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It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

By Kelly Faircloth 5/14 12:52pm

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

(Photo: screencap)

Facebook Talked a Professor Into Helping Build a Better Emoticon

Heedlessly disregarding the bad luck of looking anything like MySpace, Facebook recently added the option of emoticons for status updates. But, according to Popular Science, the social network couldn’t simply use the same smiley faces that’ve done the Internet perfectly good for more than a decade. No, besides the old standbys you’ll have the option of expressing your feelings with a custom-designed, “compassion-research-based set of emoticons.”

Hey, we’re willing to try anything that’ll keep drama out of our News Feed. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 4/16 1:00pm

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

Dr. Evil (Photo: Wikipedia)

Aren’t You Just So, So Excited for Video Ads in Your Facebook News Feed?

Did you think that, in the rush to ship Facebook Home, Zuck & Co. would forget about their reported plans to introduce video ads–with autoplay–to your News Feed? Guess again! Ad Age says that Facebook is currently meeting with ad agencies, in the hopes of signing up clients in advance of a June or July launch. (This, despite the fact they’re still finalizing the product.)

Yes, we hear your wailing and gnashing of teeth at the thought of a News Feed cluttered with autoplaying videos, like some sort of early-Internet horror show. But don’t expect Facebook to listen to your complaints, because the company stands to make out like absolute bandits: Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 4/15 1:50pm

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

fb

Facebook’s New ‘Home’ Ads Want You to Know That Everything but Facebook Is Gray and Sad

Facebook is all grown up and making commercials. Too bad this latest batch is as bleak as the time Don Draper tried to sell Hawaii as a place so great you just want to die.  The tl;dr version of these Facebook Home ads: The world is bland. Only Facebook is engaging. Ignore your real life and merge wholly with the social network that’ll provide everything real life can’t. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth and Jordan Valinsky 4/04 3:15pm

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

Screen shot 2013-04-04 at 2.11.05 PM

Chat Heads Rule Everything Around the New Facebook ‘Home’

The highly anticipated Facebook phone is finally here and it’s not a phone at all.

Instead it’s slick-looking software that wants to assume mass control of Android phones everywhere. It’s going to be available for download on April 12 in the Google Play store. HTC will be releasing the first Facebook Home optimized phone on the same day.

“It’s a family of apps and you can install it and it becomes the home of your phone. So we’re calling this, ‘Home,’” announced Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg from under a sheen of sweat. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 3/28 1:06pm

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

Basically. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Facebook Basically Hired Frank Gehry to Build Zuck a Hobbit Hole in Palo Alto

Facebook wants to expand its West Coast footprint, with a spacious new facility–designed by no less than starchitect Frank Gehry himself–just across the expressway from its current HQ. So earlier this week, the San Jose Mercury News reports, the company laid out its plans for the Palo Alto city council’s approval.

Before they could get the thumbs up, Facebook had to reassure the city fathers that they didn’t want to erect some shiny architectural marvel that’d loom futuristically over the Silicon Valley skyline. Mr. Gehry’s creative partner, Craig Webb, told them that Zuck himself requested a “low-key” design: Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 3/15 11:41am

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

Meanwhile, in Zucklandia...

Zuck Wins Popularity Contest, Can Stop Hitting Refresh

Maybe Aaron Sorkin and/or everyone who saw The Social Network thinks Mark Zuckerberg is an asocial dweeb struggling to make a friend connection. But CNET reports that his employees feel differently. The jobs site Glassdoor surveyed thousands of employees about their bosses to determine the top 50 CEOs in America, and it was Zuck who took the number-one spot.

Take THAT, finals clubs! Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 3/07 2:25pm

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

Spiffy!

Are Bigger Pics Enough to Get You Excited About Facebook Again?

Facebook’s News Feed hasn’t changed all that much since way back in 2007, when the feature was first introduced as a text-heavy way to say you were studying for your chem final, please send hugs/bagels! But in the age of the smartphone, photos and other visual content now comprise half of what gets shared in Facebook’s News Feed.

Hence the touch-up introduced today by Mark Zuckerberg and a cadre of chipper Facebook employees. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 2/20 1:29pm

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

I mean come on.

Sorry, Centenarians! You Might Not Get Credit for Your Three-Digit Ages on Facebook

When you turn 100 in America, you get a personalized birthday card from the president. Unfortunately, it seems you won’t receive the same consideration from Facebook. According to the local news team at Detroit’s WDIV-TV, Grosse Point grandma Marguerite Joseph is nigh on 105 years old, but her Facebook page (run by her granddaughter) is stuck at 99.

You would think the least Facebook could do would be to offer some sort of special Timeline icon to mark the occasion. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/05 9:20am

It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It

Screen shot 2013-02-05 at 8.28.29 AM

You’ll Never Guess Where Facebook Is Hiding Its Targeted Ad Icon

The Federal Trade Commission didn’t mince words about behavioral targeting when it said, back in 2009, that the online advertising industry needs to get better at self-policing, “or it will certainly invite legislation by Congress and a more regulatory approach by our Commission.”

In response, industry leaders developed a number of self-regulatory principles. One of their brilliant ideas? A little turquoise “AdChoices” icon on display ads that directs consumers to more information on behavioral targeting–sorry “interest-based advertising“–and how to opt-out. Read More