The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images • Hacker News Board

The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images

#1

Post by dshankar » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 2:56 PM UTC

The Faces of Facebook – Visualizing 1.2 billion Facebook profile images
app.thefacesoffacebook.com

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

#2

Post by lifeformed » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:00 PM UTC

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here... all I see is a giant zoomable grid of chromatic noise. Is it supposed to be showing peoples pictures or something?

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

#3

Post by swat535 » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:02 PM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #2

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here... all I see is a giant zoomable grid of chromatic noise. Is it supposed to be showing peoples pictures or something?

same here i was expecting to see actual profile images..

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

#4

Post by Killswitch » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:03 PM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #2

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here... all I see is a giant zoomable grid of chromatic noise. Is it supposed to be showing peoples pictures or something?

Use your scroll wheel to zoom in (like Google Maps) or click in an area and it'll zoom in.

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

#5

Post by elwell » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:19 PM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #2

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here... all I see is a giant zoomable grid of chromatic noise. Is it supposed to be showing peoples pictures or something?

I thought that at first, but then the faces started loading finally. You do have to be zoomed in for that to occur.

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

#6

Post by geekrax » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #2

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here... all I see is a giant zoomable grid of chromatic noise. Is it supposed to be showing peoples pictures or something?

A facebook profile picture of smallest dimension (50px X 50px) will have minimum size of 3 kb.. So, if this site will show real profile pics all together, it'll have to load almost 3.5 TB of data for 1.2 billion pictures.. A connection with 100Kb/s downloading speed will take around 430 days, and a connection with 1MB/s will take around 42 days..

I don't think anyone would be interested to spend more than 2 minutes on this page.

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

#7

Post by dsl » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:27 PM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #2

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here... all I see is a giant zoomable grid of chromatic noise. Is it supposed to be showing peoples pictures or something?

I had to unblock Facebook Connect in Ghostery and AdBlock before it worked.

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

#8

Post by martin_ » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

swat535 wrote: post #3

lifeformed wrote: post #2

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here... all I see is a giant zoomable grid of chromatic noise. Is it supposed to be showing peoples pictures or something?

same here i was expecting to see actual profile images..

You do, if you zoom in.

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

#9

Post by djloche » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

The real question is - does this have the image from the profile I requested that they delete over 1.5 years ago?

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

#10

Post by timedoctor » Sat, Sep 28, 2013, 4:36 PM UTC

The app doesn't work. When you scroll up and down through the images it stops showing you new faces. The faces are not all there, it's a trick, just has a few hundred facebook profiles in there, does not have all 1.2 billion.