
I'm an Engineer for Facebook and am helping build a Facebook office in NYC. AMA - taylorbuley
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/we565/im_an_engineer_for_facebook_and_am_helping_build/
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vnorby
"i probably shouldn't talk for that team too much, but generally we think of
ads the same way we think of other communication on fb. if it's starbucks
talking to their fans it's not fundamentally different than me talking to my
friends. so we're not trying to shove ads on the side and pray people click on
them - we're trying to integrate them more with the other naturally social
stuff on the site. I think sponsored stories are going to be huge, for
instance"

Looks like some kool-aid over there about advertising. A brand advertising to
its customers is the same thing as someone talking to their friend? Since
when? They are not trying to shove ads on the side and pray people click on
them because they know people increasingly will ignore them. Instead, they've
opted for tricking you into clicking them by putting them in your feed with
your friends' avatars slapped on top.

~~~
freehunter
I do like following the updates of the businesses I "like" on Facebook. I
would be accepting of Facebook taking payment for businesses you "like" having
their latest postings at the top of your news feed. That's not disruptive to
the site, and they already know you like that company. I also wouldn't be
disappointed if Facebook took payment for businesses your friends "like"
putting their updates at the top of your page, as long as you can click the
dropdown and say "don't show me posts from $company" until you "like" them as
well.

Product placement isn't disruptive as long as it makes sense. I feel Facebook
should know enough about their users to make the call on if the user would
like to see that post. Notice I say "post", not "ad". I want to see companies
the way they are, not the way their ad firms want me to see them.

~~~
alttab
I love my friends, but I don't take purchasing cues from them, and certainly
not because they 'like' it on Facebook.

Sure, there are edge cases. But generally, 99.999% of the time I don't want
product updates from companies whose products I use.

~~~
suresk
Likes are a pretty useless signal, IMO. So many businesses offer contest
entries or coupons for "Liking" them, that many users (if most of my friends
on FB are any indication) have Liked tons of businesses they've never had any
interaction with.

This is part of the reason I think FB's advertising value is overrated - a
Like is so noisy that it is almost useless, whereas other entities may have
actual purchase data, which is far more useful than a "Like".

~~~
robryan
Not sure there is much better out there for pushing continuous engagement. I
want to keep people interested in my business, I don't want to overdo the
mailing list though, especially not for little things that work much better as
a small Facebook post.

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zalew
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/we565/im_an_engineer_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/we565/im_an_engineer_for_facebook_and_am_helping_build/c5cjvw9)

 _now that we've done that we can change the language (we've added a ton of
stuff like yield, type hints for primitives, new scoping rules, native HTML
elements as real classes etc.) and we're building our own VM and JIT for it.
so it's only php kind of.

[...]

b) generally php has only two scopes - function scope and global scope. you
can get into trouble with this since something that looks like it should be
out of scope is, surprise, still the same variable later. we made it have real
scope, like in most other languages_

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obilgic
For me, my neews feed is getting more and more noisy , less valuable and
diffuclt to consume.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I block all apps, have few likes, and have silenced my chatty aunties... not
too bad now.

~~~
dmix
You can silence people without unfriending them? TIL

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
You can also tell Facebook if you specifically want more or less updates from
specific friends, without completely unsubscribing from them. When hovering
over a story, a "down arrow bookmark thing" appears in the top-right of the
story, and gives you many options for controlling your experience with that
user/page/app.

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lucisferre
I imagine the episode of the Dilbert TV series where Dilbert had to design the
new office.

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gstar
His/her ARP anecdote actually sounds like an STP problem, rather than ARP.

~~~
skeletonjelly
Can you elaborate?

~~~
gstar
Sure, STP is described at:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanning_Tree_Protocol>

When an 802.1D capable bridge appears on a network with STP, the other bridges
will all drop their forwarding table and learn again from scratch.

Failure mode sounds spookily like the one described.

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pliny
I, for one, was surprised by the lack of PHP related vitriol.

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Zenst
Having read the article I have to conclude that his email address is broken as
"go ahead and email me at hiremeserkan@gmail.com and I'll go through it this
week"

Does not have @facebook.com anywere!!! Or is this a perk of working for
facebook?

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Our email addresses are actually @fb.com -- as for the rest of your comment,
wat?

~~~
Zenst
No that was the only part of my comment - I was asking as the mass conversion
of alot of peoples emails( _1) and contacts due to `bugs` to facebook.com(_ 2)
recently to all the facebook users.

This and given he is using a gmail account, how do we know he works for
facebook? So do people who work at facebook have a @fb.com email address only?
Why did he not use that email address?

References in case your oblivious to the user interaction aspect of facebook
transpiring recently.

( _1)<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18590929> (_2)
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18687044>

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Sorry, I didn't grasp that context from your comment.

Since employees are "normal" Facebook users like everyone else, we were also
subject to having vanity@facebook.com added to our profiles, and I for one
immediately replaced it with my personal email address, just like anyone else
can do.

By contrast, our @fb.com address is our "official" account that goes to a
standard email client, and has no relation to our actual Facebook profile.
Some of us (including me) still prefer to use our personal email address for
anything not directly related to work topics.

And for what it's worth, I can vouch for the authenticity of the FBSerkan
account on Reddit.

~~~
Zenst
Thank you for confirming that @fb.com is only for employee's and also for
vouching for the authenticity of FBSerkan. Good enough for me and thank you.

