Facebook buying WhatsApp

[pisceangirl]

Facebook is basically to show off and make people jealous, nothing else.
"Look what an exotic location, I am having a vacation in" or "Look I am having dinner at this great place tonight"

This post, brought to you by "WD40's Daily Extremely Myopic View of the West by an Indian Person".

Technically incorrect.

Acceptable: Extremely myopic view of ALL FB users (including the over 93 million Indian users) by an Indian person.

[x9200]

FB is just a tool and as it is with any tool how it is used depends on the user. Admittedly if all your friends use it to "make people jealous, nothing else" then you are *beep*, but it does not need to be this way. For the total of ca 25 people I have in my FB circle only 2-3 show such inclinations.

[Wd40]

Ok lah, here is backup:

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/ecol ... owing-off/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... steem.html

http://www.economist.com/news/science-a ... e-get-life

Also as PisceanGirl said, I was talking about all facebook users and didnt bring the west at all in the conversation. In fact we Indians are the biggest show off'ers

[pisceangirl]

In fact we Indians are the biggest show off'ers

How I hate generalisations! I'm Indian myself and detest "show offers". Most show offers have self esteem issues and I try to avoid being around such individuals.

Agree with x900.

And on a separate note, if someone's FB posts inspire feelings of jealousy then the problem is with you not them! Which is what by the way the articles talk about!!!

[Wd40]

In fact we Indians are the biggest show off'ers

How I hate generalisations! I'm Indian myself and detest "show offers". Most show offers have self esteem issues and I try to avoid being around such individuals.

Agree with x900.

And on a separate note, if someone's FB posts inspire feelings of jealousy then the problem is with you not them! Which is what by the way the articles talk about!!!

The articles also talk about how defensive people become when they are told about it

She said: ‘I think people get sort of defensive about it – like, “I don’t use my Facebook for that reason”

[pisceangirl]

In fact we Indians are the biggest show off'ers

How I hate generalisations! I'm Indian myself and detest "show offers". Most show offers have self esteem issues and I try to avoid being around such individuals.

Agree with x900.

And on a separate note, if someone's FB posts inspire feelings of jealousy then the problem is with you not them! Which is what by the way the articles talk about!!!

The articles also talk about how defensive people become when they are told about it

She said: ‘I think people get sort of defensive about it – like, “I don’t use my Facebook for that reason”

[Wd40]

How I hate generalisations! I'm Indian myself and detest "show offers". Most show offers have self esteem issues and I try to avoid being around such individuals.

Agree with x900.

And on a separate note, if someone's FB posts inspire feelings of jealousy then the problem is with you not them! Which is what by the way the articles talk about!!!

The articles also talk about how defensive people become when they are told about it

She said: ‘I think people get sort of defensive about it – like, “I don’t use my Facebook for that reason”

[pisceangirl]

Let's go back to your original statement:

Facebook is basically to show off and make people jealous, nothing else

Your (loosely worded and absolute sounding) statement indicated that you blame the "tool" and insinuate that the objective of people posting their pictures and statuses is to "make people jealous".

I find that kind of reasoning funny, supported by articles or not. In general it is representative of a school of thought which does not believe in individual ownership and control when it comes to feelings and "reaction" to the various external stimuli we are subjected to.

[x9200]

But I am kind of surprised how many young people are socially insecure. All these cravings for "likes" you can see on the sites populated by all sorts of students. It has always been around but right now you can see what's the magnitude of it.

[PNGMK]

But I am kind of surprised how many young people are socially insecure. All these cravings for "likes" you can see on the sites populated by all sorts of students. It has always been around but right now you can see what's the magnitude of it.

Would you like me to like this quote?

+1

[zzm9980]

At this point in time, no. Because while they would have access to Whatsapp database and their own database of FB accounts, they have no common info to be able to directly map user accounts (i.e match someone's FB to their Whatsapp). HOWEVER, should the terms of use change and Whatsapp request you for your FB login id then its a whole different play. I do believe that FB would be interested in linking the two as that would enable them to generate better advertising and mobile revenue opportunities.

Not quite true. Facebook does behind the scenes correlation of phone numbers to emails to user accounts (and anything inbetween), even if you didn't provide all of the information.

Example:

1) You have a Facebook account and tie it to your email.
2) I have a contact in my phone with your name, your email, and two phone numbers.
3) I sync my contacts to Facebook
4) Facebook now associates all of that data with you. Doesn't matter if you ever made it public, supplied it to Facebook, or if that user is even your friend. They even keep this information for people who haven't signed up, and will instantly associate it once you do sign up. That's how you'll see a lot of people you actually know instantly pop-up in "People you may know".

Look for some old threads under 'latest news' from last June about this. I actually found a hole which would allow you to export arbitrary user's contact details from Facebook as long as you had at least one phone number or one email of theirs. And surprise - everyone with Facebook has an @facebook.com email address. This hole was covered in major media, and I was given $12k USD hush-money (err, "bounty") for reporting it to them first.

[pisceangirl]

At this point in time, no. Because while they would have access to Whatsapp database and their own database of FB accounts, they have no common info to be able to directly map user accounts (i.e match someone's FB to their Whatsapp). HOWEVER, should the terms of use change and Whatsapp request you for your FB login id then its a whole different play. I do believe that FB would be interested in linking the two as that would enable them to generate better advertising and mobile revenue opportunities.

Not quite true. Facebook does behind the scenes correlation of phone numbers to emails to user accounts (and anything inbetween), even if you didn't provide all of the information.

Example:

1) You have a Facebook account and tie it to your email.
2) I have a contact in my phone with your name, your email, and two phone numbers.
3) I sync my contacts to Facebook
4) Facebook now associates all of that data with you. Doesn't matter if you ever made it public, supplied it to Facebook, or if that user is even your friend. They even keep this information for people who haven't signed up, and will instantly associate it once you do sign up. That's how you'll see a lot of people you actually know instantly pop-up in "People you may know".

Look for some old threads under 'latest news' from last June about this. I actually found a hole which would allow you to export arbitrary user's contact details from Facebook as long as you had at least one phone number or one email of theirs. And surprise - everyone with Facebook has an @facebook.com email address. This hole was covered in major media, and I was given $12k USD hush-money (err, "bounty") for reporting it to them first.

Yes, you are right about this. And I did follow the thread last June which I why I'm very concerned about privacy when it comes to Facebook.

With respect to my post on this thread, what I meant was that acquiring Whatsapp at this point does not allow Facebook access to any "linkable" information that it didn't have before the acquisition i.e they cant say that X Whatsapp number belongs to Y FB account, UNLESS of course they already had the info. Am I making sense?

[proxymoron]

I mainly use Viber. Not sure who owns it though.

Rakuten owns Viber, a giant eCommerce conglomerate. If you think they have your best interests at heart more than Facebook, it's only because they haven't figured out how to best monetize your eyes yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten

And the Wiki says this - " On February 13, 2014, Rakuten announced they had acquired Viber for $900 million"

This ^ makes the money paid by Facebook even more ridiculous.

[zzm9980]

With respect to my post on this thread, what I meant was that acquiring Whatsapp at this point does not allow Facebook access to any "linkable" information that it didn't have before the acquisition i.e they cant say that X Whatsapp number belongs to Y FB account, UNLESS of course they already had the info. Am I making sense?

Minimally, they acquire your contact network that isn't using Facebook. This is especially useful for those users that never shared their contacts. By using Whatsapp, you auto share your contacts. They just bought those contacts and connections.

If we don the tinfoil hat, we can go further and assume they're now collecting metrics on who you're messaging and the frequency of those messages. They probably have a lot of junk data (phone numbers) from those shared contacts people voluntarily submitted. They can easily use said metrics to identify active and inactive phone numbers for users. They can also identify who is "active online" and messaging people, but perhaps abandoned the Facebook service. It's a lot of useful data. $19billion USD worth? Not sure.

[zzm9980]

I mainly use Viber. Not sure who owns it though.

Rakuten owns Viber, a giant eCommerce conglomerate. If you think they have your best interests at heart more than Facebook, it's only because they haven't figured out how to best monetize your eyes yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten

And the Wiki says this - " On February 13, 2014, Rakuten announced they had acquired Viber for $900 million"

This ^ makes the money paid by Facebook even more ridiculous.

We don't know how many active users Whatsapp had vs Viber. Whatsapp was always extremely guarded with that data. Facebook didn't want a messaging app, they wanted the users and the data said users gave to the service. Whatsapp has a lot.