Facebook API Followup

After browsing through some stats, there are actually quite a few people trying to gather data via facebook API apps…. in fact 60 searches brought people to that one article… its a little disturbing that there are *that* many people interested in this. Even more disturbing are the search stats which show people’s likely ill intent (specifically datamining). Stats follow inside post.

Facebook – Social Naiveity?

Without trying to insult or offend Facebook users or people in general, I’d like to raise the issue of social naivety. Posting quiz results or photos for instance shows a image, however I find it troubling that people go to the extent of taking quizes either out of obligation, or to prove to themselves or others the image that they find ideal. For instance, many users post a multitude of personal information with no regard as to the negative consequences. Pictures of parties (dry or not) would be the most obvious example for outsiders, profile information combined with pictures would only act as a reason for negative stereotypes to be built against individuals despite their actual nature.

Facebook API – Applications, Data Mining, and Cornucopia of Useless?

Well I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a while, for the many Facebook users who are reading this post, they will understand. Through a recent addition to the facilities that Facebook offers, the API now provided (application programming interface) gives us a multitude of applications. Those actually interested in the technical details can look here.

The API system allows 3rd party developers to query information about users that add said application from the Facebook servers revealing a multitude of information. Facebook actually provides a developers test console which allows you to test queries, with a simple query being users.getInfo on your own UID (user ID) with fields such as [first_name, last_name, music, tv, movies], try it. The Facebook query language (FQL) is used by and likely stored on 3rd party web servers to associate UID information to names, and further information relevant to the application.