SAN JOSE, Calif. — Appearing before 5,000 of the most faithful members of the Facebook community, Mark Zuckerberg threw out many, many announcements in…
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Appearing before 5,000 of the most faithful members of the Facebook community, Mark Zuckerberg threw out many, many announcements in the space of 30 minutes.
Some sounded cool, others not so much. And we left with a lot of questions. Let’s dive in.
For the past two years, Facebook has been touting the idea of live broadcasting on the social network. Remember Zuckerberg showing a BBQ from his backyard, as a way to keep people engaged and active on the social network?
In his 30-minute keynote Tuesday, Live was never mentioned once. And that’s understandable.
Heading into last year’s keynote, Zuckerberg was forced to address the mounting violence on the video platform. And it hasn’t ended this year. In April a mother was shot and killed live on the platform.
“Video will look like as big of a shift in the way we all share and communicate as mobile has been,” Zuckerberg said at the 2016 F8.
Maybe, but not in the way Facebook intended.
The network that has been under fire for much of this year for playing loose with our personal data, but expects people to trust their dating profiles to Facebook, and keep it out of the hands of co-workers, family members and other prying eyes.
Facebook said very little about how the dating app would work, except that the profile will be private, and that we’ll look for mates by checking out events—if both of us are attending, we can communicate with one another, in a new, separate app, and make plans from there. Expect to see the app later in the year.
What we didn’t hear: Whether all that new data about your preferences will be walled off from Facebook’s ad engine. Put in the cliches “love to take long walks on beach,” or “eat dim sum” into your Facebook dating profile and you’d expect to be bombarded by new ads for local beach establishments and Chinese restaurants, and more. Our question: What do we give up in exchange for the free service?
Facebook makes money by selling your data to target to advertisers. Every piece of info it has on you is fodder. But at F8, Zuckerberg said he’ll be introducing a tool (when?) to clear your Facebook history.
“It will be a simple control to clear your browsing history on Facebook — what you’ve clicked on, websites you’ve visited, and so on,” Zuckerberg said Tuesday.
He added that we’ll be able to wipe all the information from our account, and be able to turn off having the information stored with our accounts.
My questions: when does this become effective, how hard will it be to use, and how far back will the history go? I’d love to take it take it all back. Do we get to clear for a week? A month? A year? All-time?
