

Facebook Starts Mandatory Profile Linkage to Public Pages - brlewis
http://blog.louisgray.com/2010/04/facebook-starts-mandatory-profile.html

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dolinsky
This title is completely misleading. There is nothing mandatory about
Facebook's prompts for you to link items in your profile to public pages. I
was able to click 'ask me later' and the prompt went away. Next time it shows
up I'll wind up looking into how to disable it from ever showing up again.

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louismg
If it's not mandatory, it's at least a strong push, and if you don't comply,
your profile could be made empty.

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starkfist
_if you don't comply, your profile could be made empty._

I just did it. It makes the profile mostly empty. If you don't comply, it will
delete your hometown, current city, employer, schools, and interests, It
leaves family connections, quotes and contact info.

However, fB keeps that stuff behind the scenes so you can re add it later...

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warfangle
If you haven't seen the prompt yet, had a lot of stuff on your profile, and
want a majority of it deleted: facebook doesn't provide an "uncheck all"
button.

When I saw it, it was in its own window, not a modal - so I don't know if this
will work or not. Feel free to try. But this'll uncheck all of them for you so
you can selectively choose which ones to make public (instead of which ones to
delete):

javascript:(function(){var c = document.getElementsByTagName("input"); for(var
i = 0; i < c.length; i++) { if(c[i].checked) { c[i].checked = false; } } })();

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city41
They do provide an uncheck all button. Check the "check all" checkbox, then
uncheck it. That checkbox drives all the others.

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warfangle
Urgh. What a weird paradigm.

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rgrieselhuber
I'm guessing that a large part of this is about SEO.

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tokenadult
Rather, it's about data-mining for advertisers.

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madmaze
hmm certainly.. thats def the idea behind it

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Shorel
They still try to increase PageRank while they already have more visits than
Google.

In other words: they don't rest on their laurels.

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noelchurchill
Does anyone know how to get my facebook page for the Happy Hour Finder to be
the default for people who like happy hours?

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jasonlbaptiste
this is annoying. they make it mandatory and the only way to get out of it is
to reload the page and hope it doesnt show up again. a) i dont really want to
do this b) if i ever do, i just dont have the patience to pick+choose that im
linking the right stuff.

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dolinsky
What about the experience gives you the impression it is 'mandatory'? It's a
great example of opt-in. Granted, there is no 'don't ever show me this box
again' checkbox, but if Facebook would have taken this approach with their
Open Graph initiative they wouldn't be having the same level of criticism laid
into them by privacy groups, congress, their users, etc.

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devicenull
Try editing your profile if you don't think it's mandatory.

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madmaze
im a firm believer in avoiding to provid any content on your profile that may
be easy to datamine, therefore no comma separated interests. i usually just
ask people to ask me if they really wanna know.

