and you look at someone's profile and
Speaker 1: this person has subscribed to a lot of these applications, uh,
Speaker 1: the page gets pretty cluttered. That's true. Each of these
Speaker 1: applications has a little image that goes along with it.
Speaker 1: So if you tell the program that you're installing that
Speaker 1: you want to uh to include this in your profile,
Speaker 1: then it's going to put another little badge on there.
Speaker 1: It's it's not unlike I guess the badges you would
Speaker 1: see on the side of a fighter jet in World
Speaker 1: War Two every time they shot down another plane and
Speaker 1: get the little thing on the side of the nose
Speaker 1: where you'd have, you know, sixteen different ones. Well, on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, you have, say, you have fifteen different applications installed,
Speaker 1: and you let it show that on your profile page.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden you've got this little string of
Speaker 1: little I don't know, probably sixteen by sixteen pixel or
Speaker 1: a thirty two by thirty two images, you know, representing
Speaker 1: each of those applications. And and it gets worse than
Speaker 1: that because some of the applications also put will put
Speaker 1: a box in your profile page so that um, it'll
Speaker 1: it'll take up even more space on your profile. Now,
Speaker 1: not every application does that, but and you can choose
Speaker 1: to not let it do that. But if you're not
Speaker 1: paying attention and you're just saying, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: be a pirate, Oh I want to be a zombie,
Speaker 1: Oh I want to be aware wolf, Oh I love
Speaker 1: this movie application, eventually you're you're a profile is just
Speaker 1: gonna be filled with all these different boxes and it's
Speaker 1: it's arranged vertically so you have to scroll down and
Speaker 1: down and down, and it may be that that it
Speaker 1: takes a good minute and a half to scroll all
Speaker 1: the way through your page, which is not very elegant.
Speaker 1: So that was another part of the redesign. We should
Speaker 1: probably actually got around to talking about what the redesign
Speaker 1: looks like. It's it's pretty neat. Actually. They they've organized
Speaker 1: the Facebook profiles into tabbed pages, so everything is now
Speaker 1: organized within tabs, and all those applications are now in
Speaker 1: a tab called boxes. Um. I'm sure this probably has
Speaker 1: some of the developers a little peeved because it's if
Speaker 1: you're looking at the main profile page, you don't see
Speaker 1: the applications there anymore. And I bet that's got some
Speaker 1: people rubbed the wrong way. That's true, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: make the the profile a lot easier to navigate. I mean,
Speaker 1: rather than having a list of all your applications and
Speaker 1: being limited to see only a few of them at
Speaker 1: a time, you can actually hit the applications tab and
Speaker 1: uh and see all the different applications in one place. Um.
Speaker 1: You can also, you know, there's also links to your
Speaker 1: friends to your inbox. You'll see your status updates right there,
Speaker 1: and they opened up, UM, and they had basically three sections.
Speaker 1: You had your left navigation and then the main content
Speaker 1: on your profile, then another in the right rail. And
Speaker 1: they basically got rid of the entire left navigation scheme
Speaker 1: and put it into those tabs. So it really opens
Speaker 1: up a lot of white space and makes the page
Speaker 1: easier to uh, to get through. Right. It doesn't look
Speaker 1: nearly as busy as it used to, and it's I
Speaker 1: think it's a it's a huge improvement. UM. I do
Speaker 1: use Facebook occasionally and UH, and I really do like
Speaker 1: the new layout. Now, if you haven't seen the new layout,
Speaker 1: that's probably because Facebook hasn't really rolled it out to
Speaker 1: the site at large, but you can check it out
Speaker 1: at www dot new dot Facebook dot com. That's in
Speaker 1: e w UM and that's where you can see the
Speaker 1: the the new design. And UH, I think it's pretty nifty.
Speaker 1: I know too. Although a lot of the feedback that
Speaker 1: I've seen on blogs and different social networks that aren't
Speaker 1: Facebook and uh, a lot of the people who I
Speaker 1: follow have not been at all thrilled with it. But
Speaker 1: someone who might have been thrilled with it, um at
Speaker 1: least enough to get hit with a lawsuit. UM. As
Speaker 1: a German organization which is uh sort of a very
Speaker 1: similar website called study vz, and they are accused of
Speaker 1: and I quote copying the look, feel, features and services
Speaker 1: and quote um of the Facebook uh layout according to
Speaker 1: the Financial Times, So they have actually gotten as close
Speaker 1: to Facebook as they could to the point where Facebook
Speaker 1: is willing to take legal action. So you know, it's um.
Speaker 1: It's a popular layout for for social platform. Yeah. Whenever
Speaker 1: a new social networking site comes on, the inevitable comparisons
Speaker 1: against the two biggias MySpace and Facebook come around. And
Speaker 1: in some cases those comparisons you say, it doesn't just
Speaker 1: resemble it, it it's identical to it. And that's a
Speaker 1: that's not a not the best route to take. I think. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more, you should visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and read how Facebook Works. Until then,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you later for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com?
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