Facebook's Zuckerberg: Copy to Win
By Tim Conneally | Published March 5, 2009, 2:33 PM
It is now well-established that social network Facebook was built up from the idea (if not the actual code) of HarvardConnect, which later became ConnectU. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was sued for stealing the idea of Facebook from HarvardConnect, which he briefly worked on as a student.
So when Facebook announced yesterday that interface changes would soon be rolled out, which will turn the user's page into a real-time update feed of his friends' activities, many assumed this move was to replicate some of the more popular functionality of microblogging service Twitter, and remove some of the luster from that popularity. This idea is largely due to repeated rumors of an attempted Twitter buyout by Facebook.
But Facebook has been offering users a self-status update field -- "What are you doing right now?" which is essentially what Twitter does now -- long before Twitter came into fruition.

In fact, Facebook's coming redesign actually wedges it into the vein of Tumblelog, a stream-of-consciousness blogging style that has been increasing in popularity for the last five years. Blogger Jason Kottke notably said Tumblelogging is the blog equivalent of Ruby on Rails: quick and dirty with an emphasis on fast prototyping.

Like Tumblelogging service Tumblr, Facebook's interface will be a blank field for text updates that includes buttons for inserting Links, Photos, Video, and other items that can be blogged. All updates appear in (mostly) real time, instead of every ten minutes like the site's current refresh time. Real-time feeds can be filtered by friend network, geographic network, and other categories.
Facebook's changes will go into effect next week.
Im so sick of all this blogging and social networking crap. When will it end? We lived without it im ready to live without it again. I just dont see how people have that much time on their hands, specially while at work.
Score: 4
|What the heck is "prototyping"?
Please tell me that's not how we're supposed to refer to the "omg ur so crazy lol" typing style.
Edit: Nevermind. I'd never heard "prototype" as a verb before.
Score: 1
|I would characterize prototyping as having a plan for a project. You know if you make a web page you may grab a sheet of paper and sketch out how the page is going to look when your done.
Edit: Nevermind. I just saw your edit.
Score: 0
|Except what Facebook does, turns to gold so....
Do we need an anti Dog-eat-dog law?
Score: 1
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