How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You’ve Ever Met (Gizmodo)

In real life, in the natural course of conversation, it is not uncommon to talk about a person you may know. You meet someone and say, “I’m from Sarasota,” and they say, “Oh, I have a grandparent in Sarasota,” and they tell you where they live and their name, and you may or may not recognize them.

How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You’ve Ever Met – Gizmodo

I think tech people have been aware of this for a while, but it is worth exploring again

I have been griping about leaving Facebook and owning my data for a while now, but I may have finally found a solution.

The indie web, its called. Made up of the people who got tired of talking about these concepts and decided to start doing something about them.

I first heard about them on one of my weekly must-hear podcasts, In Beta (episode 90). Then a guest on another webcast I enjoy regularly – This Week in Google #241 – brought it up near the end. (TWiG actually just dedicated most of an episode to it – #266.)

I always viewed blogging (at least my blog) as a spot for thoughts that skewed toward longform writing, that could not be fleshed out in a short snippet. The indie web, however, encourages tweet-length thoughts as well as longer posts, which can then be syndicated to whatever social network you choose. The point is to not keep those thoughts siloed somewhere that may eventually shut down or change their policies, but to control your online identity, on your own terms. You can build your own tools, or you can browse the IndieWeb site to find something pre-built to use on your site.

But how will people see these posts if they are on Facebook or Twitter? Well, they thought of that too. POSSE stands for Post (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. By syndicating, your non-IndieWeb friends will still get to see what you are up to. And using the webmention protocol, comments and replies will be pulled back into your own site as well.

If you are feeling less brave, one of the higher-profile indie web tools just launched a beta. It is called Known, and it has been treating me well so far. I look forward to their hosted/beta service adding a WordPress plugin. But if I did my work right, you should see my Known post about this article down below.

TL;DR: if you see anything oddly formatted posts on my site or one of my social profiles, it is probably an attempt at implementing one of the Indie Web projects. Maybe if you are getting wary of Facebook and you’re looking for a technically-inclined side project, you should check it out too.

So, I hadn’t been on Facebook directly for about a month until a couple nights ago (not counting one post from Spotify, where I tried to post to Twitter instead of FB but did the opposite – stupid share buttons). Man, the nostalgia wave was intense. I enjoyed my sojourn into the internet wilderness for a month, but this one relapse visit just made it feel lonely.

My renewed interest was piqued by their announcement of Facebook Home. It is an intriguing concept. The cynic in me knows they just want to put one less layer between you and them (and their ads). The pragmatist in me knows that Android has been dying for some kind of integrated messaging ala iMessage, and this looks like a great solution (until Google announces their own at I/O next month). It is another great way for them to leverage their user base and practically inevitable since their introduction of their own app system. Facebook is the only social network robust enough to attempt something like this. I will try it out of morbid curiosity, and will probably start sharing things there more often. At least until I want control again.

But, that aside, it was very easy to function without Facebook. There was more time to read important things, like literature. My phone locked up less often, honestly. I could find updates in other places if I needed to know how someone was doing.

Coming back was even easier, though. One picture posted, 5 likes by the end of the night. Churning out content is fairly easy, but without a built-in audience, what is the point? I guess when the average user is ready to drop out of there and go somewhere else, I know that I will be ready too.

via Tumblr http://craigpilcher.tumblr.com/post/47205579648