Live data from Hacker News

The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images

app.thefacesoffacebook.com

21–30 of 49 posts

Re: The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images

#21
post #14

Can't load the page. But I wonder, is it possible to grab all Facebook profile pictures (or at least the public ones), or were they given special access for research purposes?

Your browser is doing the downloading. The URLs are available from the API (I changed random characters):

  $ curl -I https://graph.facebook.com/100000624321700/picture
  HTTP/1.1 302 Found
(...)

  Location: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn1/573867_100000621711234_930571234_q.jpg
Then it is just a matter of incrementing the number. This might be a fun research project.

Re: The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images

#22
post #20

So apparently the app works because you can access someone's facebook page with the URL www.facebook.com/"#". With the number being the numbered profile they are. Its curious, however, that Zuck is actually number 4 (www.facebook.com/4), numbers 1-3 are missing. I wonder why?

There's even a https://www.facebook.com/NaN :)

Also: https://www.facebook.com/window.location.href

Re: The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images

#23

So apparently the app works because you can access someone's facebook page with the URL www.facebook.com/"#". With the number being the numbered profile they are. Its curious, however, that Zuck is actually number 4 (www.facebook.com/4), numbers 1-3 are missing. I wonder why?

Source, Dustin Moskovitz: 1-3 were accounts used to test registration. Evidently it only took Mark 3 tries to clear the bugs. Link: http://qr.ae/NMpX6 (Does not require login)

Re: The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images

#28
Interestingly, the first 14 "members," or at least images, are male. I'm not immediately familiar with the early development team of Facebook, but it appears that they didn't start sharing with their female friends immediately.
Post reply on HN