Facebook to Now Allow Users to Pay to Promote their Status Updates and Instragrammed Food

Fox - Facebook wants you to advertise … to your friends. The world’s largest social network, which announced Thursday that it has crossed the billion-user mark, has struggled to make money from its enormous pool of users. The solution: Turning individual users into advertisers...Facebook announced Wednesday that Joe Sixpack will soon be able to ensure that you're reading his messages, thanks to an expansion of the Promoted Posts program, which lets businesses pay anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand to ensure that hundreds of thousands of Facebookers see your posts. “As part of a test starting today, people in the U.S. can promote personal posts to their friends on Facebook,” explained Abhishek Doshi, a software engineer, on Facebook’s website. “When you promote a post -- whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news -- you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it.”..Facebook announced Wednesday that Joe Sixpack will soon be able to ensure that you're reading his messages, thanks to an expansion of the Promoted Posts program, which lets businesses pay anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand to ensure that hundreds of thousands of Facebookers see your posts. “As part of a test starting today, people in the U.S. can promote personal posts to their friends on Facebook,” explained Abhishek Doshi, a software engineer, on Facebook’s website. “When you promote a post -- whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news -- you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it.”

Ok, I'm not going to get all dramatic and say that if you do this I'll un-friend you, I'm not going to bitch about the fact that on top of having to wade through countless advertisements for Tide Detergent and Duracell batteries every time I log on to Facebook just to see what my fake internet friends are up to, I'm now going to have to add advertisements specifically from those fake internet friends for garage sales, craigslist adds, and awesome pictures of what they had for dinner...I'm fine with all that.

I'm just going to say, if you're one of these people who feels the need to pay Facebook to ensure people see your post/status update/picture of food...You really need to look in the mirror and take stock of your life.  Really think about what that's saying about you. You're basically paying to advertise the fact that not only do you assume internet strangers and fake friends who, by logging into Facebook, are admitting they've got nothing better to do than to kill time and look for gossip fodder, aren't going to find you interesting enough to pay attention to...But that also your real friends have so little interest in what's going on in your life (or what you purport to be your life through phony updates) that they're just going to skim right by your updates. That's what you're saying.

So if you're at that point, I'd say paying $7 for a post that says "Little Caroline's First Poop on the Potty!", shouldn't be your top priority. Maybe getting out and seeing some real people, or a shrink perhaps. At the very least pick up the phone and talk to an actual human voice. Because when you're at the point where you're literally paying for the lowest form of human contact imaginable, the "Like", that's when you know you really need help.

SocialCam is Making the Facebook Experience Extremely Awk.

This is what we're doing now Facebook? Alerting me to all of my "friends" disgusting video viewing habits in my feed? 

Gross, and extremely awkward. I know I've complained in the past but I'll take a lifetime of instagrammed photos of peoples dinner, baby photos, and engagement announcements over one more of my friends watching some ridiculous pimple popping video. 

I mean yea, I went and checked it out after, but I wish I hadn't. And frankly, if I didn't have people in my feed apparently watching pimple videos left and right, I would have never known these existed. My stomach is literally churning right now. I feel like throwing up thinking about what I just watched, but its not like I'm not going to go check it out. And I for sure feel a little weirder about these "friends" who are sharing the fact that they're watching pimple popping video with their hundreds of contacts. That's just fucked. Yes I watched it, but no I didn't advertise the fact that in my spare time I voluntarily watch videos of disgusting ogers having prehistoric pimples medically popped. That's just not proper decorum. You watch that stuff on your own time and then you pretend it never happened. Maybe you show the video to your fiancee so you don't feel alone in the horror of what you just saw. But you most certainly do not alert the masses.

PS: I'm not going to put you guys through it but if you're morbidly curious, youtube "OMG Pimple" or "best pimple pop ever." These videos have literally been blowing up my feed lately.

Facebook Violates Bro-Code, Outs Man's Secret Wife to his Real Wife.

Boston.com - A corrections officer is facing bigamy charges after authorities said a Washington woman using Facebook discovered that she and a potential “friend’’ were married to him at the same time. According to charging documents filed Thursday, Alan L. O’Neill married a woman in 2001, moved out in 2009, changed his name and remarried without divorcing her. The first wife first noticed O’Neill had moved on to another woman when Facebook suggested the friendship connection to wife No. 2 under the “People You May Know’’ feature... Wife No. 1 then called the defendant’s mother. “An hour later the defendant arrived at (Wife No. 1’s) apartment, and she asked him several times if they were divorced,’’ court records show. “The defendant said, `No, we are still married.’’ Neither O’Neill nor his first wife had filed for divorce, according to charging documents. The name change came in December, and later that month he married his second wife. O’Neill allegedly told wife No. 1 not to tell anybody about his dual marriages, that he would fix it, the documents state. But wife No. 1 alerted authorities.

"Who's on first, What's on second," am I right? No, crickets? Ok then.

Jesus that was hard to follow, but the jest of it is,(to quote modern day bro-code philosopher, Ronnie from the Jersey Shore) "Facebook don't got bro-code, dude."

Be cool, Facebook. It's one thing for your name to come up in something crazy like 80% of all divorces, its quite another thing when you start taunting cuckolded women with "people you may know" notifications for your husbands second wife that she knew nothing about. That shit is cold blooded, talk about invasions of privacy. I don't think that's anywhere in the terms of agreement when you sign up for Facebook; 

"you exclusively give us the right to share your content, your privacy is important, and, oh yeah, we've just notified both of your wives to eachothers existance, so good luck with that. Click here if you agree with our terms and conditions."

I'm Legit Afraid of Creeping on Linkedin

So I've never really been into Linkedin, I've had a profile, I get random network requests that I accept, but I've never really visited the site since I signed up for it a few years back, until recently when I started getting notifications that "someone has viewed my profile." 

"Oh, really? That's kind of convenient," I naively thought. 

Because it's not convenient, at all. Who would ever creep on someone on here if the person you're creeping on is going to be alerted to said creeping!? WHO? Like here I am trying to get my stalk on with some senior managers in my company and it just clicked..."SHIT...if I can see who's creeping on me, they can see that I'm creeping on them..." I've never deleted cookies faster, in a futile attempt to erase my path of creepage. 

I'm pretty sure it was to no avail, but it begs the bigger question...What is the point of a social network if you can't creep in private? Every other week some group of people is all up in a huff about Facebook or Google invading your privacy because all that public information you chose to share with complete strangers is now, being shared with complete strangers, and yet no one is upset about this? I didn't agree to have my stalking victims made aware of the fact that I'm absolutely an internet peeping tom, that shit is outrageous and a HUGE violation of my privacy.  Look, these people volunteered their information, they're openly listing their resume, skills, and job history online. If they didn't want me checking that stuff out they shouldn't have put it out there. Instead they're allowed to use it like a Venus freaking fly trap,  just sucking in Linkedin Novices like me. Can't wait for that conversation in the hallway this week..."Oh, hey Chris, saw that you were perusing my credentials at 12:30 am last Monday." That's all I need, thanks a lot Linkedin.

Mark Zukerberg's 6 Secrets for Success

Daily Finanace - David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World -- the only book about the site written with Zuckerberg's full cooperation -- offers an insider's view of what we can learn from the 27-year-old billionaire, while challenging some of the conventional wisdom on the inscrutable entrepreneur. Here, according to Kirkpatrick, are the key ingredients in Zuckerberg's recipe for success.

1. Believe in Yourself

2. Just Get It Done

3. Stick to Your Vision and Tune Out the Naysayers

4. Loyalty Breeds Success

5. Live Below Your Means

6. Follow Your Passion -- Not the Money

All due respect to Mark, I think he forgot one, "Invent the most addictive and popular website in the history of the internet."  Not to be too cynical here, but I just can't stand whenever some uber-rich guy comes out with lists like this, it's bullshit. It's common sense, and it has nothing to do with your company's success or your riches that followed. 

You're rich and successful for two reasons, you thought of/and/or possibly borrowed a brilliant idea, and you executed it brilliantly. That's it folks, it's that simple. All that other stuff, that corporate fluff (to be fair my company has never said "get it done," so maybe Mark hasn't gone totally corporate, but we do say things like "commitment to operational excellence," which is the same thing), it's common sense and propaganda for the employees.

Take myself for instance:

1. Believe in Yourself - I consistently believe that, when I put the effort in, I'm geniunely funny and pointed. Problem is, the results don't always support my theory. I think I happen to have a very narrow sense of humor and interest that is not necessarily palatable to a broad audience...I know this because we're not exactly rolling in advertising dollars or writing deals over here...probably because I don't have a brilliant original idea.

2. Just Get it Done - After working my day job I come home and research blog topics, I then rise an hour and half earlier than necessary each morning to type out this drivel...I'm getting it done, it's just not accomplishing anything...again, because I don't have a brilliant original idea.

3. Stick to your Vision and Tune out the Naysayers - Believe me, I do this. I get some pointed criticism daily from reader e-mails and comments, and I'd be more offended, it's just that for some reason, people wait several months before commenting on the blog...take this blog for example, wrote it in December, took this Jake P character two months to comment, at that point I just don't give a shit. Also, I consistently get e-mails from some guy in Africa with some pretty interesting business proposals for the site, but I always turn them down, I don't want to sell out just yet.

4. Loyalty Breeds Success - Well that's just a flat out lie...We've had a revolving door of bloggers over here, with Dr. Jack and Seany Mo being the only two that have somewhat stuck.

5. Live Below Your Means - Frankly, that's not even possible. Living below my means based on blog income would make me the equivalent of a homeless toddler, luckily I have a real job.

6. Follow Your Passion, Not the Money - If you haven't been getting the general gist of things here, I'm not exactly rising early each morning because of the promise of riches. I'd like the riches, it would be nice, I certainly wouldn't turn them down, but at this point if that was my driving force I'd be a fucking idiot because that's one dream that's surely not coming true...Probably because I don't have a brilliant and original idea.

In sum, I'd much rather listen to the business tips of every-man type business people, ones that haven't necessarily struck it rich but are still getting by, guys like: Michael Scott: