Do Want a fake Facebook girlfriend? Read this..!!!

There's nothing worse on Facebook than appearing to be unloved. So a Brazilian site offers to create a perfect, but entirely fake, girlfriend for you.

 

   Some people are just unlovable. Or they seem to attract lovers who are one leg short of a stable table and cause them such misery that they have to consign them to history.
This would have been fine in olden times. They would have gone to a bar with a book, and drunk themselves quite silly.
But now there's Facebook, the all-encompassing, always-on repository of everything that is happening to everyone.
So being a singleton doesn't look good. It makes you look like the spare part that no one desires.
Thankfully, a group of very caring Brazilians has decided to come to the rescue of all of those who currently appear denuded of love on Facebook. They will create a fake Facebook girlfriend for you.
NamoroFake.com says, in Portuguese, that it can create a lissom lover in the blink of an eye and the passing of $39.99. Yes, around the price of two lapdances.
Please don't think that they just slap up a picture and take your money. Oh, no. They create a whole fake Facebook profile, so authentic that it's adorned with cute comments and status updates like: "Oh, cutey, Ren and Stimpy miss you and so do I."
You might wonder where these fake girlfriends are coming from. Well, ABC News lovingly informs me that the site invites women to offer their profiles up for virtual grabbing, with the incentive of a 50 percent profit share.
This seems eminently equitable.
Moreover, the site understands the psychology of men. It explains:

Sometimes people need to rent a fake girlfriend to make jealous a jealous ex-girlfriend. In truth, we have a lot of clients for that reason. After a breakup, the ex-boyfriends want to show that they are already with another person to feel good. One immediate way to do this is to hire a fake girlfriend to maintain appearances.

Appearances are, often, more important in relationships than, say, reality. Surely you, too, have enjoyed lovers for whom the approval of family, friends, and pastor were more important than the heightened quality of your actual love.
I feel sure that the creation of this site has absolutely nothing to do with any events that may or may not have occurred in the life of one Manti T'eo, amateur football player (and, perhaps, amateur lover too).
Still, the creators have tried to think of several amorous eventualities. They even offer a $19.99 service that creates a very fine ex-girlfriend for you. This might well be useful if you're trying to persuade your next amorous target that you're not the entirely lonely, pitiful creature that you actually are.
Naturally, there will come a point where your Facebook friends will be desperate to see a picture of the two of you together.
Presumably that is the time when you explain that she wasn't quite right for you because she had the empathetic level of a mailbox and the intuitive breadth of a bicycle tire.
And that's the point at which you transfer her to the status of ex-girlfriend and pay another $39.99 for another new fake girlfriend.
This way, you'll never have to pay for dinner for two again.
It's sad, though, that the service seems to be only available for men.
I have several women friends who would dearly love to have a fake Facebook boyfriend in order to ease their burden as they climb the corporate ladder in search of untold riches and boundless unhappiness.

Facebook's New Graph Search

The search engine will allow people using Facebook to more quickly find answers to questions about friends in their Social Graph.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

(Credit: CNET)

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Graph Search at a press event today at the company's Menlo Park headquarters, billing it as a new way find people, photos, places and interests that are most relevant to Facebook users.
Graph Search is the social network's newest way for users to make sense of its massive base of 1 billion users, 240 billion photos, and 1 trillion connections. The tool is meant to provide people the answers to their to their questions about people, photos, places, and interests. Zuckerberg said Graph Search is launching to a small number of people today and is available only on the desktop and in English for the time being.
People can use the structured search tool to resurface old memories, find people in their network, and uncover potential connections. The service incorporates various filters such as "place type," "liked by," and "visited by friends" to make locating things faster. You can refine search queries with more advance filters to get better answers.
One example demonstrated was a very specific search for "Friends of my friends who are single male San Francisco, Calif." That refined query returned a select group of people who fit the criteria. Apart from personal use cases, Graph Search can be used for dating and recruiting purposes, which could make the product a potential challenger to LinkedIn and various dating sites that incorporate social network profiles.
But the personal use cases do abound. A query for "photos of my friends before 1990," for instance, popped up a number of cute kid photos, including a shot of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg from 1972.

(Credit: CNET)

  Graph Search is going to appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page, replacing the usual white search bar. Facebook said that when people search the service, that search both determines the set of results you get and serves as a title for the page. "You can edit the title -- and in doing so create your own custom view of the content you and your friends have shared on Facebook," according to Facebook.

Graph Search

(Credit: Facebook)

Zuckerberg noted that Graph Search and Web search are very different. The latter was engineered to take a set of keywords -- Facebook's example was "hip hop" -- to come up with possible results that best match the keywords. By contrast, Graph Search combines phrases. The other obvious difference is that each piece of Facebook content has its own audience, and for the most part that content is not public. Alluding to the obvious privacy concerns, Zuckerberg said that Facebook built Graph Search from the start with that in mind, and it would respect the privacy and audience of each piece of content on Facebook. Traditional Web search, though not the focus of Graph Search by any means, is still incorporated into the beta product. Facebook has partnered with Bing to automatically supply answers to queries that the new Facebook engine can't compute.

Facebook introduces Graph Search (pictures)

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On the business side of things, Facebook does not intend to immediately monetize this new asset. But that's certainly on the agenda.
"This potentially could be a business over time. For now, we are focused on building user experience," Zuckerberg said. "We have had sponsored search results for a while. ... That extends quite nicely to this, but we haven't done anything new for this release."
Graph Search is being rolled out today in limited preview.
Last week, the social network sent out a media invitation to "Come and see what we're building," fueling speculation that it would finally unveil a Facebook-branded phone. Wall Street's expectations have been equally high with the company's stock trading above $31 a share, a price point it hasn't seen since its May 2011 Nasdaq debut.
But the phone rumor proved to be bogus and Wall Street's immediate reaction was to sell. After reaching a high of $31.71, Facebook's shares reversed course and fell as low as $30.20 during the course of Zuckerberg's presentation.

Mark Zuckerberg watches fellow Facebookers demonstrate Graph Search.

(Credit: CNET)

   Perhaps even more important than direct monetization is Facebook's ability to keep members engaged on the site. Graph Search, according to Forrester analyst Nate Elliott, has the potential to do just that: "Facebook's worst nightmare is a static social graph; if users aren't adding very many new friends or connections, then their personal network becomes less and less active over time," he said. " Terrifyingly for Facebook, that threat is very real: We haven't seen significant growth in the average number of friends per user recently. Graph search seems designed to encourage users to add more friends more quickly. If it means users' personal networks change more frequently, and become more active, then that keeps them coming back to the site -- which is vital to Facebook's success."

Facebook search to be launched at 15 January event

     Facebook is to launch its own search engine,  With its rival now steadily gaining traction in the social networking space with Google+, Facebook is to retaliate in the other direction. And we understand that it is this the company will announce at its 15 January press event.
Although exact details of how the new search engine will work remain unclear for now, we have been told that the social network is planning to launch a big new "search feature" on the site "very soon", one that will shake everything up.
   Sources who don't wish to be named have confirmed to Pocket-lint that the big announcement at the company's event will focus on the new search feature with an expected roll-out shortly afterwards. Although the information is light on detail, the source is trusted and has given us legitimate information before.
Facebook already offers a basic search feature on its site, allowing users to look for "people, places and things". The 15 January announcement is expected to expand the offering considerably further.
    If Facebook were to allow users to quickly search the social network and beyond for example, it could cause major headaches for Google: the new feature would give Facebook users a reason to bypass Google altogether.
   Facebook could either expand on the ways of searching the content it currently has, or bring in more content from a wider catchment area. There have been rumours in the past that Mark Zuckerberg and his company have wanted users to make the social network their opening homepage. Adding full search functionality would do just that.
Incidentally and intriguingly, Google is currently blocked from cataloguing Facebook pages.

Facebook tries new Timeline design

The company's new design brings back a tabbed design and streamlined display of Timeline updates.

 

 

Facebook has been quietly testing a new Timeline design, the company has confirmed.
The world's largest social network yesterday confirmed to ABC News that it's testing a new Timeline design "with a small percentage of people." The move, the spokesperson told ABC News, is to "make navigating Timeline even easier."
According to ABC News, which tested out the new Timeline, the design includes a tabbed look, allowing users to switch between friends, photos, and a person's About page. In addition, Facebook's current method of displaying Timeline updates by placing them in two columns has been modified to show updates on the left and friend and photo information on the right side.

In addition, when scrolling through a profile page, it automatically scrolls through a person's "about" information and then goes to friends, followed by photos, all within the same pane.
That's not all Facebook is doing. According to Facebook blog InsideFacebook, the social network lets users drag and drop photos into their publisher box -- the space in which users post photos and updates. In addition, users can drag and drop multiple photos into the box at once.
According to InsideFacebook, the drag-and-drop feature is being rolled out and will eventually come to all users. Whether the Timeline update will make its way across the social network is unknown at this point.

Poke for mobile: Facebook's new app

The new mobile Poke app.

(Credit: Facebook)

The app sends messages, photos, and videos that expire seconds after they're sent. Perfect for the type of communication you don't want falling into the wrong hands.

Cue the inappropriate poke jokes. Facebook just released a Poke for mobile app that lets people send messages, photos, and videos that expire seconds after they're sent.
The news confirms a report by AllThingsD earlier this month.
This standalone app, similar to the app Snapchat, is perfect for sending messages and images you don't want unintended recipients to stumble across. Facebook calls this sending things in a "lightweight way." The rest of the world calls it sexting.
"With the Poke app, you can poke or send a message, photo, or video to Facebook friends to share what you're up to in a lightweight way. You can poke an individual friend or several at once," reads a Facebook blog post.
Facebook isn't that naive. It's built in reporting tools to make sure things don't get too out of control for recipients. After all, sharing photos "of a sexual nature," is a violation of Facebook's policies.
"If you ever see something you're uncomfortable with, you can click the gear menu and report it," the post reads.
You set each message to expire at either 1, 3, 5, or 10 seconds. When time runs out, the message disappears from the app. But remember, that's not going to stop a friend from taking a screenshot of a message, as CNET's Casey Newton pointed out.

Facebook introduced the poke feature in 2004, but the desktop version does only one thing: instantly notifies friends that they've been "poked."
The poke is a leftover from Facebook's dorm room days. The new mobile Poke takes the sexual innuendo to another level and may get Facebook more mobile traffic, if sexting app Snapchat's performance is any indication. Snapchat said its users send 20 million "Snaps" per day.

Facebook - best place to work

(Credit: Glassdoor)

Maybe it's the ability to influence a billion people or maybe it's the deluxe campus and free food, but Facebook employees have come out in full force and voted their company the best place to work this year.

Company review site Glassdoor annually compiles the 50 best places to work based on comments from employees in dozens of companies. This year, nearly half a million reviews were submitted that rated employers on career opportunities, salary and benefits, work and life balance, senior management, and culture and values. And, Facebook won out.

"The company's leadership truly believes in Facebook's mission to make the world more open and connected," a Facebook product manager told Glassdoor. "Teams are small and have a lot of autonomy, and it's amazing to see how much of a difference a single person can make at this place."

Besides Facebook, 19 other tech companies made the top 50 list. For the top 10, Riverbed Technology came in at No. 3, Google got No. 6, and National Instruments was No. 8. For the most well-known tech companies, LinkedIn came in at 14, Intel was No. 31, and Apple got No. 34.

While Google and Apple aren't in the top five, they've both made the list for the last five consecutive years -- although both have dropped places from last year, from 5 to 6 and from 10 to 34, respectively. Facebook has only made the list the last three years, but the year it debuted on the list, in 2010, it ranked No. 1. Last year, the social network fell to the third spot but has notably rebounded this year.

"The Employees' Choice Awards are one of the highest honors a company can receive, as it is an authentic and tangible reflection of employee satisfaction," Glassdoor's CEO and co-founder Robert Hohman said in a statement. "Due to greater workplace transparency, information about what it's like to work at particular companies is becoming increasingly influential as job seekers and employees consider their next career move."

Below is a video produced by Glassdoor and Facebook about what it is like to work at the world's largest social network.

Facebook launches real-time visualization of voters

Using a feature that promotes peer updates, the social network reminds Americans to get out the vote.

Facebook's real-time visualization of people sharing that they've voted.

You may see a button on your Facebook news feed today that says "I'm a voter." The social network is sending a not-so-subtle message to its users to get to the polls on Election Day 2012.
Facebook launched the feature to remind Americans to get out and vote by sharing the update in users' news feeds. Once a you click on the button, Facebook redirects to a map of the United States that shows people across the country clicking on the button in real time.
Clicking a button on Facebook doesn't necessarily mean a person has voted, of course. But studies have suggested that activity on the social network has boosted voter turnout.

A study by the University of California at San Diego, cited by Facebook, suggests that updates reminding people it's Election Day or a visual of the clickable "I Voted" button, when associated to users' friends, turned out more votes. The researchers studied more than 60 million people on Facebook during the 2010 elections. Full details of the study can be found on U.C. San Diego's Web site.
"Our study suggests that social influence may be the best way to increase voter turnout," James Fowler, U.C. San Diego professor of political science said in a press release. "Just as importantly, we show that what happens online matters a lot for the 'real world.'"
Facebook's real-time voter map may not be an exact science, but it sure is fun. Now, don't forget to vote.

Facebook password-bypass flaw fixed

The social network corrects a flaw over the weekend that could potentially have put over a million accounts at risk of being accessed by unauthorized users.

Facebook was vulnerable to a flaw that might have allowed some users to log in without a password.

Facebook this weekend disabled a loophole that might have allowed some accounts to be accessed without a password.
The vulnerability, which was posted to Hacker News on Friday, could potentially have allowed an unauthorized user to access another person's Facebook account.
The flaw centered on e-mails sent out by the social network which contained links that, once clicked, would log a user straight into a Facebook account without the need for any secondary authentication, such as entering a password. The e-mails could be discovered through a simple Google search query, with 1.3 million accounts potentially open to the flaw, according to Hacker News.

As well as bringing up the links that could expose Facebook accounts to unauthorized logins, the search query also showed the e-mail addresses associated with accounts.
The search query that found the links -- which were only temporary and set to expire once the intended user clicked on them -- has since been disabled by Google and no longer displays any results.
Facebook engineer Matt Jones said on Hacker News that Facebook does not share the links. "We only send these URLs to the e-mail address of the account owner for their ease of use and never make them publicly available. Even then we put protection in place to reduce the likelihood that anyone else could click through to the account."
"For a search engine to come across these links, the content of the e-mails would need to have been posted online (e.g. via throwaway email sites, as someone pointed out -- or people whose e-mail addresses go to email lists with online archives)," he added.
Facebook's security system also runs "additional checks to make sure it looks like the account owner who's logging in," according to Jones.
Most of the links in the search results would already have expired, and Facebook has since disabled the feature for the time being, the engineer said.
"Regardless, due to some of these links being disclosed, we've turned the feature off until we can better ensure its security for users whose e-mail contents are publicly visible. We are also securing the accounts of anyone who recently logged in through this flow."