With wounds of the Boston Marathon bombings and Waco fertilizer plant explosions still fresh, we’re all witnessing the evolution of how we communicate, find facts, and even comfort ourselves in times of unexpected tragedy. We saw how social media was used to share and source information, amplify voices, and connect communities that are geographically far apart––all in real time.
Here’s what we saw happen. Continue →
On Monday, around 1PM Pacific Time, Facebook had an issue with their comments and the counter for their Facebook Like button that made it appear for many people–including TechCrunch–that they had lost all their Facebook Likes.
Unfortunately, this was out of our hands since the problem happened on Facebook’s end. But I thought this would be a good time to explain how counter values work, and where those values are stored. Continue →
It was fall 2004, my junior year of college, and I was at a party. I was conversing with a new friend when she asked me enthusiastically, “Are you on The Facebook?” I don’t remember my exact reaction, but I’m certain it involved a clueless look and something along the lines of “the what-book?” I could have never imagined at that moment sipping my purple punch, I was essentially experiencing a milestone in my life.
That was 8 years ago and these days, it’s hard to remember a world without Facebook. The service, which started as a private social network for ivy leaguers and eventually evolved into the massive public community it is today, is really more than a service – it’s a commodity. It has become our telephone, our newspaper, our photo album, our address book. Facebook is a part of our everyday routine.
Today marks another milestone. After much anticipation, Facebook is going public. (And no, this has nothing to do with privacy settings). Mark Zuckerberg’s college side project is set to hit trading desks at 9am and it’s expected to be big. In 8 short years Facebook went from a dorm room to being a company valued at over $100B.
This morning’s bell will be one that is heard ‘round the world.
To “ring in” the big day, we’ve analyzed billions of events from our network and distilled down a couple of fun facts about Facebook’s popularity.
Some general stats about the popularity of Facebook:
(click for larger version)
*Social data should not be used to make trading and investment decisions
**UPDATE** 3/11/2011 10:00 AM EST: Facebook’s fix has been stable so we’ve reverted back to our normal sharing integration. We’ll continue to monitor Facebook sharing but everything is back to normal now.
**UPDATE** 3/10/2011 10:00 PM EST: Facebook has deployed a fix intended to address the core issue. We are running a full suite of tests and will revert to our normal integration once this is confirmed fully functional. We are currently still on an alternate integration, which works as expected with minor limitations on posts with multiple images. We will update here once we resume fully normal operation.
**UPDATE** 3/10/2011 1:30 PM EST: Facebook has reenabled our workaround so we have been operating correctly for a few hours now. We will continue to monitor in case of any changes.
**UPDATE** 3/10/2011 6 AM EST: Facebook has indicated a fix will be deployed on their side by “no later than Thursday evening”. We are working with Facebook directly and will provide updates as they are available. The mobile endpoint workaround will stay in place in the interim, so Facebook sharing is currently functional. You can follow Facebook updates on this issue on their Live Status Page.
**UPDATE** 3/10/2011 12 AM EST: In an effort to keep the system as stable as possible while Facebook works on a fix for the root cause, we are currently leveraging Facebook’s mobile share endpoint for all shares. Though the user experience is geared to a smaller form factor, it does function correctly and allows us to continue to support sharing functionality. Facebook has let us know that a fix will be deployed quickly; we will resume our normal operation as soon as that happens.
**UPDATE** 3/9/2011 6 PM EST: We deployed a workaround to restore core Facebook sharing functionality via AddThis while we await a more permanent solution from Facebook. We are continuing to monitor progress on the issue from their side and will keep you updated with additional information as we have it. In the interim, we believe the workaround re-enables all sharing features. Thanks for your patience.
This morning we got reports that their were problems with sharing to Facebook. After some investigation, it appears that overnight Facebook may have introduced a bug as part of an update that has broken Facebook Sharing.
With the bug, any url that hasn’t been previously cached within Facebook will initially not show the title and image of the page and then get an error when shared.
This bug has been discovered by a number of other developers and reported to Facebook. We’re escalating the issue through our channels and hope to have it resolved as quickly as possible.
If you’d like to see the issue first hand or if you have a few extra special URLs, Facebook does make a tool that you can force URLS to be cached in their system.
We’ll keep you updated as things change. Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well for the latest updates.
With a recent release, you can now share MapQuest Local pages with your friends and the world using AddThis. Back in early September, MapQuest launched MapQuest Local, a portal that aggregates information together about your town or city.
As you can see from the screenshot at the beginning of the post, just hover over the orange AddThis plus sign and you’ll see the traditional AddThis menu. If you click on the plus sign, you’ll get the pop-up menu.
So… go find your town with MapQuest Local and share the page with others.