
Yeah Ok, So Facebook Punk’d Us - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/yeah-ok-so-facebook-punkd-us/
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tsally
Gotta love tech company culture. :)

On an unrelated note, why request a comment from a company at all if you're
only going to wait 24 minutes for a response?

~~~
hristov
Oh its a basic journalistic trick. Each journalist wants to give the
impression that they see both sides of each story. But if they have a hot
story they really do not want to wait to hear the other side. So they request
a comment, wait an unreasonably short time, and then print the story saying
"we requested a comment from the other side but they did not provide a comment
by the deadline for this story".

~~~
marcusbooster
It used to be that there was a set deadline to respond because of a broadcast
time or a printing run. A responsible journalist would call for a comment and
if they weren't available they'd let them know when the story had to be done.

So here we are when the "journalists" are controlling the printing runs and in
this case they thought 24 minutes was a fair time for a response. I think this
speaks more about the level of journalism practiced at TechCrunch than
anything else, and this Facebook prank actually goes a long way to show that.

What kinda baffles me is that all those old deadlines were set by management,
the reporters always wanted more time to craft the story and get it right.
There were epic battles between reporters and editors over time versus
distribution. Now that there's instant publishing the reporters have the same
itchy trigger fingers. Just like the before everyone's afraid of being
"scooped".

~~~
rapind
That's a really good point. I'd argue though that web journalists running
their own site are also wearing the management hat and are more concerned with
the bottom line than the journalist of old who had that bottom line abstracted
form them through bureaucracy.

This is just as much a problem with the average consumer's attention span as
the content producer's race to print. If this is their policy on stories and
yet we still read them and comment on them, well then I guess we value the
quick fix even though we complain about it.

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netsp
From the comments:

Matt Harwood: _I call hoax. There is zero way Facebook would even consider
this, nor use that god awful over-sized icon._

Jason Kincaid: _It’s not a hoax, I’m seeing it when I browse photo albums.
Might now be rolled out for everyone yet._

~~~
jacquesm
We once pulled a stunt like this on a remote co-worker whose IP we figured
out. Eventually we did get to be on speaking terms again ;)

Maybe at TC they'll learn the value of cloaking and a pc that is not on the
'known corporate network' to fact check their scoops ? If not I expect there
will be a few more pranks like this.

They must be howling with laughter in the Twitter offices right now, and
plotting their own version, the subtle part here is the timing.

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sriramk
The part I love is that they made the feature work and actually faxed the
photo over. Lots of effort for a prank. Thats what makes the best pranks stand
out :)

~~~
netsp
That is slightly suspicious. Maybe somebody at facebook actually thought that
this was a good idea at some point and had developed it as a feature.

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snprbob86
More likely is that the fax was manual after clicking the link did this:

    
    
      send_email(to='prankster@facebook.com', subject='FAX Prank', body='Photo ID: %s\nUser ID: %s' % (photo.id, user.id))
    

But, you know... in PHP, not Python :-)

~~~
drusenko
with efax you can send a fax with an email, so really sending an email to a
person and having a fax sent is the same amount of work.

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Alex3917
I've heard of companies doing this to their competitors. It's a great trick...
Announce new lower prices that only your competitors can see, and then laugh
when they send out an email to all their customers informing them of the new
pricing structure. Or else announce a stupid new feature, and watch them waste
time trying to implement it on their site too.

~~~
snprbob86
That's funny. Is there a particular story to share? Do you have a link or
source?

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raganwald
Certainly. Microsoft announced that OS/2 was the future and watched as Lotus
and Wordperfect spent millions porting their apps to the new oS.

Then they cobbled Windows 3.x together and ported their own apps to that
instead of OS/2. (The wikiedia article
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#Breakup> makes no mention of the effect of
Windows 3.0 on Lotus and Wordperfect.)

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doty
This was not actual Microsoft strategy; until the Windows team destroyed OS/2
Microsoft had every intention of making OS/2 the future. Windows was really
just a project that refused to be killed until it won.

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alex_c
Amazing.

This is officially my favorite TechCrunch post.

The best part is that the feature actually worked. If a prank is worth
doing... it's worth doing well :)

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dbreunig
And Facebook makes $1.50 off TechCrunch. They should do this more often.

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alaskamiller
Good to know 24 minutes is all you need to verify.

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jmorin007
Aren't you supposed to be on a plane?

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alaskamiller
I'm multi-talented.

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jacquesm
If being in two places at once is merely being 'multi-talented' then I think
I'm going to have a little lie down now.

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ivankirigin
If I didn't already want to work at facebook, I would now.

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jimmybot
Is it me or does it seem that Facebook is working hard to generate a lot of
news/publicity these past few days? What are they looking to accomplish?

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helium
Just for a second imagine if this somehow went wrong and this 'feature' was
suddenly available to everyone. FB realises the mistake quickly and pulls it,
but there is a vocal outcry from all their users who just got into the whole
'Fax your profile pic' meme. Also, TC is first to pick this up in a blog post.

Yeah OK, this is probably highly unlikely, but it would sure have been funny.

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heycarsten
Absolutely awesome! Hubris bites back!

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mynameishere
Can somebody explain to me why this article was
written/posted/upmodded/commented upon/any of the above?

Serious question.

ED: So...you can't answer the question, but you can click the down arrow? I
always find that strange. I'm really puzzled as to why HN is lately polluted
by the 3rd-gen friendster copycat facebook, and this latest post just seems to
add that many more layers of derivation, all leading to...? I don't know.
What's the point?

Serious question, as I said, if that matters.

~~~
rms
This site likes humor that is actually funny. This is actually funny. It's
also a prank against Techcrunch, which this community loves to hate. Of course
the irony is that it is still pageviews to Techcrunch.

~~~
turtle4
Why do we love to hate Techcrunch? I missed the memo, apparently...fill me in.

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thaumaturgy
There are some positive aspects to Techcrunch: they generally do a good job of
keeping tabs on a vast field, and Crunchbase is an impressive and useful
effort.

But, their particular brand of "pretendo journalism" rubs a lot of people the
wrong way when they publish news without doing basic fact checking, and they
tend to publish a little too much gossip and rumor.

Take Business Week and mate it with the Enquirer, add some "web-2.0"ness, and
you've got TechCrunch. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do not love their
Enquirer bits.

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pavs
Yes, even facebook (along with most of the rest of the tech industry) thinks
techcrunch is such a joke that they don't mind pulling pranks on them.

Notice that there are bigger/better tech blogs/publications out there but
facebook choose only to prank them - that's how low they think of techcrunch.
And they should.

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drusenko
i would think it's exactly the opposite -- being individually signaled out and
pranked by facebook is more a sign of TechCrunch's importance...

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dc2k08
or a light-hearted way to ask them to stop posting information without first
fact-checking.

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jacquesm
That's how I read it. With a bit of a bite to it.

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swolchok
Great! Will TechCrunch halt its bid to rename HN "Facebook News" now?

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jacquesm
I thought the bid was to rename HN "TechCrunch News". There can't be the most
inane article on TC or it gets posted here.

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rapind
So... you're saying I won't be able to fax from facebook? Crap.

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PStamatiou
Damn this just made my night. Thank you Facebook.

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dunk010
Man, this is brilliant. A long time coming.

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JacobAldridge
Well, if a company with as much personal information as Facebook is going to
pay people to 1) Delve into specific individuals' profiles, 2) Read enough
information to make sure it's the right person, and then 3) Mess about with
their settings, at least they did it with a sense of humour.

Not so funny sequel - seeing "Zuckerberg told everyone in PR that you were
easy" appearing on each of his ex-girlfriends' profile pages.

~~~
smanek
It sounds like they did it by IP (or 'Facebook Network' membership), not
account.

 _But everyone in the TechCrunch network saw it_

I'm not sure if that means TechCrunch's offices' subnet, or the Facebook
network. But either way, no big invasion of privacy.

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jkincaid
Probably easier just to do it for everyone in the Facebook TechCrunch network,
though it's possible that they used IPs.

