The engineers used a weighted context-free grammar (WCFG) to represent Graph Search’s query language. Think of a tree, with the root or base as the “Start” of a particular query. Facebook calls this the “parse tree,” and the various “limbs” branching from the root include verbs, objects, etc. The “leaves” at the top are the terminal symbols, or entities such as users, cities, employers, groups, and the phrases that link those entities together. It’s perhaps easier to diagram than explain:
Tag Archives: facebook
Wolfram Alpha Drills Deep into Facebook Data
At this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, Wolfram Alpha creator Stephen Wolfram offered up some interesting details about his computational engine. Wolfram Alpha contains more than 10 trillion pieces of data cultivated from primary sources, along with tens of thousands of algorithms and equations. Solving complex math problems is one of the system’s key abilities.
via Wolfram Alpha Drills Deep into Facebook Data.
More information from Data Science of the Facebook World
Some of this is rather depressingly stereotypical. And most of it isn’t terribly surprising to anyone who’s known a reasonable diversity of people of different ages. But what to me is remarkable is how we can see everything laid out in such quantitative detail in the pictures above—kind of a signature of people’s thinking as they go through life.
Facebook vs. Salesforce: An Identity Smackdown?
If an alternative did take root, his money would be on Salesforce to prevail. “There’s credibility for Salesforce being an enterprise identity provider,” Shaw says. “They have a legitimate claim for being an identity provider because so many people use salesforce.com. It’s hard not to run into an enterprise that’s not using Salesforce to some degree. Even small companies.
via Facebook vs. Salesforce: An Identity Smackdown? — Dark Reading.
As player numbers crater, EA will shut SimCity Social, other Facebook games
Similarly, The Sims Social rocketed to over 65 million monthly players just after its launch in 2011, only to drop to just over five million monthly players today, according to AppData. SimCity Social seems to have peaked at 10 million monthly players and has managed to hold on to just over one million of them less than a year after its launch.
via As player numbers crater, EA will shut SimCity Social, other Facebook games | Ars Technica.
Facebook “Home” Is Next Step in Facebook’s Developing World Strategy
Projections from the Yankee Group, a Boston-based analytics firm, highlight the potential: the number of smartphones in use is projected to double from 1.5 billion in 2013 to nearly 3 billion in 2017. Most of those 1.5 billion new adoptions will be in the developing world, and the vast majority will be lower-end Android phones. Facebook also wants to capture the attention of those who haven’t yet gotten access to the Internet—and will likely first do so on a mobile device.
via Facebook “Home” Is Next Step in Facebook’s Developing World Strategy | MIT Technology Review.
Coming and Going on Facebook
Two-thirds of online American adults 67% are Facebook users, making Facebook the dominant social networking site in this country. And new findings from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project indicate there is considerable fluidity in the Facebook user population:
via Coming and Going on Facebook | Pew Internet & American Life Project.
- 3% of Facebook users say they plan to spend more time on the site in the coming year.
- 27% of Facebook users say they plan to spend less time on the site in the coming year.
- 69% of Facebook users say they plan to spend the same amount of time on the site this coming year.
How Facebook dug deep within Android to fix its mobile app
After a bit of panic, we realized that we could work around this problem by breaking our app into multiple dex files, using the technique described here, which focuses on using secondary dex files for extension modules, not core parts of the app..
via How Facebook dug deep within Android to fix its mobile app | Ars Technica.
Facebook Hacks Points to Much Bigger Threat for Mobile Developers
In this case, the website of a legitimate mobile developer was targeted, with the attackers knowing the people they were really targeting (Facebook, Twitter etc) would sooner or later come to visit the site, allowing them to infect the computers of these organisations.
This type of attack allows hackers to infiltrate systems otherwise closed off to them as Facebook’s own security would spot a straight forward attack.
via Facebook Hacks Points to Much Bigger Threat for Mobile Developers – IBTimes UK.
The article mentions how many app developers on Mac platforms are operating with a false sense of security. Interesting read.
Sullivan has this advice for mobile app developers:
“Any developer who has Java enabled in his browser, has visited mobile developer websites in the last couple of months, and finds evidence his computer is compromised – probably should use his source code versioning system to check recent commits.”
Is Facebook envy making you miserable?
Witnessing friends’ vacations, love lives and work successes on Facebook can cause envy and trigger feelings of misery and loneliness, according to German researchers.
via Is Facebook envy making you miserable? – chicagotribune.com.
LOL. Reverse Schadenfreude.
Facebook Messenger app change allows free calls via WiFi
Using software, rather than hardware, the latest update of Facebook’s Messenger app now lets U.S. users place voice calls over WiFi. The rollout follows reports of Facebook testing voice call features in Canada earlier this month.
via Facebook Messenger app change allows free calls via WiFi – The Washington Post.
You might want to be careful about this after reading this article on slashdot: