Treat your facebook friendships like a marketer
January 12, 2013 11:33 AM   Subscribe

Facebook Friend Analyzer A new, fun way to be creepy [SLYT]
posted by UsernameGenerator (30 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
That woman's married female friends with daughters are named Hnpxy Mayvfgdr, Vhpk Khdjgh, and Xamane Lart.





I hadn't realized Vhpk was a woman's name.
posted by languagehat at 11:48 AM on January 12, 2013 [5 favorites]


I have no idea why anyone puts their actual personal info into Facebook (I use a fake name, a fake birthday, and a fake hometown - FB can obviously see my IP address - plus a fake high school, fake this, fake that).

The worrying thing is Facebook can track where I go on the web, so I just create a Chrome profile just for Facebook.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:01 PM on January 12, 2013


That woman's married female friends with daughters are named Hnpxy Mayvfgdr, Vhpk Khdjgh, and Xamane Lart.

Do you know of the family that started Five Ultimate? The youngest sister's name is Qxhna. Pronounced CHEE-na. (Know this only because I have friends who know them.)

Maybe they have cousins.
posted by phunniemee at 12:25 PM on January 12, 2013


Is Facebook still a thing anymore? Most of the time it seems that it serves as a platform to debate gun control, or exchange stupid Morgan Freeman memes. The social networking aspect of it - sharing photos, planning events - seems to be taking a back seat to arguing with Internet strangers.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:26 PM on January 12, 2013


Only married people with kids that like Lady Gaga? Folk who live in sin are OUT?!

I bet Lady Gaga wouldn't like this video.
posted by taff at 12:29 PM on January 12, 2013


I use steganography to hide personal data from Facebook. For every true piece of information I enter, I also include two other pieces of outlandish misinformation.

LIKES: Tom Waits, Wing Han Tsang, Justin Bieber, Baking Bread, Rockford Fosgate, BMX Bikes, Preventive Medicine, Keystone Light, Maury
posted by The White Hat at 12:31 PM on January 12, 2013 [8 favorites]


I also found Wolfram has joined in on the fun. I admit I tried it and was horrified at the word cloud of my posts.
posted by UsernameGenerator at 12:35 PM on January 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


But if this only works on people you've friended, it's no help at all in deciding who to spend $100 to be able to bypass their spamfilter.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:41 PM on January 12, 2013


I use a fake name, a fake birthday, and a fake hometown - FB can obviously see my IP address - plus a fake high school, fake this, fake that

Isn't the stated (by users) purpose of Facebook to connect with friends, family and classmates? I can't think what you'd even use FB for with everything faked. Obsessive gaming platform?
posted by DU at 12:50 PM on January 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


Facebook is a great way to lose friends over political differences you didn't know you had.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:53 PM on January 12, 2013 [24 favorites]


Isn't the stated (by users) purpose of Facebook to connect with friends, family and classmates? I can't think what you'd even use FB for with everything faked. Obsessive gaming platform?

I do use Facebook to stay in contact with family and friends (many of whom are spread all over the globe), plus people I know from my field of work (Japanese-English translators, copywriters). I use a fake name to my FB account from showing up in Google Search results, and I usually have to explain to my FB "friends" why I do this. But you don't have to enter any school info if you don't want to, and you can also enter a fake birthday.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:53 PM on January 12, 2013


What's the narrator's accent? My brain kept on hooking onto it as "completely familiar, but not the usual for tech demos," with different enunciation and elision and vowel sounds than the neutral American norm.
posted by zippy at 1:04 PM on January 12, 2013


I was thinking about trying it just for fun, but the "status and sentiment" analysis seems like it crosses a boundary. Having it done by someone who knows you seems more wrong than if it just being mined by megacorp.
posted by cgk at 1:07 PM on January 12, 2013


What's the narrator's accent? My brain kept on hooking onto it as "completely familiar, but not the usual for tech demos," with different enunciation and elision and vowel sounds than the neutral American norm.

I know, right? I love it! I think, based on an "oop" for up and "shoe" for show, which are similar to sounds I've only otherwise heard on The Wire, that it might be Baltimore?
posted by Sys Rq at 1:10 PM on January 12, 2013


This recording is the same person speaking. It contains 60 Hz hum, so the narrator probably recorded in in North America. Her accent is therefore American. Suck on that, forensic scientists.
posted by UsernameGenerator at 1:23 PM on January 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


Rockford Fosgate, BMX Bikes, Keystone Light, Maury

I want to hang out with the outlandish steganographic version of you.
posted by scose at 1:28 PM on January 12, 2013


I have no idea why anyone puts their actual personal info into Facebook
posted by KokuRyu at 8:01 PM on January 12


Because we're not paranoid?
posted by Decani at 1:52 PM on January 12, 2013 [6 favorites]


If you need data mining software for a girl's night out there is something
seriously wrong with you.
posted by benzenedream at 1:56 PM on January 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


Is Facebook still a thing anymore? Most of the time it seems that it serves as a platform to debate gun control, or exchange stupid Morgan Freeman memes. The social networking aspect of it - sharing photos, planning events - seems to be taking a back seat to arguing with Internet strangers.

Just unsubscribe from poitical nuts. It's still amazingly handy for social networking. I've been sorta seeing somebody who I met years ago, Facebook friended, and then forgot about. She left a comment on a status of mine and then showed up at an event I did a mass invite to.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 2:08 PM on January 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


I just unsubcribed from status updates from an online friend who has clearly gone around the bend.

He was a die-hard Obama supporter leading up to the election, posting all sorts of links to anti-Republican rants, which is tolerable, I suppose, although I was really happy when the election was over. He started posting more updates about his family, or places he went hiking, that sort of thing - although he did indicate that his wife was thinking about divorce, which sucked.

Then the Newtown horror happened, which was very bad, but when Obama and the Democrats started talking about gun control, this friend of mine lost it - he's a fervent 2nd Amendment supporter (if you happen to think that the 2nd Amendment involves average suburbanites being armed to the teeth), and it was kind of sad to see him start to call for Obama's impeachment after months and months of posts that were totally and absolutely pro-Dem; Obama could do no wrong.

And now he has started posting crude memes that feature images from the Holocaust, the message being that an armed populace is the best protection against tyranny. If only those 6 million Jewish people had been armed...

So, I've unsubscribed from him. It sounds stupid, but I think it really is possible to form meaningful connections with online friends. MetaFilter is a case in point.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:25 PM on January 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


I have no idea why anyone puts their actual personal info into Facebook
posted by KokuRyu at 8:01 PM on January 12

Because we're not paranoid?


Well yes, given that Facebook is basically a gigantic, monetizing stalker.
posted by mattoxic at 3:06 PM on January 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


What's the narrator's accent?

I think I might know the person who did the voiceover, in part because she did the voiceover for a video I created several years ago. If it's the woman I know, she's a black woman from Mississippi.
posted by Houstonian at 3:26 PM on January 12, 2013


But there is a plugin for Chrome that prevents it from tracking you. Do you have any other reasons why you're better than the rest of us? Because this one flamed out fast. No TV, perhaps? It's a tried and true favorite.
posted by Brocktoon at 4:08 PM on January 12, 2013


Because we're not paranoid?

Isn't that a word usually reserved for the delusional?
posted by DU at 4:33 PM on January 12, 2013


This recording is the same person speaking. yt It contains 60 Hz hum, so the narrator probably recorded in in North America. Her accent is therefore American. Suck on that, forensic scientists.

If that's the case, why does her Facebook page data on screen suggest she's in the UK, and when she refers to married women with children who might like to see Lady Gaga (assuming their children do), they all seem to be clustered in SE England, probably the greater London area.

I find the data used in this video suspect. Plus all the names appear fake.

I think I might know the person who did the voiceover, in part because she did the voiceover for a video I created several years ago. If it's the woman I know, she's a black woman from Mississippi.

I'm pretty sure the narrator isn't a professional voiceover person. There's a few ticks in there.
This did sound to me like it was done on a cheaper webcam.
posted by Mezentian at 5:26 PM on January 12, 2013


I have now whittled it down to one remaining friend (a mother of 3 boys under age 10, two of whom are under 3) who keeps asking me to come back to FB as its easier for her to share pics and updates than to keep up our decade old email (remember pen pals? that's how we met) correspondence. I can understand that. But... FB!!

Finally I sent her a link to the last big privacy hoo haa - oh yeah, inboxes - and said I don't want FB anywhere near my browser. As a former representative to iCann for the UK, I hope she's finally got it. Need to find another low impact way to stay in touch with her.
posted by infini at 6:35 PM on January 12, 2013


At last, I can construct statistical models to maximize how much my friends like me! Ooh, and I could analyse information about my friends and make even more statistical models about how to persuade them to buy more shit. Maybe I could track the position of their phone every time they use it to sign into facebook, determine what stores are nearby and display their ads; or refine it to just those nearby stores selling goods they've bought at that time of day, that location, that day of the week, after which friends they'd last spoken to and about what, etc. Whichever heuristics gets my friends to spend!
posted by eurypteris at 7:42 PM on January 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


That woman's married female friends with daughters are named Hnpxy Mayvfgdr, Vhpk Khdjgh, and Xamane Lart.

I have a bunch of friends whose teenagers have Facebook pages using false names and ridiculously false familial relationships. They all know each other so they don't need to use their real names to do Facebook things with each other.
posted by straight at 8:46 AM on January 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


I have a bunch of friends whose teenagers have Facebook pages using false names and ridiculously false familial relationships. They all know each other so they don't need to use their real names to do Facebook things with each other.


Yeah, this was very workable in the Screenname Era, when kids learned terrible HTML to tinker with their web pages and AIM profiles.

Then they went to college, and being hard to search for was more difficult than it was worth, I mean, what were they going to do, print up business cards? (And no one learns HTML anymore, sad to say.)

Helpless single girls will still be married to each other.
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 1:16 PM on January 13, 2013


Is Facebook still a thing anymore? Most of the time it seems that it serves as a platform to debate gun control, or exchange stupid Morgan Freeman memes. The social networking aspect of it - sharing photos, planning events - seems to be taking a back seat to arguing with Internet strangers.

You know how people talk about that September (Black September? Eternal September?) when the Great Unwashed joined the internet and started making webpages and generally lowering the tone? The people who signed on then now look down on Facebook. I'm just old-school enough that I find it weird to be communicating on sites with my real name instead of an avatar or handle, and the people most active on Facebook in my experience are older relatives and former classmates who never really used the internet until wi-fi and smartphones made it more accessible to people, started out using FriendsReunited, then moved to Facebook when that became the new big way to 'stay in touch with people'.

If Facebook was around in 1998 instead of Bolt.com, I'd still be on there as Tixylix Cornucopia from Uzbekistan.
posted by mippy at 1:29 PM on January 14, 2013


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