Alex Muller

Here’s a feature I haven’t seen reported anywhere yet. The new version of Facebook has a “Shake to reload” option. Gimmicky? Yes. Awesome? Yes.

Somebody told me about her (nameless) school in West London that has simply bizarre practices regarding pupils’ safety online. The Catholic school, for girls aged 11 to 16, has a Facebook account shared by the staff, and pupils were encouraged to accept a friend request at a beginning of term assembly. They were then told that if they did not accept this friend request, they would be made to log in to their accounts in front of a member of staff so that the adult could check for any privacy issues or "social problems." They’re searching for underage drinking, smoking or potentially revealing photos, but don’t seem to have quite grasped that Facebook is not the entire Internet.

This is crazy. What’s more crazy is that parents will support it, in the name of safety.

Now I’m wondering whether Facebook profiles are destined to look like this forever:

A quick note: most of the people finding this post via search engines want to know why Facebook profiles are sometimes unavailable. It’s due to Facebook carrying out routine maintenance; no data is lost while this is going on, and in my experience it normally lasts no more than about 3 hours at a time. Now, back to the original writing:

Random interestingness with Facebook profiles – if a profile is unavailable for any reason (which most of the time means maintenance being carried out), all the wall posts on that profile can’t be seen. So basically, wall posts are associated with the person they’re posted on rather than the person they’re written by.

Also, wall-to-wall makes for a much more interesting read – just one side of the conversation, have to try and guess what the other person’s saying. (more…)

This is interesting advice from Facebook that I’d never seen before – not a bad way of putting it, either:

Remember, unless you’re prepared to attach something in your profile to a resume or scholarship application, don’t post it.

Unfortunate that it’s hidden in help.php, the only link to which is right at the bottom of the page.