Facebook users and developers are often been shocked and surprized by seemingly random changes occurring on Facebook. That changed recently with my first glipse at Facebook’s Developer Roadmap.
With every Facebook UI and API change, there seems to be a Facebook user revolt, complete with torches and pitchforks (“Curse you Facebook! curse you and your free tool!”) and with every API change there is a wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth from developers.
Almost 15 percent of internet users are still using Internet Explorer 6, according to a recent statistics from W3Schools. It’s time for this madness to stop: It puts these users — and the entire Internet community — at a disadvantage.
Internet Explorer 6.0 is eight years old. Eight. Years. Old. It pre-dates Windows XP. Heavy commercial internet usage started around the mid-nineties, let’s call it 1995. That puts the age of the commercial internet at roughly 14 years. What’s that matter? Well, IE 6 has been around for more than half of that time period.
The internet has moved on, and it’s time for IE 6 to go away. Not just because IT’S A HORRIBLE WEB BROWSER — but because it’s become increasingly hard to support. The gap between IE 6 and modern browsers — such as Firefox, the most popular web browser (used by almost 50 percent of Internet users) — is vast.
When I set out to create my first Facebook application, I was totally jazzed. Here was the coolest open platform around. Heck, they even had their own tag system. This was going to be so awesome.
I added the developer application and lo and behold: starter code! I had my “hello world” app up and running in no time. This was going to be easy!
That’s when things started to slow down. The Facebook Developer Wiki tends to sprawl a bit, so I ordered some books (a natural reaction for a pushing-40 developer). [Read more...]
So I work on a social media team and I love it. The other day, one of my co-workers said to me, “How long have you been on Facebook? Your ID is really low, you must be a real O.G.”
Suffice it to say, that was the first time anyone referred to me as an O.G. It feel kinda cool. Aside from the short-lived feeling of hipness, it got me thinking about just how long I’ve been hanging around the whole internet thing. It kind of made me feel a little bit like Grandpa Simpson on my way to Morganville with an onion in my belt, as was the style at the time.
Admittedly, I was not one of the original BBS users, nor was a heavy user of Gopher or Archie servers. I did hand-code my first web page for Mosaic 1.0 on a Digital Unix workstation between marathon Fortran sessions. That’s right, Fortran. You think Twitter’s 140 characters is restrictive? You only get 72 per line in Fortran, so choose your variable names wisely.
“There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.” – Cluetrain Manifesto (Thesis 12 )
This may come as a shock to many, but your super-secret idea is not super-secret. In fact, a Google search reveals that there are thousands of people talking about it already.
Now before you grab your Weapon of Choice (I prefer nunchucks) and go looking for the mole who leaked it, take a breath and count to ten. Then look at the first ten search results about your secret. Any good ideas in there? Any nuggets you can use? How much did you pay for that marketing research firm? Ouch.
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