I carried out a small survey in my school asking people which feature would they like to see on Facebook or what is the one thing that Facebook is missing. I received some very obvious answers like a dislike button (it is not going to happen my friends) and some very out of the box answers like an auto tagging feature for photos on Facebook. I asked them if they would appreciated threaded comments or not. The initial reaction from most people was “Erm..What is that?” Once I explained the reply to comment feature the response went something on average like “That. would. be. awesome!”

The reason I bought this topic up today is that I remember seeing seeing threaded comments on Facebook a few days back. Though that was their only sighting and no other credible proof could be found. I took this screenie to  iterate the fact that Facebook might just be getting nested comments.

Facebook to get threaded comments?

The screenshot is obviously not of the post on which I saw the new comment system (couldn’t take a screenshot ) but is just reiterating what I said earlier.

See here for Why Facebook Will Never Get A Dislike button

I noticed today that below a video that I shared on Facebook, was a comment (usual) which had apparently been liked by two people (usual) and below those likes was an option to post another comment (usual) but the usual comments box was not there. Instead there was a comment box which was slightly displaced towards right from its original position (very unusual). My first reaction: ” I’ve got to write a post on this!”. My second reaction: “What is this anyway?”. My final reaction :”Do we finally have threaded slash nested comments on Facebook?”

A new comment for shared links on Facebook? Naah..not really.

What I figured out after spending some time in jumping from Wall to Wall (non-literally) and _logging in to some fake accounts and trying to create almost the same circumstances_ and liking random links on random Fan Pages in order to see if it happens again was not very exciting. Because I failed miserably at that. But eventually I figured it out.

Facebook has not got any new feature or anything of that sort. Only a small change in the comment system for shared links on Facebook has been brought. The change is that when you click share on anything posted by any user, the comments and likes that the original post got (the post on which you clicked share) shows on your post as well. Though this change is shown only on the Live feed. News feed still displays the earlier system. Any credible information about this change has not been seen (unless you see this blog to be credible enough) and if this is just a hint that Facebook might just introduce threaded comments on Status messages and all other posts cannot be said.

And apparently I am not the first or only one to noticed this

And I am not the only who noticed the change in Facebook's shared link comment system.

My last post certifies that I am alive but I like to believe otherwise mainly for reasons which if told here would require a NSFW notice above the post beforehand. And however difficult may it seem for you to digest this but I still do not have a monitor and the possibilty of getting one in the near future is very slim. The last post concerning TCS IT Wiz was written in the I-Lab of my school on THE Pavna, which was later occupied (read me being told to get out) by some kids (read non-Code Warriors) who had to make a PPT (screw them).

I check my mail, Facebook, blog stats et al on my iPod which did feel a PITA at first but I have now got used to it. Its a brilliant device if you want to know what’s going around in the cyber world but not one with which you can contribute to the cyber world. Reading mails is sweet but replying is bitter. Catching up with friends in Facebook is easy but no working option to chat is available. Battery feels non-existent and the device needs to be plugged in to the socket all the time (thank God I bought a wall charger and did a untethered Jailbreak). Typing isn’t actually difficult but without key feedback ( tak-tak sound) I don’t feel like typing to great lengths, so ciao for now.

Facebook yesterday implemented the I like your comment feature which received acclaim throughout the world with people unable to say anything against the feature except this

Okay…uptil now, we had retards who liked their own status updates. Now, we’ll have even more mentally-challenged-opposable-thumbs-possessing morons liking their own comments…

Needless to say, I commented on this status and then liked my own comment but let’s leave that for now. One thing that I noticed when the feature was introduced was people’s eagerness to get a Dislike button. You will realise this when you see the comments on the Official Announcement by Facebook about the new feature. The ‘note’ has about 1500 comments with every one in every three comments being something like “DISLIKE BUTTON. Jesus, aren’t you people listening???” and “make a dislike button!!!” Yesterday a friend said the same to me on Facebook. I was quick in replying that Facebook will never implement a Dislike button. Well, then he asked why? To which I replied;

A dislike button will at some point start fights. Facebook doesn’t want fights, do they? Because fights on Facebook usually lead to deletion of friends from profile/ blocking of friends or even account deactivation in some extreme cases.

Facebook will only and only implement feature that will make people know each other better, increase their friendship and in turn make people know about their like-mindedness with other users. A dislike button will only put a stop to all this.

The reason why Facebook has not yet implemented the Dislike button is simple. It’s negative. Disagreeing usually leads to discussions which quickly turn into fights online. Now there is no point in telling people that fighting on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics, even if you win you are still retarded because they probably already know that.

Disliking a status such as ‘I broke my arm” is fine but what if someone beat you in a quiz and makes a status something like “I won the <insert name of quiz> hands down!”. If there is a dislike button then trust near that status then trust me, nothing in this world will be able to stop you from clicking that unless of course you agree with him.

Dictatorship, censorship, freedom of speech and compromises, they all are very interesting topics we could talk about for hours. People will say that I live in a democracy and I have the freedom of speech and can dislike anything! But wait, you are on Facebook – a website owned by an individual. It’s up to him what he let’s you do on the website. And he will only get a feature if it is in popular demand and will bring profit to him.

Now the question which arises here is that would negative comments started by Dislikes increase page views? Is Facebook ready to install it? It is a psychological question and has a simple answer. We love gossip and bitching and are curious by nature so this would increase page views. But there is a counter argument for this. Negative comments may make the discussion more interesting, happening and more people are likely to participate in a discussion like this but when it gets over (online most of the times but in some cases the matter is settled offline) , will they come back to the website? I fear not.

You know what lead to MySpace‘s downfall? Something like this only!

The moral of the Story is that if you are ready to compromise on friends, ready to get indulged in online fights and ready to weaken friendships then you deserve a dislike button (You can get it by first liking a status and then disliking it when Facebook gives you that option).

Either something is wrong with WordPress.com or I need to stop Blogging. You read my last post, #whiletwitterwasdown, did you? I wrote that post after I reliased that twitter is down. The stats on my Dashboard tell me that I didn’t even get one view on that post, leave alone a comment. Well, I published the post. Pasted links on Facebook and on my Blog’s Fan page on Facebook. Then how is it possible that I didn’t even get one damn view?!

The only reason I can think of is that WordPress.com is not showing me stats for a post that was published 19 hours ago is because of the title starting with a # and followed by words without ‘space’ in between them resulting in meaningless title (at least for computers).

I have now changed the Title from #whiletwitterwasdown to While Twiter Was Down.

This was one post from which I was expecting some traffic to come but alas.

Well, yes. After having issues with missing tweets and incorrect tweet counts yesterday and being down for almost the whole night Twitter is back or almost back. Most of the tweets are gone.

Twitter status blog says this on the issue of incorrect tweet counts;

Some users are noting inconsistencies in tweet counts. This is purely a display issue and the tweets are not lost or missing. We are working to fix this underlying problem with counts.

Twitter status blog says this on the issue of Site Availability Issues Due to Failed Enhancement of Our Timeline Cache

Update: 11:51 PM PDT: We’re  recovering from the site outage. Remember, users may temporarily experience missing or duplicate tweets from their timelines. Normal timelines will be restored shortly.

Update: We’re currently experiencing site availability issues resulting from the failed enhancement of a new approach to timeline caching. Our infrastructure and operations engineers are currently working to resolve this. We’ll update you soon with an ETA.

Update: 10:17 PM PDT:  Users may temporarily experience missing tweets from their timelines. They will be restored shortly.

I am definitely not a twitterholic but it is interesting to know that I may not have tweeted about my most recent Blog post or about the fungi-ridden bread I ate in the morning but a week back I tweeted about this problem which I suppose I was one of the first user to face. My tweet was something like this “Where did the tweets made to me go? My @me page is almost empty”.

Welcome back Fail Whale, please go ASAP

And this was the tweet after which my twitter completely died taking the Timelines with it;

A few days back I made a tweet ‘Where did all my tweets go?” Now I know the answer. http://bit.ly/d4GZWt #WhileTwitterWasDown

PS: Ironic isn’t it, liking a Twitter Fail post on Facebook

Fiddling with links has always been a habit of mine. I fiddle with links either to “hack’ something or to find a bug/glitch/error or just to pass away my time.

We see people using links everywhere, some even use cut them short by using URL shortening services but still they use inefficient links. For instance this link

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=XXXXXX&ref=mf#!/profile.php?v=wall&ref=mf&id=XXXXXX

would suppose take you take a place X and the following link would also take you to place X

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=wall&ref=mf&id=XXXXXX.

So why not use the shorter one? It’ll save bits! Plus it would look neater. Who cares anyway about Facebook or a particular site getting to know who the referrer was?  Sometimes characters like ‘ ? ‘

But we are not here to discuss links but How to get a link for your Facebook game profile.

I’ll just give you a rough idea so that you understand it and can take over yourself after reading the post. For now I’m focusing only on Facebook links, specifically Facebook games links.

Making a strong foundation: Facebook gives each one of it’s users a unique ID. Facebook is not the only website to do so, you can find this almost everywhere on the internet. But recently Facebook switched to Usernames. This lead to one more step being added to the process for us.

For instance earlier the link to a Facebook profile looked something like this:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=XXXXXX

But now it looks something like this

http://www.facebook.com/Thedolt.

Though both direct you to the same place. But why should you read about this? You wan the gaming stuff right?

The Facebook ID number is also your game ID number which is unique everyone. The ‘XXX^n’ signify the place where you are supposed to fill in your Unique ID.Only numbers can be used here.

These are the Formats for some Facebook games:

Farmville:

Gift link:

http://apps.facebook.com/onthefarm/gifts.php?ref=neighborBar&giftRecipient=XXXXXXXXXX

Fertilize link

http://apps.facebook.com/onthefarm/index.php?visitId=XXXXXXXX

Airline Manager

Link to profile so that others can invest:

http://apps.facebook.com/airline_manager/users.php?uID=XXXXXXX

Mafia Wars

Direct link to Profile page

http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/remote/html_server.php?xw_controller=stats&xw_action=view&user=XXXXXXX

Now comes in the tricky part. To get the Unique ID.

Step 1: Go to your Wall on Facebook and hover your mouse to the ‘Friend’ area, the place where the images of some of your friends are shown. There is a link ‘Friends’. Right click on it and select ‘Copy link location’.

Step 2: Open Notepad and paste it there. It should be something like

http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=100000565868955&view=everyone .

Though the ‘&view=everyone’ is not important. You see those numbers there? Copy paste them in the any of the format in places where X are written.

So, you final link should look something like this

http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/remote/html_server.php?xw_controller=stats&xw_action=view&user=012345789

The numbers after ‘user=’ represent your Unique ID.

If you need the link format for any other games, please feel free to comment but do mention the full name of the game and tell me what exactly you want.