

Facebook is showing a real time like count on Mark Zuckerberg's status updates - schlichtm
http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/999900229761

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ahupp
This has worked for a while, it's just much more apparent on his posts:

<https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=496077348919>

~~~
schlichtm
ahupp - That is referencing the real time comments (where comments are pushed
to you without reloading the page).

This is different. Facebook is showing the actual like count change in real
time. This is fantastic feedback for big brands.

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aristus
You might want to check the credits at the end of the post ahupp linked to. :)

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staunch
Wolfram Alpha shows 9993 days.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+14%2C+1984+to+today...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+14%2C+1984+to+today+in+days)

~~~
baddox
Python 2.7 shows 10,000 days.

    
    
        >>> datetime(2011, 9, 30) - datetime(1984, 5, 14)
        datetime.timedelta(10000)

~~~
baddox
Also, Ruby 1.9.2 shows 10,000 days.

    
    
        irb(main):017:0> (Time.utc(2011, 9, 30) - Time.utc(1984, 5, 14)) / 60 / 60 / 24
        => 10000.0

~~~
benatkin
So does PHP!

    
    
        echo date_diff(date_create('1984-05-14'), date_create('2011-09-30'))->format('%a days');
        => 10000 days
    

Is this silly yet? ;)

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kalleboo
The like updates are timed improperly and the number keeps going down and then
up and then down. I got a lot of shit at work for a similar bug on a JS
ticker, I'm glad I'm not the only one!

~~~
nicholasreed
Could this be because some people (at 120,000 now) are unliking and dropping
the count for a moment?

~~~
dreamux
More likely a propagation/aggregation issue.

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guelo
Doing a little network sniffing this seems incredibly inefficient. Apparently
the page is polling the server up to 8 times per second and getting back a
7-800 byte chunk of Javascript. The infrastructure to support this at
Facebook's scale is mind boggling. This is the kind of stuff that Websockets
was invented for.

~~~
kwamenum86
web sockets or, in most browsers, long polling. long polling is easy to
implement and they must already have the infrastructure built out since they
have chat...silly Facebook.

[edit] just took a closer look at the network activity. this really is the
worst way to implement this feature. polling several times a second, sending
back a bloated response, and updating much more of the DOM than necessary.
this is just terribly hacky. probably done very quickly at the last minute
though.

~~~
wgx
Zuck maybe wrote it himself for fun?

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pork
Stop kidding yourself.

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wgx
Amused that my comment was down-voted when It's widely known that Mark would
work 'hands on' on the codebase [1] as recently as last year.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/apparently-mark-
zuckerberg-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/apparently-mark-zuckerberg-
still-writes-code/)

~~~
datasink
<http://kottke.org/11/09/zucks-gonna-write-code>

This excerpted anecdote indicates it was mainly a leadership gesture to rally
the troops. Still pretty cool that he'd bother, though.

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DiabloD3
I don't have a Facebook account, does it only work for logged in people?

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chunkyslink
Probably, I don't click anything with Facebook in the URL.

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rehashed
It has done the exact same thing for my friends posts for a looooong time.
This isn;t specific to his account, its just more prominent because there are
more people "liking" it.

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cellis
If they keep adding people at the rate they are, in 10 years they'll have
wired together the entire human race. I'm not sure if I should be scared or
thrilled or skeptical.

~~~
hack_edu
But they won't and can't. These sorts of hyperbole are getting really old.

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plainOldText
On my client if js is disabled then yes the count is "real time" otherwise
nothing happens.

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william42
Seems buggy to me; it doesn't register my like and unlike very well.

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zem
cute little easter egg

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NHQ
way to toast yrself zuck

