Miss out on all the various Facebook happenings from this week? We’ve got you covered in this week’s round up of everything going on with the social network.
How to fake anyone’s death on Facebook
If you have a grudge against someone, you can “kill” them on Facebook – and by that, we mean that you can take down their profile. Buzzfeed reported a loophole identified by a tipster proving doesn’t take much effort to take down a profile that doesn’t belong to you. It’s more difficult, actually, to reinstate the profile after it has been memorialized.
All you need is to fill out Facebook’s “Memorialization Request” (like the screenshot by Buzzfeed above) for the deceased individual. You’ll need to submit a “proof” of their death, but all it takes is a URL to an obituary (and it doesn’t have to be of that specific individual). Or if you find an obituary with the person’s same name, that also works. That’s pretty devious, bordering on terrible, but you can do it.
We don’t advise you try this — but here’s to hoping Facebook patches this security hole.
Update your Facebook status to curb loneliness
As contradicting as it may sound, psychology researcher Fenne große Deters of the Universitat Berlin discovered that users will feel more connected to friends by publishing status updates, and that receiving comments and Likes can actually help ease loneliness. He explains this phenomenon by comparing publishing status updates to a snack: “Similar to a snack temporarily reducing hunger until the next meal, social snacking may help tolerate the lack of ‘real’ social interaction for a certain amount of time.” So if you’re away from friends, loneliness sets in and makes you want to feel connected to them — so just hop onto Facebook and share to your heart’s desire. It’ll make you feel better.
How to claim $10 from Facebook
Remember the class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook over using your pictures for Sponsored Stories? Reports are saying that Facebook has been sending out emails to every user that was affected, describing the lawsuit and notifying them that they are eligible to claim up to $10 as a piece of the class action suit. If you see an email from legalnotice@facebookmail.com, DO NOT delete it (as spammy as it sounds). The letter is authentic and you really can claim the money from the $20 million set aside in a fund that Facebook is using to pay its users. There’s a catch, however: If too many people claim their share (and exceed the $20 million) the offer is null and instead goes directly to a charity organization. Or you can even opt out to pursue your own lawsuit against Facebook, but considering the legal force that they’ve employed we’d recommend against it unless you plan on pursuing another class action suit.
You can read more about the settlement here. Oh, and you have until May 2, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PST to apply for the payment.
Facebook, redesigned
Fred Nerby, a designer based in Brisbane, Australia, reimagined what Facebook might look like based on a different take on the social network’s user experience and design. And boy, does it look pretty. We can see a hint of the new Myspace with the flat, borderless “Metro” design that Microsoft employed to revamp Windows 8, and of course the obvious Facebook-specific elements like the blue color, and identifiable navigation bars. What’s missing here is the ever-important Facebook ad units, but to be frank the current design would be able to intersperse native ads into the tile-structure News Feed and would offer a far better ad browsing experience than the banner ads that you probably ignore on the far right side of your center stream.
We can wish for a design like this, but considering that Facebook is more concerned with archiving your life from birth to today – which is what motivated the Timeline redesign – we can chalk this up to a pipe dream. But have fun looking.
Facebook is (almost) the king of the world
Only five top social networks remain, based on Vincenzo Cosenza’s infographic “World Map of Social Networks,” with four of these trailing far behind Facebook when looking at the total global market share. And all four of them are for the most part confined to dominating the single countries or locations near or in where they were founded – QZone in China, V Kontakte and Odnoklassniki in Russia, and Cloob in Persian countries including Iran. Of course, other social networks still exist, but Cosenza’s graph goes to show that Facebook is in fact taking over the world.
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