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Facebook Has 150 Million Active Users. Whoa.

By Stan Schroeder | January 7, 2009

Back in August 2008, Mark Zuckerberg posted on the official Facebook blog that Facebook had reached 100 million users.

Now, only 4 months later, this number has grown 50%: Facebook now has 150 million users.

And, these are active users we’re talking about. How they determine this number at Facebook is unknown to me, but it probably means that users who’ve just created an account which sits idle for a long period of time aren’t included. This is huge; Facebook is growing incredibly fast, and at this pace it will will reach 300 million users by the end of 2009.

Also worth noting: Facebook was once a US-only service, but now it has users from over 170 countries. I can personally attest to Facebook’s growth in Croatia, where recent numbers suggest a growth of 100% over the last six months of 2008, with over 400,000 users. If this example is any indication, Facebook has no problems expanding internationally, in fact, it might even be growing faster than in the US.

Besides the obvious benefits of such growth, which include catching up with MySpace and increasing advertising profits, Facebook will also have to deal with scaling problems; some of their features (Chat and Live Feed, for example) simply aren’t working very well, and users are beginning to notice.

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

iLike Sees Exponential Growth with Facebook App
More Money for Facebook: Hong Kong Investor Adds $40M+ to Stake
Facebook Gets Another $500 Million?
The New Facebook Rollout Begins; 60M+ Still Haven’t Tried It
INSANITY: Facebook App Sells to TripAdvisor for $3 Million
Multiply Reaches 5 Million Users
Facebook’s 100 Million Users: How Much are They Worth?

Topics: Mashable! | Comments Off

Robotic Evolution

By ShawnBruce | January 7, 2009

Scott Beale over at Laughing Squid recently posted this amazing commercial from Germany. Scott writes:

Evolution of Technology is a fantastic ad created by Scholz&Friends Group for the German electronics store Saturn that shows an evolutionary process from dinosaur robots to modern androids.

Evolution of Technology

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)



Topics: Boing Boing | Comments Off

TSA agents being poisoned by their uniforms?

By Eideard | January 7, 2009

Bring a tube of A and D ointment along as a bribe.

Topics: Dvorak Uncensored | Comments Off

MacRumorsLive.com keynote hacked by 4chan anon

By Joel Johnson | January 7, 2009

Topics: Boing Boing Gadgets, Gadgets | Comments Off

How to Create Great First Impressions on New Readers and Convert Them Into Loyal Readers

By Darren Rowse | January 7, 2009

This video has been around for over a year now (I made it just after ProBlogger was last redesigned) but I think it’s particularly relevant for this time of year when many bloggers are looking at refreshing the look and feel of their blog.

First impressions matter both in real life face to face interactions with new people that you meet AND the first interactions you have with new readers. In this video I examine 5 ways you can improve the impression that you leave on first time readers and give three questions to ask when thinking about how to leave good impressions on readers.

Of course overarching all of what I mention is that your content needs to be of the highest quality to create a good first impression. Your design, titles, tag lines etc can all be amazing but unless you’ve got something useful and unique to say - the first impression will not be as good as it could be.

Further Reading:

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Topics: Blogs, ProBlogger Blog Tips | Comments Off

Wait, What? Apple is Charging for DRM Removal

By Stan Schroeder | January 7, 2009

Amidst all the coverage of the new iTunes pricing structure - and the fact that purchased songs will be DRM-free from now on - not many reporters pointed out (there are exceptions, of course) that Apple is actually charging 30 cents for DRM removal from old songs.

Yes, you can burn the songs to a CD and import them back into iTunes, but the quality of the tracks will deteriorate. What’s important here is the fact that Apple is now basically admitting (remember that long anti-DRM note from Steve Jobs?) that DRM was a mistake, but they still want you to pay them for it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like paying for others’ mistakes.

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

YouTube on Your Tube through Apple TV
Apple Prepares To Standardize iTunes Prices Across Europe
First Class Action Lawsuit Against Apple and AT&T
Class Action Lawsuit Brought Against Apple for iPhone Bricking
Apple-Centric Social Network Net4Mac Releases iPhone App
1 Million iPhones. 74 Days.
How Apple Should Handle the App Store Blacklist

Topics: Mashable! | Comments Off

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town podcast

By Cory Doctorow | January 7, 2009

After a long hiatus, I'm back at my podcast, and to kick it off, I'm reading my 2005 novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, "A miraculous story of secrets, lies, magic and Internet connectivity." It's going to take a while -- this is a looong book -- and I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't re-read this book since it was published, and it's been enough time that it's like reading something someone else wrote, which is really cool and fun.

Here's the Publishers' Weekly summary:

"It's only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow's fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he's the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being'or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist's plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who's now resurrected and bent on revenge." MP3 Link, Podcast feed link

Topics: Boing Boing | Comments Off

Big Kitchen With Food: a five-year-old’s cooking show

By Cory Doctorow | January 7, 2009

Julian Kreusser is an adorable foodie five-year-old with his own cooking show, "The Big Kitchen With Food" on Portland cable access TV. He cooks others' recipes and his own ("Yummy Yummy Citrus Boy") and he's absolutely fabulous. BrooklynTwang sez, "his story is full of win - there is the coolness of a 5 year old boy who loves cooking, the refreshingness of a cooking show with an awkward host, and what appears to be some very cool free range parenting, encouraging the kids enthusiasm for something and letting him use food processors, stoves, etc. to follow his muse. I just watched an episode and it was rad. It even included a plug from Julian to buy your food locally because its better for you!"

Five-Year-Old Chef Gets His Own Show, (Thanks, BrooklynTwang

Topics: Boing Boing | Comments Off

“Citizen videos” spread online showing BART police officer shooting unarmed man to death

By Xeni Jardin | January 7, 2009

(Warning, explicit content: the video below shows a man being shot to death).


In the early hours of New Year's Day, 27-year-old BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed 22-year old Oscar Grant. A number of people who were riding the BART train that night witnessed the shooting, and shot video or photos on handheld cameras or phones. The victim's family today filed a lawsuit for $25 million. Five days after the shooting, the accused officer still has not given a statement. He is said to be have received death threats and authorities are apparently moving him from place to place to protect him from harm. Some people are speculating the shooting may have been an accident -- the officer may have grabbed his gun by mistake because he thought he was instead grabbing a Taser device. I have operated both devices, though certainly not in those extreme stress conditions, and I find that argument hard to understand. The weapons are so different. Snip from SF Chron article, to that point:

[Use-of-force training and research firm founder Bruce Siddle] said changes in how the brain processes information in a stressful situation might have led the officer to mistake the butt of his service weapon for the Taser. But other experts found the idea that the shooting resulted from such a mix-up hard to believe.

"That's as reflexive as you getting in on the driver's side of the car (instead of) the passenger side if you want to drive it," [Florida criminologist George] Kirkham said. "There's no remote similarity to a conventional firearm. ... The Taser is just like apples and oranges."

The fact that so many videos and images are surfacing in this case is significant, because each set of images provides a different view of the killing, with different visual information. Snip from that same SF Chron article:
Roy Bedard, who has trained police officers around the world, advanced a different theory after his first viewing of the video: that the shooting was a pure accident, a trigger pulled because of a loss of balance or a loud noise.

But in an indication of how the videos might move the investigation, Bedard reached a different conclusion after viewing the shooting from a different angle.

"Looking at it, I hate to say this, it looks like an execution to me," he said. "It really looks bad for the officer. ... We have to get inside his head and figure out what he was thinking when he fired the shot."

I first heard about the story from Jake Appelbaum's blog: BART Police (in Oakland) murdered a man on NYE. Here is one video (nsa.org). Here is another released by a Bay Area CBS affiliate -- first, we see the entire, raw footage a 19 year old eyewitness shot on her camcorder, then we hear her explain what she saw and experienced -- she says a female BART police officer tried to forcibly confiscate her camcorder.

Here is still another video (YouTube), and many YouTube users are annotating and re-uploading video to offer amateur opinions on what's going on, and who did what, why.



Topics: Boing Boing | Comments Off

CES: Loving the enemy

By Rob Beschizza | January 7, 2009

Topics: Boing Boing Gadgets, Gadgets | Comments Off


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