Me and Anand have descended from our treetop houses once again to bring you this week’s episode of the Not So Horrible podcast. The monkeys were particularly feisty this week, and the vines secreted some sort of strange goo all over my khakis. But luckily, the water taxi was on time, and we made it to the shortwave radio with only minor discomfort.

Note to self: bring back monkey repellent.

Having spent all our money on Khaki-specialty dry cleaning, we couldn’t afford paper this week. Thus, today’s episode is being brought to you with little to no planning whatsoever. This is probably for the better — the trees have taken root in our inkwells. Talking points include:

• The Super Bowl comes to town. We pretend we actually watch sports. Pigs everywhere worry for their skin for yet another year.
• We discuss Caprica, the new, hit teen drama! It’s like 90210 in space. But not quite. In fact, not at all. It’s a Battlestar Galactica spin off, you fools. With wallpaper I can’t stop looking at.
• I finished Mass Effect. In unrelated news, 2007 called — they want my computer back.
• Anand plays Oblivion all day and forgets to take out the trash again.
• Finally, we talk Project Tentacle Titan, Facebook’s rumoured webmail platform. With over 400 million users worldwide, this could be the platform that ensnares us all.

Length: 32:49
Close: M4 Part II – Faunts (Mass Effect OST)
Download: 31.5 MB
iTunes / RSS

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The inner workings of Facebook have always confused me. The social networking giant seems akin to the Keebler factory, yet with elves more sinister, and a shroud of secrecy that could rival the USSR. The cogs are always turning, and new features come frequently enough, but does anyone really know the factory works inside?

You see, Facebook has an algorithm and I have no clue what it is — a social networking question mark on par with fast food’s secret sauce.

In the olden days, we would trudge through five feet of snow just to comment on a picture, and we liked it that way. Sometimes, we would even be notified if our friends did the same. Of course, things got weird when Johny at Some University decided to comment on a picture that was three years old, because you’d be notified for that too. The powers that be decided this was weird too, and in their infinite wisdom, put an end to all those comments on the past.

The thing is, there are now some weird conditions in place that determine whether you’ll receive a notification on a picture, post or comment. For example…

• You will always receive notifications for comments on things you post.
• But after a certain period of time, comments on photos you have also commented on will no longer prompt notifications. This seems to vary depending on the number of people who have commented, the length of time since the last comment, and other variables.
• To make things more confusing, if you’re tagged in a picture, yet never comment, you seem to receive notifications regardless.

The apparent randomness of these occurrences makes me think that there may not even be an algorithm to comment notifications at all. I’ve heard rumours that Facebook staff use a brand of divination based upon cheese mold and the birthmarks found on baby kittens. It would explain a lot.

Now, this is all purely anecdotal. I’ve gone back to look at the notes and pictures of my friends from months past that have mysteriously acquired new comments – comments that I haven’t been notified for. Some of these comments have even been posted by reasonably good looking women. One might assume that Facebook’s mysterious algorithm is hindering my online relationships with the opposite sex.

But really, I just want my notifications back, and a peek at the the algorithm that makes this social beast tick. Is that too much to ask?

A quick glance outside my window revealed that pigs were flying, and the denizens of hell were enjoying a few cold ones. Much to the chagrin of internet users, it seemed as if Facebook was becoming Twitter – the introduction of @tagging having drawn the ire of each networks most loyal.

But let’s step back for a second. Amidst the hyperbole and seeming rage is really just a subtle and logical change that’s been a long time coming for Facebook. The social network first carved an online niche for itself with the ability to tag friends in photos. Then came notes, and later on, videos. Naturally, the only piece of original, user created content left untouched by our Facebook-tagging overlords were status updates.

What seems to be drawing all the attention is Facebook’s implementation of tags, and it’s very superficial similarity to that of Twitter. So, let’s break this down, shall we?

MATTHEW’S HANDY GUIDE TO SOCIAL NETWORKING AND LIFELONG TEXTUAL RELATIONSHIPS.

1. Twitter’s @ system makes up for the services’ inherent lack of threaded replies. In other words, it’s the only means by which to converse back and forth with someone. Facebook, meanwhile, actually has threaded replies to Tweets. I mean, updates.
2. Twitter allows you to mention anyone. Facebook, as always, will only allow you to tag your friends.
3. Facebook tags are NOT searchable. This is, arguably, one of the most powerful features of Twitter’s mention/hashtag system, and really what separates the two services.
4. And finally, Twitter let’s you tag as many people as you’d like, within the 140 character limit. Facebook limits you to six tags, however. This may be a good thing for Matt Demers.

In a nutshell, Facebook continues to improve and evolve, as it should, and gives a nod to one of its so-called competitors. Far from game changing, I think.

A Twitter clone it is not.

It’s jarring, at first, seeing a room packed with twenty-year-olds and middle-aged developers, each with a Facebook page splashed across their screen. For a service initially intended for an American college crowd, to see such widespread adoption of the social networking juggernaut is astounding. Yet, it is this fevered interest that has made Toronto one of Facebook’s largest networks, and a prime location for those looking to develop for the site.

FacebookCamp Toronto held its fifth Facebook Developers Garage Tuesday night at the MaRS Collaboration Centre, on 101 College Street, the latest in a series of talks since developer group’s inception over two years ago. An “unconference for everyone with an interest in building on the Facebook Platform,” according to organizers, the evening brought together marketers, designers, students and developers from all over Toronto looking to create and integrate with the popular social network.

With over 400 attendees attending each of FacebookCamp Toronto’s scheduled events, its clear that Toronto has a thing for Facebook. In fact, of all Toronto’s active Internet users, it’s believed that around 70% are active users on the site.

“It’s taking real world connections, and solidifying them on Facebook,” explains Matt Wyndowe of the site’s popularity, a developer and engineer from Facebook in Paolo Alto, California. A Canadian native, Wyndowe traveled to Toronto to join other presenters in one of Facebook’s newest initiatives, Facebook Connect. Launched at the beginning of December, it’s a new platform that Wyndowe is particularly excited about, and feels could have a big impact upon users and developers in cities like Toronto.

Connect is all about taking the Facebook user base, and using it on the Internet in a more general capacity, he explains. The goal is to allow Facebook users to navigate the web in such a way that their Facebook information and profiles can be seamlessly integrated into some of the Internet’s most popular and high-traffic sites.

“Imagine you have a site with ‘most watched’, ‘most viewed’, and ‘most emailed’” says Wyndowe. “Imagine what you would get if you replaced that with ‘most watched by my friends’ or ‘most viewed by my friends’. More people will be interested in that.”

One example, which Wyndowe hopes will soon be implemented in cities like Toronto, is a website called CitySearch. While there are already hundreds of websites across Toronto that offer restaurant, theatre and other reviews, CitySearch’s goal is to bring all of those together into one central, user-driven platform. But what makes CitySearch unique is how it utilizes the Facebook Connect platform.

Friends already using the CitySearch service are added instantly, based on a user’s Facebook friends, while reviews and recommendations from these same friends are given a higher priority on CitySearch’s homepage. The result is a highly streamlined and more intimate system – one that recognizes a user will be far more likely to respond to the input of their friends, over a seemingly unknown critic in Toronto.

More so, it’s a system that makes the external web easier for users to navigate.
Dimi Paun, another developer also presenting at last night’s FacebookCamp, took the stage to describe how his travel photo website, Zipalong, has incorporated the Connect platform.

“Dealing with customers, you realize very quickly that nobody likes the signup process,” Paun explained, while presenting slides of Zipalong’s old registration process. “Everybody hates it. So we jumped on the opportunity to use Facebook Connect.”

Using Connect, users are presented with a one-click sign-in process that uses their existing Facebook profile – a far cry from the complicated, multi-form system of old. The result, according to Facebook, has been a 20-100% increase in registrations on some sites, with connected users creating between 25-60% more content. Already, sites like CNN, Gawker Media, and even Toronto-based BikingToronto have begun to adopt the simplified system, in attempt to attract more users to their sites.

But while Facebook Connect dominated most of the evening, developers also took the opportunity to discuss tips and challenges when developing for Facebook’s year-old application platform.

Roy Pereira of Toronto-based marketing agency Refresh Partners, explained the development process behind his company’s wildly successful “Whopper Sacrifice” application. What began as a modest Burger King advertising campaign grew into an American sensation, allowing Facebook users to sacrifice – or, delete – 10 of their friends, in exchange for a free Whopper coupon from Burger King. And while “Whopper Sacrifice” proved a novel idea, indeed, it presented some interesting problems for Pereira and his team.

“We discovered pretty early on that there wasn’t actually any Facebook API for deleting friends,” remarked Pereira with a laugh. For a website that pushes new social interactions and networking, it’s hardly surprising; Pereira’s team found they had to write their own system to allow the application to achieve its sacrificial goals.

But most importantly, Pereira remarks, is that unlike other applications which divert the attention of users away from Facebook, “Whopper Sacrifice” made users focus on the Facebook platform itself. Updates to the minifieed allowed friends to see exactly who had been sacrificed, while also generating increased interest, and higher traffic to the application.

The importance of making applications and websites take advantage of Facebook’s social capabilities as much as possible is incredibly important. “I can see what my friends are saying. That’s what makes this interesting and engaging,” says Wyndowe on the impact of applications like “Whopper Sacrifice”, and the Facebook Connect platform as whole.
And for a Facebook network as large and diverse as Toronto’s own, the number of people developers hope to engage is almost limitless.

“Your lack of blog updates disturbs me.”
Google, being the sentient, all-knowing entity it is, told me this the other day, while searching the intertubes. And so it was.

A matter of great grammatical importance has come to my attention. Facebook – the similarly all-powerful, yet Google-subservient social network, of which we are all a slave to – has a handy little feature called status updates. In theory, status updates are a noble concept; Facebook is a platform on which you have a great deal of friends and accquaintances. Naturally, some of those friends might find it prudent to know what’s going on in your life, courtesy of a small phrase or two. Of course, in practice, things tend to turn out terribly, terribly wrong.

You see, for the longest time, Facebook statuses followed the following format….

Matthew is having a psychadelic oddesy involving muffin tops and a walrus.

There’s the prefix (in this case, Matthew is), and the suffix, which is essentially any status you deem appropriate at the time. Normally, this wouldn’t pose a problem to most people. Of course, I use the term “most people” rather liberally; apparently the term doesn’t cover myspace-immigrants and the grammatically challenged. Thus, it was only a matter of time until Facebook statuses played host to this sort of behaviour….

Matthew is I want to get with you girl, you be lookin’ so fly.

Disclaimer: I have no problem with people putting song lyrics as their statuses. Or statii, if you want to be cool, and plural. What I do have a problem with, is those who choose to do so, in obvious ignorance of the laws of grammar. People like this truly confuse me – does reading that phrase back to yourself even begin to make sense? Most likely, the answer is no. Unless you’ve got Pirate Facebook turned on; then it would be nay.

Now, I might be able to excuse this if Facebook still actually required you to say Matthew is…. But the thing is, they don’t; the mandatory is was dropped months ago. Making you, the user’s job, infinitely easier.

Matthew wants to get with you girl, you be lookin’ so fly.

So WHY then, do people insist on keeping the is? Particularly when their supposed statii make no sense whatsoever? Are they simply inept when it comes to appropriate conjucation? Are they ignorant of subject/predicate agreement rules? HAVE THEY NEVER SEEN SCHOOL HOUSE ROCK?!

Gentle(wo)men of the internets – these are questions I need answered. My sanity, and the fate of the known Facebook world, depend upon it.