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“One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

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Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not talking about active users. The metric quoted was "used Facebook in a single day". I know for a fact that they count any "Like" click or any Facebook comment on any web page on the internet when they quote "used Facebook". It does not mean logged into one of their apps.

I personally audited the entire pipeline, and code, from collection to analysis all the way to the little DAU ("daily active users") graph that informs this number. That experience, and years of working on related data sets inside Facebook, are enough to convince me that the 1B number is legit. If that's not enough for you, well, maybe I can't help that. But I am curious what evidence leads you to believe something d…

You both seem to be saying the same thing - actively clicking on a like button gets counted as a real genuine user of Facebook. That seems reasonable (one is logged in, and clicks something sending data to FB)

Neither of you have said just having FB button appear on a 3rd party site counts - that would get what 3bn users :-)

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#152
post #12

I'm curious to know what the metric is actually measuring. Is it one billion people that hit Facebook.com or used the mobile app? Or is it also counting people that might have triggered a hit just by browsing around sites with Like buttons on them while logged in, but didn't actually use Facebook? To some extent it doesn't matter because it's just such a massive and impressive number, but I'd be curious to know.

Back when I worked there, I "audited" the systems that count Facebook's active users. I needed to analyze code efficiency and feature growth over long periods of time, and so needed very accurate user counts in order to subtract user growth. Without going into details / trade secrets: there is more than one system, they can cross-check each other, and if anything it's conservative. You have to perform legit, non-driv…

That sounds pretty amazing. Can you offer any insight about users with multiple accounts? Back in the farmville days, people with 10 accounts seemed pretty common. An account just for tinder, or a professional account seems to be a common tactic as well.

I'm curious if multiple accounts are common, or just a few percent of users take it to that level.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#153
post #130

I hate stuff like this: "A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values. Thank you for being part of our community and for everything you've done to help us reach this milestone. I’m looking forward to seeing what we accomplish together." It reeks of dishonesty.…

Given that Zuckerberg and Co have access to the private lives of 1 in 7 people, enormous supplies of money, and a giant soapbox of influence, maybe we don't really want honesty--just politeness.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#154
post #12

I'm curious to know what the metric is actually measuring. Is it one billion people that hit Facebook.com or used the mobile app? Or is it also counting people that might have triggered a hit just by browsing around sites with Like buttons on them while logged in, but didn't actually use Facebook? To some extent it doesn't matter because it's just such a massive and impressive number, but I'd be curious to know.

Facebook actually has an easier way to measure this than most: how many users logged in. I'm not sure if that's how they did this count, but that's how I initially read it.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#155
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any data on that?

He doesn't. Here's some data. June 2015 averaged 968mil daily active users. From their quarterly report: http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=924562 And quarterly reports aren't something you add marketing lies to.

ok, well, let's attack this problem from another angle using the data you cite. 968 mil customers, $4.04 Billion in revenue. That makes $4.18 in revenue per customer for the quarter. You'd be hard pressed to name another going concern even 1/10th of facebook's size with such low rev/customer numbers.

So what's wrong? They are either miscounting customers, or they are horrendously bad at achieving any non-trivial revenue on a per customer basis.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#157
post #130

I hate stuff like this: "A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values. Thank you for being part of our community and for everything you've done to help us reach this milestone. I’m looking forward to seeing what we accomplish together." It reeks of dishonesty.…

[deleted]

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#158
post #32

When the Facebook hack comes, it will be devastating.

Getting in might be possible, but then the attacker would have to covertly exfiltrate and store all of Facebook's content to do a dump. Does J. Random Attacker have enough storage to do this?

No no no. That's not the hack.

The real hack will be using Facebook to infect people with malware. Which will probably be staggeringly easy once they get inside.

It will be impossible to remove, it will hijack legitimate connections to non-FB accounts with injection attacks, it will expose all the credentials of all the users of all the services of these 1 billion people. The compromise of sites that rely on Facebook for authentication tokens will pale in comparison.

Attack vectors: app upgrades, browser exploits, e-mail/messenger/comment phishing, 3rd party comment section or ad-network injection, desktop integration, and of course, all the mobile networks that provide Facebook data access for free (which are largely non-smartphone and have rudimentary interfaces).

One billion people will be prompted in some way, or immediately exploited using 0-days, and I would wager around 20% of users would be infected within a few hours of actually starting the attack. That's 200 million infected devices (edit: users; number of devices may be many times more). Depending on the point of entry and the access gained (let's say 20 percent of the infections lead to compromise of the whole system), that's 40 million accounts compromised in a few hours.

Banks, email accounts (which lead to everything else), online shopping, e-wallets, etc all stolen. Then the data extortion packages will encrypt all the phones and wipe any usable data and demand payment or destruction of data. There'll be a very short timer, too, because the bank and other financial account session data may be reset quickly. There is a potential that markets could crash worldwide as financial balances get shifted around at the speed of the internet.

Screw the Facebook data. This is a compromise that organized crime and state actors would invest millions of dollars to set up. And it's a virtual certainty that it will happen one day.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#159
This announcement makes me think of a quote from the Urbit dev mailing list [1]:

Infinite or effectively infinite identity systems are not impossible to make spam-free. There is a very easy way to make them spam-free. Install a dictator. The dictator (call him "Zuck," because that's his name) is then subject to political pressures of various kinds, and pretty much has no choice but to decide, say, which kinds of videos you can and can't host.

[1]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/urbit-dev/zuck/ur...

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally audited the entire pipeline, and code, from collection to analysis all the way to the little DAU ("daily active users") graph that informs this number. That experience, and years of working on related data sets inside Facebook, are enough to convince me that the 1B number is legit. If that's not enough for you, well, maybe I can't help that. But I am curious what evidence leads you to believe something d…

You both seem to be saying the same thing - actively clicking on a like button gets counted as a real genuine user of Facebook. That seems reasonable (one is logged in, and clicks something sending data to FB) Neither of you have said just having FB button appear on a 3rd party site counts - that would get what 3bn users :-)

I think so, rereading. But many people assume that simply visiting a page with a widget counts.
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