Facebook's 'Graph Search'
A nice little thing called 'Graph Search' is one of Facebook's many old (released January 15, 2013 but for most people new) updates. The company keeps record of most everyone's information, from where you were on vacation back in 2010 to which events you'll be going to or possibly going to in the future. Very handy for memories and such of course, but almost too much information for one company to have their hands on, don't you think?
Anyhow, bit by bit Facebook is exposing new ways to use all that information, claiming it to be handy, which in most cases, we indeed believe it is. In this update your typical 'old school' blue facebook search bar with notification icons on the left, has been switched around; meaning they put the notification icons on the right side, and went back to the simple, more elegant basics as far as button design goes and 'facebook' reduced to merely the logo in white... (as seen below)
What this wide search bar update actually allows you to do, is look for more, and search more specifically. You can find mutual connection information through (page) likes, check-ins, tags, listened music, played games on facebook, opposed to just mutual friend possibilities. Almost ALL the information you have ever put out in the gesture of liking or any Facebook activity, is now intertwined in one search machine.
Anyhow, bit by bit Facebook is exposing new ways to use all that information, claiming it to be handy, which in most cases, we indeed believe it is. In this update your typical 'old school' blue facebook search bar with notification icons on the left, has been switched around; meaning they put the notification icons on the right side, and went back to the simple, more elegant basics as far as button design goes and 'facebook' reduced to merely the logo in white... (as seen below)
What this wide search bar update actually allows you to do, is look for more, and search more specifically. You can find mutual connection information through (page) likes, check-ins, tags, listened music, played games on facebook, opposed to just mutual friend possibilities. Almost ALL the information you have ever put out in the gesture of liking or any Facebook activity, is now intertwined in one search machine.
Graph Search maps out people who have similar interests in likes; for example I'm wondering if any of my friends follow an inspirational artist to me: 'Propaganda'. So I typed in the search bar: 'My friends who follow Propaganda'. And as it turns out, I have one friend who does, and multiple other mutual friends who do. As you can see on the image to the right, you can than also further refine the search with information about their Gender, Relationship, Employer, Current City, Hometown, School, (your) Friendship (with them), specific Name or maybe a different person you're Following. |
Even further down below that there is the possibility to extend the search by viewing; Photos of these people, Their friends, Their workplaces, Their study places, Music they’ve listened to, Videos of them, Their visited landmarks, Languages they speak, Places they’ve lived, Places they’re from, Activities they like, Their groups and even further into the search results are photos of the people who follow that same first person. The list goes on and on, you could be entertaining yourself with useless information for days. It’s like facebook doesn’t know what else to do with their extensive amounts of user information but boast about everything they know about your ‘real life’ friends. It's all aimed at trying to make you more open and connected to friends you never knew were a fan of certain music, or who have been to your hometown.
But no, we're not done quite yet; in Facebook's product/engineering director's further introduction to Graph Search, they explain that with more than a trillion different possible connections out there, facebook has now become a way of making more 'new' connections, opposed to the past where the majority was actually doing the same (huh, say what? see link). In other words... it's all about getting us addicted to putting all our interests out in the digital world, in order to gain more and more 'friends' that we can get to know digitally. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned elsewhere that it was never intended for Graph Search to become like Google, where possibly relevant results appear, opposed to relevant results based on specific searches. Rather interesting to note, is that the company chose for the web search engine 'Bing' to provide for the 'leftover' web searches.
I think, that sometime in the near future all these information providers will merge together, maybe even with your thoughts, so the second you doubt or have a question the answer pops up. For now, you will just be led in that direction by knowing which of your friends also have your activities in common, by grouping pictures from before high school and by categorizing our life's activity through (hash)tags, statuses and check-ins. ...Which also is possible now since September 30th for a limited few. Handy to note is that Graph Search is still only available for Facebook users in English. Getting all the bugs and grammatical problems figured out for both Spanish and Swahili along side would just be a nightmare... Facebook is like an almanac for the people's behavior, a digital database recording the course of life I'm naming the Antropedia. | |
'Gramozo'
Have you ever committed the deadly sin of craving for more attention, respect and tolerance in the digital shape? Well, for our attention seekers or desperate businesses with too much money on their hands and too little followers on Instagram, there's Gramozo. "The cheapest and most reliable place to buy Instagram followers". When I first read this I was wondering, how could these actually be REAL people, and not just digits? Attention: if you're interested, I later tried out the trial version and found out these followers are indeed fake/not active people (scroll down for more info).
You now have been passed down the secret knowledge of a provider of Instagram followers, likes, comments or even as far as things called subscriptions. If you pay a one-time fee of say $10,00 for 1000 followers, they'll analyze your profile and spread the word of your profile around, basically create propaganda for you, until you get that amount of followers added.
You now have been passed down the secret knowledge of a provider of Instagram followers, likes, comments or even as far as things called subscriptions. If you pay a one-time fee of say $10,00 for 1000 followers, they'll analyze your profile and spread the word of your profile around, basically create propaganda for you, until you get that amount of followers added.
I actually was wondering what the difference was between subscriptions, instant followers and likes so I sent them an e-mail at 11:17 this morning, and surprisingly got a response at 12:56 pm! The CEO of Gramazo responded very long and kind saying that the subscription was for likes, meaning they'll charge you a weekly (cheaper) fee for smaller amounts of likes. The most recently uploaded file will be delivered the likes due automatically. So if you're planning on uploading another picture/video next week that you want extra likes for, there will be another amount of likes available. |
Yes, apparently money can buy you popularity! Here's a quote from one of their testimonies:
"My account got 15,000 followers in the first 24 hours! I am now proud to say that I’m the most popular girl in my whole school! Pretty cool effect if you think about it."
Whether it's ethically 'fair' within the realms of Instagram to use this type of 'cheatcode' is more of a personal dilemma that needs to be dealt with. It's like winning a competition or getting a 10/A+/20 on your test; if you cheated to get there, how do you then look at yourself afterwards? Opposed to having EARNED those rewards.
So yes, I do think it's unfair that my personal feed which I put a decent amount of effort into, doesn't get more attention compared to a random girl who gets thousands of followers for flashing cleavage pictures the whole time. But that is an issue in the hands of our own decisiveness. You might even say that whatever Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts get the most positive attention, (which therefore are the trendsetters,) are like reference points for where our culture is at; what we're interested in. And every time something is discovered and tolerated massively, say it was my website's thoughts, that would become another level of where our culture is at.
But enough of that, if you manage to be sent this link (as I was, and as I am doing), or find the need to become popular from Googling 'how to get free followers', then go ahead. As soon as I've finished this post I'll share it in an attempt at seeing if the 'free 10 followers!' trial actually works. I'll further edit this post as soon as I find out...
And boy did I sure find out what Gramozo's about! - it actually works! BUT... the 10+ fake accounts that are now to be found on my profile are non-active, fake or whatever you want to call it, as seen in the picture on the right. Those are actually picture captions from each of their profiles, nothing but the same each time.
You may notice, the time I took the screenshot at V (15:10), I received all those followers at 14:20. I shared the links to this blogpost at 14:17 on my facebook page, meaning it was indeed a 3-5 minute 'delivery time'.
So the sad part is that they're fake. So if you don't want to pay for ghost-followers... DON'T BUY IT!
"My account got 15,000 followers in the first 24 hours! I am now proud to say that I’m the most popular girl in my whole school! Pretty cool effect if you think about it."
Whether it's ethically 'fair' within the realms of Instagram to use this type of 'cheatcode' is more of a personal dilemma that needs to be dealt with. It's like winning a competition or getting a 10/A+/20 on your test; if you cheated to get there, how do you then look at yourself afterwards? Opposed to having EARNED those rewards.
So yes, I do think it's unfair that my personal feed which I put a decent amount of effort into, doesn't get more attention compared to a random girl who gets thousands of followers for flashing cleavage pictures the whole time. But that is an issue in the hands of our own decisiveness. You might even say that whatever Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts get the most positive attention, (which therefore are the trendsetters,) are like reference points for where our culture is at; what we're interested in. And every time something is discovered and tolerated massively, say it was my website's thoughts, that would become another level of where our culture is at.
But enough of that, if you manage to be sent this link (as I was, and as I am doing), or find the need to become popular from Googling 'how to get free followers', then go ahead. As soon as I've finished this post I'll share it in an attempt at seeing if the 'free 10 followers!' trial actually works. I'll further edit this post as soon as I find out...
And boy did I sure find out what Gramozo's about! - it actually works! BUT... the 10+ fake accounts that are now to be found on my profile are non-active, fake or whatever you want to call it, as seen in the picture on the right. Those are actually picture captions from each of their profiles, nothing but the same each time.
You may notice, the time I took the screenshot at V (15:10), I received all those followers at 14:20. I shared the links to this blogpost at 14:17 on my facebook page, meaning it was indeed a 3-5 minute 'delivery time'.
So the sad part is that they're fake. So if you don't want to pay for ghost-followers... DON'T BUY IT!