2009-01-28
We at Idea Raft had seen mention on the Internet of various Fake Mark Zuckerbergs. When we encountered one, we could not resist asking him many questions, all of which he deftly answered. A transcript follows.
Idea Raft: Are you really Fake Mark Zuckerberg?
Fake Mark Zuckerberg: Dude, is that a serious question? If I was the real one, I would be worth billions. Do you think I would even be talking to you?
IR: What about all those other Fake Mark Zuckerbergs we keep seeing on the Internet? Are they you?
FMZ: Impostors, every one of them.
IR: So tell me about Facebook. I understand that you can keep in touch with friends and acquaintances.
FMZ: Friends, yes. Acquaintances, no. We allow only friends.
IR: And friends-of-friends?
FMZ: And friends-of-friends. Two categories. Friends, and friends-of-friends. No acquaintances.
IR: And then there’s everybody else on Facebook who is neither your friend nor a friend-of-a-friend.
FMZ: True. That would make it three categories.
IR: And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, right?
FMZ: Huh?
IR: Not important. I was thinking, a fourth one would be everybody not on Facebook, correct? The ones who aren’t even registered. So that would be four categories.
FMZ: Well, there’s only a handful who’re not registered, since we do rule the Internet. In fact, we are the Internet, more or less. But yes, that would be a total of four categories.
IR: Any more? A fifth category, maybe a sixth one? Casual acquaintances, intimate friends, people with whom you have a love-hate relationship, people you hate but they are your boss, and so on?
FMZ: Absolutely not. We don’t allow those questionable types of relationships. Essentially, we divide the world into those who are your friends, and those who are not. The only reason we even allow friends-of-friends is so they can later become your friends. That’s how you can make lots of friends. We constantly scan around and find friends-of-friends, and friends-of-friends-of-friends, and so on, and present them to you as People You May Know. And then you can make them your friends too. And so on, and the network grows.
IR: That would explain why some people seem to have hundreds of friends.
FMZ: Many have thousands. We are the Internet, and we supply you with friends.
IR: Could I have thousands of friends?
FMZ: Set a goal for yourself, and get there one friend request at a time. Last year, almost seven billion friend requests were approved. A thousand or two of them could easily have been yours.
IR: Could I have tens of thousands of friends? Hundreds of thousands?
FMZ: Now you’re just being silly. Let’s be realistic. An average person could handle maybe five thousand friends, max. That way, you could have lunch with each of them one at a time in, oh, about nineteen years or so, and still keep your weekends free.
IR: How many friends do you have?
FMZ: I don’t have friends, dude, I have fans. A lot of them.
IR: I saw some blogger complaining about how he had five thousand friends on Facebook, and he needed a database to keep track of them, and you wouldn’t let him do downloads into his database.
FMZ: Those bloggers! If you need to download to a database to keep track of your friends, maybe you just think they are your friends.
IR: True.
FMZ: And besides, you don’t need a database. We are the database. We are the Internet. And all your friends are belong to us.
IR: Are you absolutely sure you’re not the real Mark Zuckerberg?
FMZ: Can we move on?
IR: You mentioned fans. How does that work?
FMZ: Fans is when you are friends with people who want to be your friend and who hang on to your every word. But you barely know who they are.
IR: Sounds like groupies.
FMZ: It does indeed, but it’s all online, so really they are actually fans.
IR: So you take a negative situation, and make it sound like a good thing. Brilliant!
FMZ: You should come work for us.
IR: You mentioned “people you may know”. If you said “people you might know”, that would mean the same thing, wouldn’t it? But “people you may know” could also mean that you are giving them permission to know these people. “You may know”—see? Permission. That’s ambiguous, isn’t it?
FMZ: Correct.
IR: This ambiguity—is it accidental, or is it what you intended?
FMZ: Correct.
IR: Moving on, then. If you’re not already friends or friends-of-friends with somebody, then I’m told that you can see the person’s picture, but not see anything that he has written about himself. Stuff like essays, descriptions, messages, etc. And if the person has a blog or a home page somewhere else, you can’t see a link to it. Without seeing any of this, how can you decide whether or not to be friends with him? Or her, as the case may be—I believe the technical term is “themself”. How can you decide whether or not to be friends with “themself” if you can’t see what that person has written about themself?
FMZ: You have to understand that you don’t actually make friends on Facebook. You find people who are already your friends. Even if they don’t realize it just yet. That’s why we don’t let you read what others write if they aren’t your friends. If they wanted to let you read their writings, they would be friends with you already. Just be their friend. Once you are friends, you can read each others’ writings.
IR: You haven’t really answered the question.
FMZ: I know.
IR: I understand that the pictures people post are quite small and if you zoom them up in you browser to fit the screen, they look fuzzy. Can you let Facebook users upload bigger images? Say, a thousand or twelve hundred pixels across?
FMZ: We can.
IR: And?
FMZ: We don’t.
IR: Because?
FMZ: We’re the Internet. We don’t have to.
IR: And that would explain why no contact list exports, photo exports, et cetera?
FMZ: Right.
IR: You’re making it sound more and more enticing. But tell me, if Facebook exists so friends can find you, and so on—well, we at Idea Raft have our own web site, and anybody can find us with a web search. Why would we want to be on Facebook?
FMZ: Ah, but not everybody knows how to do a web search. And those of your friends who have never heard of you—they wouldn’t even know to look for you. But on Facebook, they can just click on your friend request. If they don’t know how, their friends on Facebook will help them click. It’s a very supportive environment.
IR: Friends of ours who have never heard of us. Good point. But we can send them email asking them to click on a link to come to our web site.
FMZ: That would be email spam.
IR: And on Facebook?
FMZ: We have no email, so—no email spam. And a friend request is just…a friend request.
IR: Diabolical!
FMZ: Nefarious is our preferred term.
IR: Can Facebook users be friends with people not on Facebook?
FMZ: No.
IR: Why not?
FMZ: Why would a friend not join you on Facebook? One who makes the dubious choice of staying outside Facebook is not a true friend. This type of person can be a casual acquaintance at best. We do not allow those. Our background check ensures that only real friends sign up.
IR: Background check?
FMZ: Our web pages use a white and grey background. And we make the person signing up check a box.
IR: Ah—background check.
FMZ: Indeed. We also normally require the person to be alive. We don’t allow dead people to have friends, but they can have fans, by having a Facebook page. For example, Thomas Alva Edison and Elvis Presley. Both of those gentlemen have multiple Facebook pages. They have no friends, but they have a multitude of fans.
IR: Is Elvis really dead?
FMZ: We don’t take sides. We have both types of Elvises, some dead, some alive.
IR: Fascinating. How can you tell whether a person is dead or alive?
FMZ: We can detect even the slightest movement of the mouse or any typing on the keyboard. If we detect no movement, then the person must be dead, and cannot have friends.
IR. I’m more and more impressed. On a different note, according to the New York Times, being a “friend” of someone on Facebook is almost meaningless. Is that true?
FMZ: The New York Times—what is that, some sort of blog? Don’t believe a word these bloggers say.
IR: Other than allowing people to find their real friends—no acquaintances, I understand completely. Other than finding true friends—what else can they do on Facebook?
FMZ: Oh, where to begin. A lot of cool stuff. You already mentioned the small and fuzzy pictures. There’s also pictures from mobile phones, which are even fuzzier. Then there’s all kinds of communications-type stuff like chat and messaging. And walls—you can post on walls. But the messaging is the best part. That’s how people communicate—by sending messages to each other and to their friends.
IR: These messages—could one use a POP client to read them?
FMZ: POP?
IR: Post Office Protocol.
FMZ: Oh, no no no that would be too slow. It would take days to arrive. We don’t send anything via the Post Office. It’s all strictly electronic. Very high-tech.
IR: Impressive. How about IMAP? Google mail does IMAP.
FMZ: Ah, Google Maps. Different market.
IR: I understand. Another question. When a Facebook user sends an invitation to a non-Facebook person—the non-Facebook person gets an email, but he, or should I say themself, gets no opportunity to communicate with the sender. No way to reply, no way to exchange email. He can either accept the invitation, or reject it, but there is no opportunity for any dialog. Why is that?
FMZ: The dialog begins once you become friends. That’s the whole point—either you are friends, or you are not. If not, no dialog.
IR: Because you are the Internet.
FMZ: You’re sharp.
IR: OK, we have photos, messages, chat. Anything else?
FMZ: Apps. Don’t forget the apps. We have apps. Tons of apps.
IR: Apps! I love apps. I use Google Apps for creating documents.
FMZ: No no no, not that.
IR: Presentations? Spreadsheets?
FMZ: Ours are much more fun than spreadsheets. And practical. For example, you can get a free burger if you delete ten of your friends.
IR: Interesting. So if I had five thousand friends, I could get five hundred burgers?
FMZ: Not all at once.
IR: That’s a relief. So to summarize, the point behind Facebook is to find many friends, do fun things with messages and apps and photos and stuff, and get burger discounts.
FMZ: All of those things, and none of those things.
IR: I thought we had covered everything.
FMZ: We did, almost all of it, and yet, the ultimate point behind our service is none of those things.
IR: Well, what is it?
FMZ: It’s the karma and the Nirvana.
IR: Say what?
FMZ: It’s glaringly obvious and yet oh-so subtle.
IR: Tell me more.
FMZ: It’s the be-all and the end-all.
IR: OK. You lost me back there with the karma thing.
FMZ: You’re not the first. Let me tell you, and you may still not see it—but that’s the nature of what we are. In the Facebook world, none of your usual status symbols exist any more. Your house, your car, your stock options—all worthless. Your face, your physique, your model looks? Our powerful high-gigahertz servers will scale your photos down to an underwhelming low resolution.
IR: Still lost.
FMZ: And understandably so. Try to follow. When you sign up onto Facebook for the first time, you begin with no friends, or maybe one. And we never let you forget it. Every time you log in, we remind you of how few friends you have.
IR: Scary.
FMZ: Our progress meter reminds you, and reminds your friends, of how little progress you have made.
IR: Omigod.
FMZ: Indeed. And every time your friends look at you they see how few other friends you have. We don’t let them forget it—it’s the first thing they notice about you.
IR: A chill runs down my spine.
FMZ: From day one, the pressure is on you—to look good by adding more friends, so your friend count isn’t the lowest among your friends. But in any group of friends, somebody will be the lowest, and we make sure that everyone knows it. The battle has begun.
IR: You have created a monster.
FMZ: We are the monster. We are all around you, and we are tracking your friend count, and for the rest of your life, you will live with the haunting feeling that someone, somewhere, out there, has more friends than you do. And they know it.
IR: And acquaintances don’t count.
FMZ: And acquaintances don’t count.
IR: But you could edit your privacy settings, so nobody knows your friend count, right?
FMZ: Anybody who can see who your friends are will always know your friend count.
IR: Couldn’t you set your account so others can’t see who your friends are?
FMZ: And then you look like a loser with no friends at all.
IR: Diabolical! And nefarious. I feel like the walls are closing in around me.
FMZ: We are the walls. We are the karma. We are your destiny.
IR: So the only way out is to delete one’s Facebook profile and run?
FMZ: What, and lose all your friends? You would never do that.
IR: I surrender to your ingenuity.
FMZ: We didn’t invent the concept, but we have refined it to a science. The Internet will never be the same again.
RI: This is big.
FMZ: Many have tried to buy us and failed. Soon, we will buy them. Then we will buy their friends.
RI: Ah, yes. Let’s talk a bit about your business model. Tell me how it works.
FMZ: We make money through targeted advertising.
IR: Targeted in what way, exactly? I understand that your users often see irrelevant ads.
FMZ: Our ads are targeted towards our users. Hence we call them targeted. They are relevant too, but sometimes users just don’t know what’s relevant.
IR: So that would explain the high success rate of these ads.
FMZ: Exactly.
IR: Why do I see bloggers complain about getting hardly any click-throughs from Facebook ads?
FMZ: Bloggers? What do they know? If they had any sense, they would be posting on the walls on Facebook, not on those—blogs.
IR: So going back to your business model, as I understand it, you target your users with relevant advertising, and that pays the bills.
FMZ: The “pays the bills” part—we’re still working on that.
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