The beginning of the end of Facebook?

[GreyGeek]

https://www.facebook.com/limitedpres...09534972507958

...we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site...
...

So we did what any good developers would do. We built our own analytic software. Here's what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn't on.
...
We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply. Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes. But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable.
...

[HalationEffect]

The really damning bit is the paragraph immediately after the bit you quoted, IMO.

There's some mild profanity, so I won't quote it here in the interest of keeping this forum family friendly.

[whatthefunk]

This is starting to make the press to. From the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/business/tech...,1602559.story

I wonder if other companies will find similar problems. If 80% of ad clicks are from bots, that means that the value of facebook derived from ad revenue is only 20% of what they say it is. I hope nobody here threw their life savings into facebook stock.

[eggbert]

One can only hope so. My hatred of facebook burns brighter than a 1000 suns. It's all that's wrong with the world. It's like a giant echo chamber for the dregs of humanity. Their site is a convoluted nightmare, and their APIs are a collection of bizare and disgusting kludges. My god what a mess... But I digress...

I don't see why these guys are so surprised that bots are crawling facebook and following ads. This happens all the time, and its not like its any big secret. That facebook can't distinguish between an actual click and a bot, however, does not surprise me one bit. If their ad service is anything like their so-called "developer api" , it's quite probably a total cluster#$@$.

I have a feeling at the heart of facebook lies a big ball of the original PHP (lol) spegetti code written by mark zuckerberg himself.

[woodsmoke]

One can only hope so. My hatred of facebook burns brighter than a 1000 suns.

Mine burns not quite that bright but almost. That stupid site almost cost me the friendship of a person whom I hold in great esteem.

The absolute only interaction I have with it is because my former students use it and clamored for me to use it, and even at that I have kept my interaction at a minimum.

There was once another distro that tried, in vain, to develop a Linux Facebook, but, mainly due to lack of humanpower and that the software wasn't quite up to speed, it never took off. But the folks involved gave it a heroic try.

if Facebook was gone tomorrow morning it would not bother me one whit.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

I have a feeling at the heart of facebook lies a big ball of the original PHP (lol) spegetti code written by mark zuckerberg himself.

Nah, it's probably BASIC:

10  suck=1
20  suck=suck+1
30  goto 20

[woodsmoke]

Lol
I was trying to remember how to write a for-next loop that would increase the pile of cash to include that but it's been waaaay to long! lol

woodsmoke

[DarthMedicus]

I walked away from Facebook (deactivated my account) in October of last year. I have never felt so good about something in quite some time. I communicate better through Twitter (when I bother to check it out) or Google+ (the Hangouts make it worth it). When the IPO dropped, my wife texted me that the stock was falling and joked that we should jump in when it hits rock bottom. I replied that buying FB stock was grounds for a divorce. My hatred for that cesspool burns as brightly as eggbert's, as people I happened to be very good friends with sunk to the lows of flame wars and the like (admittedly, even I got dragged under a few times).

But, again, no FB for me. I tell my students and anyone who wants to keep in touch with me to either email me, or get up on G+.

-DM

[sealbhach]

I really dislike Facebook BUT have used it a lot to follow events in other countries, particularly recent events in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and other places. You get into contact with people and get some very different and interesting perspectives. Facebook is the global brand for this kind of grassroots communication so we're stuck with it at least for a few years more. So what I'm saying really is that the idea of social networking need not be bad, it's just that Facebook as a company really are horrible.