Theoretically rich

We know what Facebook is worth to it's owners: a vast shit-ton of filthy lucre (warning: advanced economic term). It's why their founder openly mocked those who gave him their trust, talks openly about how he doesn't believe in privacy, and Facebook itself is catching heat for its privacy issues: that information is worth money. Fat stacks of cash.

But what is Facebook worth to you, someone with a fan page who is trying to leverage shady privacy holes to your own benefit? I mean other than as an effective method to know too much about your friends, allow your family to know too much about you, bitterly stalk ex-girlfriends, or creepily stalk attractive people you've never met but you'd like to consider killing? Two fitty? Naw, tree sixxy.

According to a new study released by social media management company Vitrue, Facebook Fans are valued at $3.60 a piece in earned media for big brands. When scaled to Fan Pages with one million Fans, that equates to $3.6 million annually — and Vitrue says that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

That's right, each fan you have is potentially worth $3.60 to you. How do you actually monetize that?

/throws things on floor, runs out of room, jumps into car, and screeches off in cloud of dust

OK, no one knows that or will ever know that. It's the paradox of the internet. But hey, if you have fans, that's a theoretical $3.60 in your pocket, and theoretical money is what fuels our countries biggest financial institutions. See how that worked out?

OK, you're probably just a regular Facebook user and you don't have fans, seeing as all you do is post up too much information about what you did last night and "funny" pictures of your cat in a sombrero. What are your friends worth? They're priceless... which is another way of saying worthless. You don't have theoretical money in this scenario, Facebook does. Yours.

So if you want to be a real Intarwebs trillionaire like me and Sean here at TB Industries, get some fans. I bet the Can This Pickle Get More Fans Than Twilight guy is rolling in it.

Broken in Brief: 377th consecutive Twitter search party fails to find missing person

DULUTH—It has been nearly two weeks since area junior Kacey Garret, 16, went missing without a trace. More vexing to Garret's friends, however, is their inability to locate her through an extensive online campaign based solely on social networking site and narcissism factory Twitter.

“I just don’t know why we haven’t found her,” said friend Breliegh Endicott, 17. “I mean, we all totally Tweeted that she was, like, missing and junk. You know, like you see all the time on Twitter. And that people should, like, look out and stuff, but… nothing. Maybe we should have gone out and looked.”

Others aren’t willing to react so harshly as to suggest actual effort be expended in search efforts, choosing instead to place the blame on the lackluster Tweeting efforts of others.

“Bro, Brad totally wasn’t doing his best on Twitter to help find her,” Tweeted senior Jack Maher, 18, all-city quarterback and amateur date rapist.

“Harsh, @jackdawg10. I totally RT’d your Tweets. I was trying just as hard as everyone!” Bradzilla16 responded. “Don’t put this on me. BRB Hot Pockets are done.”

Ultimately, this marks yet another high profile failure of people using Twitter to tweet that someone you might not know from some area you might not even be near has gone missing and that you should re-Tweet it.

“It’s almost as if there’s something fundamentally flawed with the idea that hitting a button while sitting at your computer or tapping away on your iPhone is an effective method of locating a missing person,” observed local police chief Harry Grasscock. “It almost makes me think we should go back to investigating, using dogs, or, I don't know, actually going outside."

“Maybe if we expanded the search to Facebook…” Chief Grasscock excitedly said, his face lighting up. “By God, I may have just saved this little girl’s life!”

Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.26

Why Some Comics Aren’t Laughing at Jay Leno (Essay)
Nathan Rabin of the Onion AV club looks into the most important issue of our time, the Coco/Leno feud, and analyzes why everyone seemed to take Conan's side and heaped unending vitriol on Leno. Essentially he's boring, not funny anymore, tries to play the innocent guy shtick while he's stabbing people in the back, he isn't funny, he never wrote one single monorail related Simpsons episode, and he isn't funny.

In audio message, bin Laden says he endorsed Dec. 25 airline bomb plot
I'm not in the business of giving advice to terrorists. Well, not for free anyway. But Osama, you're starting to lose your terror cache. There use to be a time when we'd fear your proclamations of Jew hate and promises of fiery death from the sky. Now? You're repeating old material and trying to take credit for a guy who staged the greatest public groin singeing in the US... outside of the rural south. Get your shit together man, all we have to fear nowadays is the complete idiocy of our legislative branch. It's just not the same.

Slime Mold Grows Network Just Like Tokyo Rail System
You know how me and Sean are always saying that Japanese engineers are as smart as pond scum? Turns out it's not a racist remark anymore, it's a complement. When mold is allowed to grow on a grid the shape of Tokyo, they end up laying out nutrient channeling tubes much in the same manner as the Tokyo rail system, one of the best designed rail systems in the world. Looks like all those people who protested at our offices for our Japanese slime mold jokes owe us an apology. We still refuse to apologize for the Bulgarian physicist jokes.

US to lift 21-year ban on haggis
Finally, our senseless ban on haggis is ended. I know you haggistotalers wanted this delicious concoction banned from American life, but all your meddling laws did was empower the mob and the haggisrunners. Hell, we've all dabbled in a little haggisrunning, brewing up some bathtub minced sheep offal and selling it in underground speakeasys. Now we're finally allowed to come out into the light of day and enjoy haggis out in the open as God intended. Our long national nightmare is over.

NASA Reveals New Batch Of Space Program Artifacts
If any of you are in the market for some slightly used spacesuits, lunar landers, or a space shuttle or two, NASA is being kind enough to auction some of these items off to the highest bidder in the next coming months. Why build your own spacesuit when you can just drop a couple grand on an Apollo or Mercury era one? If you want the ultimate front lawn centerpiece forget a garden gnome and get a decommissioned shuttle. Only $28 million and the shipping is free. Help them out and buy a goddamn rocket or two. Science is expensive and their budget just got frozen for petty political reasons.

The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures
Dating site OK Cupid is not only a sit for hipsters to meet other hipsters for the purpose of discussing Vampire Weekend at tapas bars, it's also a site where statistics nerds analyze pictures and response rates of it's members to create mathematical and statistical breakdowns of what does and doesn't work online if you're trying to meet another human. Girls making that annoying duck face in a profile shot? Bad. Guys looking away in their profile shot? Good. The Myspace shot? Winner winner chicken dinner. In addition they also have studies done on how different races interact online, the receptive response rates/cruelty of men and women in relation to perceived attractiveness, and what responses work best when human contact is attempted. Check it out, it's sociologically interesting.

Picture of the day

Who is this? Why it's Craig Lynch, a September escapee from England’s Suffolk’s Hollesley Bay Prison who is using Facebook to taunt the UK police who have been searching for him for months.

Let me just check to make sure he isn't a rapist or murderer... check done. It's burglary. Alright. Well done, Craig.

If you'd like to become friends with Craig and follow his updates as he evades the police, his Facebook page is here.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 12.18

U.S. training plan: Read first, shoot later
From liberal rag Stars and Stripes, comes a look at how the US is using literacy training to get people into the Afghan army and police, while also using a desire to get into the Afghan military and police as a way to spread literacy. We still pay less than the Taliban does, but we are giving them job skills. Shame we can't do it for anything cheaper than an extra hundred billion.

The sports-entertainment crossover: it's sublimely funny. Just ask speedskating savior Stephen Colbert
Sports Illustrated takes a look at Stephen Colbert's successful quest to save the US speed skating team through sponsorship and what it might mean for the future of Olympic sponsorship. All part of the new issue of SI that features Colbert on the cover... in a speed skating spandex suit. This is going to be the best Olympic sponsorship by a comedy program since SCTV sponsored the Canadian men's two man luge team.

In 2010, The Civilian Space Industry Finally Takes Off
It's almost at that point in time where we're starting to get past that point all our favorite sci-fi TV, movies, and books described as "the future" and into that part they called "the distant future". What do we have to show for it? The ability to watch porn anywhere and HDTV. No moon bases and nothing that even remotely hovers in a car. But 2010 is the year which we can also pay billionaires for the right to rocket our asses up into low orbit, to feel a sensation that Buzz Aldrin and Alan Shepard got tired of describing three decades ago. The future is slowly creeping up, it's just a shame that it's more in the "carnival ride" aspects of the future and not the "to boldly go..." ones.

Collider Sets Record, and Europe Takes U.S.’s Lead
Well the Large Hadron Collider is up and running and while it isn't yet up to the task of killing God or crushing Europe into a singularity, it is up to the task of rubbing America's nose in shit. It has already set the record for accelerating protons (to 1.2 trillion volts), for number and speed of collisions, for the number of particle physicists in one room named Jens, for the slowest particle on record, the largest particle on record, most PhD's at a nude science kegger, and most appearances of the "particle physicists do it with momentum and position" bumper sticker. Here's congratulating them on their serious endeavors.

People finally realize Facebook intends to make money off of their data
Yeah, Facebook is starting to become mildly evil in regards to privacy, attempting to make money, and making everything on the site public. Turns out that you can't expect Facebook to exist forever without trying to make a buck of your info. Social media isn't private, especially free social media. Shocking, I know. However, this will help you stalk 15 year-olds and ex-girlfriends you are convinced still love you without a restraining order entering into it. So, that's a plus.

Obama's Big Sellout
Matt Taibbi's big Rolling Stone piece on the Obama Administration and that whole thing where we intended to bail out banks and financial institutions while providing increased scrutiny and oversight before turning our attention to the American people, before we promptly forgot the whole scrutiny, oversight, and American people parts. He's probably a little too focused on Obama and Bob Rubin and not the collection of money humpers in Congress, but it is another thorough indictment of the way this country works. Shame he used the title "Obama's Big Sellout", what's he going to use for his article detailing the health care debacle?

Oh yeah, this is still happening

I don't want to alarm you, but you remember that whole Iranian Revolution thing? Brace yourselves for disappointment. Despite the fact we might have rotated green into our wardrobes a little more frequently, made our Twitter icons green, put our Twitter and Facebook locations as "Tehran", and actually paid attention until a pop star we hadn't thought about in a decade died, the revolution was not only not won by the revolutionaries, but it's still going on right now. Still! How many more green t-shirts does a guy have to buy?

Iran's opposition Green movement put on a powerful show of strength today against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the hardline president repeated his notorious claim that the Nazi Holocaust was a "lie" designed to justify the existence of Israel.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in central Tehran to shout "death to the dictator" despite a heavy security presence and official warnings to the opposition not to hijack the Quds (Jerusalem) Day rally, the regime's annual display of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Ahmadinejad supporters mounted counter-demonstrations, leading to repeated scuffles between the two sides, news agencies reported.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims he won June's election, was forced to abandon plans to take part after his car was attacked. Former president Mohammad Khatami, another leading reformist, was also said to have been assaulted by hardliners before being rescued by riot police.

That must have been a hell of a show, "death to the dictator" chants competing with "death to Israel" chants. It is nice to see that stealing an election, staging mock trials of supporters, and torturing and killing protesters hasn't dulled any of the sharp edges off of Ahmadinejad. He's still willing to go out there blame Zionists for all the wars, claim the Holocaust never happened, urge the Revolutionary Guard to beat anyone wearing green, and war monger with Israel all before he goes to address the UN General Assembly about Iran's nuclear ambitions. What a freedom suppressing scamp.

Fuck it, it's time to get serious now. I think it's clear that we failed to give the Iranian people enough moral support last time. I'm thinking we need to find an even better shade of green to change our Twitter and Facebook icons to. Pantone power, bitches! We change our Twitter location to "Tehran....you election stealing motherfuckers." We resist the urge to let our focus waver from blog updates, no matter how many celebrities die. Don't go looking to see if Dirty Dancing is available for rent on Netflix. Stay committed to the cause, Swayze would have wanted it that way. Once Ahmadinejad sees this and is subjected to the full brunt of a million snarky tweets and sarcastic live-blogs of his UN speech, he'll certainly think twice about rigging another election. I feel good about this. This is going to work so much better than last time. I'll see you on the Sherwin-Williams color fields of battle. I'm feeling 6734 Espalier or 6465 Shamrock.

Broken News: Paranoid anti-totalitarian employs online social networking

SEATTLE—Today the greater Seattle area was shocked to learn that area man Nick Scofield, who came to local prominence after his arrest for a nude protest of what he termed “the pervasive surveillance police state” and illegal wiretapping during the 5th inning of a Mariners/Indians baseball game last year, was keeping anyone with computer access updated of his whereabouts through the popular web application Twitter.

"Going down to shop at Standish’s Market before lunch with members of EarthFirst at Mary’s All Organic Café" was the timestamped message that greeted followers of his feed mid-morning. This was the sixth in what would eventually be 17 updates of Scofield's itinerary, location, activities, and lists of people he was meeting with, as well as references to discussions in which he'd engaged.

“I just think that this is an important tool that can be used to keep friends and family updated as to one’s daily goings-on in a way that e-mails and blogging simply can’t do,” Mr. Schofield said as he left his home to a protest against the immunity given to telecoms for conducting illegal surveillance on the American people. “I think these tools are becoming increasingly important to help people organize and speak out against the overbearing surveillance state foisted upon them by an unsympathetic government. What better way to keep your fellow freedom fighters informed than through hourly updates describing your every righteous move and detailing your next step towards liberation?"

Dr. Aaron Harrington, lead ACLU counsel on electronic privacy matters, was unavailable for comment. According to his Facebook status, Dr. Harrington had left his Washington DC offices early for a weekend family retreat to Vermont, where his wife and two high school-aged children would be staying at the Humble Inn Bed & Breakfast, thirteen miles northeast of Burlington, in rooms 7 and 8.

Fears over government surveillance and wiretapping have increased over the past few weeks as news stories have revealed governmental abuses of wiretapping within the NSA, the inadequacy of laws to prevent such measures, and even a sitting US Congresswoman being wiretapped.

“I just can’t believe the abuses,” remarked US Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA), who was caught up in a shady NSA probe. “I just think that if it can happen to me, it can happen to any American citizen. Actually, I don’t think that, I know that. Mostly because I helped authorize and support these spying measures and only got outraged when I found out they betrayed me and used the law I helped use to gut legal oversights to wiretap me. They only stopped spying on me because they thought it would harm any chance of my supporting new and even more invasive wiretap legislation. I fear that other Americans need to take heed, because they won’t be given this colossally hypocritical opportunity. Strike that: I know they won’t.”

Such concerns have only driven Mr. Scofield to expand the scope of his efforts. Since his arrest, Scofield has started a wordpress blog, youcantseeme, and a LiveJournal account to keep a diary of his daily life. Scofield has also joined Facebook, where he lists all his friends and acquaintances, expanded his Flickr site to include more photo documentation of his daily life, added a Google maps application to his Blackberry so friends can see where he is on a city map at any given second of the day, and has moved his Twittering beyond simple flashes of what he is doing to his exact “of the moment” thoughts.

“If the Feds want to come and take me in for opposing their Big Brother moves, then I want the world to know where I was and what I was thinking, with clear notation of most of my activities, thoughts, meeting places and known accomplices for the preceding months. So people know exactly who I am and what I stood for,” Scofield said in the midst of Twittering ‘interviewing with reporter about the oppressive nature of constant monitoring’ from his Blackberry.

When asked to reconcile his opposition to government wiretapping with the sheer volume of information he provides to anyone willing to look, whether a phonetap could ever glean as much information as any of the methods he was freely providing, and to address the whole semi-hypocritical premise of this satirical article, Mr. Scofield paused. As his eyes widened and his mouth stood agape, the full brunt of the irony hitting him, he could only remark “Oh, yeah... This whole web 2.0 thing doesn’t seem as smart or helpful in retrospect, does it?”

Barry v. Osama

Osama bin Laden decided to pop back up today with a message for the world and our new President. It was a tape of his congratulations to his Muslim brother and a signal to ease tensions in the Middle East. Just kidding, it was all about the Jews! OBL is, surprisingly, not a fan of this Gaza conflict. He called for a jihad against Israel, which was surprising because I thought one had already been called years ago. Maybe this is a new one, or maybe in all the hubbub of 9/11 and Iraq, Israel just slipped al Qaeda's mind. It happens. He also vowed to open new fronts on the war on terror against the US.

"We are on the way to opening new fronts," he said, urging Muslims to "join hands with the mujahedeen to continue the jihad against the enemy, to continue bleeding them on these two fronts and on the others that are open to you."

"The question is, can America continue the war against us for several more decades? The reports and signs show us otherwise," he said. He said Bush had left his successor "with a heavy inheritance," forcing Obama to choose between withdrawing from the wars or continuing.

"If he withdraws from the war, it is a military defeat. If he continues, he drowns in economic crisis," bin Laden said.

I'm not so sure I buy Osama's financial analysis. We can give almost a trillion to banks but ten billion a month is causing us financial trouble? Did insurgents unleash credit swap markets on us? Come on now, claiming credit for our economic failures? That's just being dishonest. Well, unless Phil Gramm was a cell leader. Also big congrats to George Bush, I didn't think you were going to get a big FACE~! from your greatest failure, but OBL did not disappoint. Have I thanked you for pulling troops out of Tora Bora to go to Iraq? No?

But I'm more outraged by his continual use of audio tapes. We're in a Blu-Ray world Osama, Hamas has its own YouTube and you're still pressing record on your boombox. Get with the program Osama, get a blog, a YouTube channel, and a Flickr account and start hammering out some hate and/or satirical news pieces. How are you going to speak to the kids if you can't poke them on Facebook? Then you can challenge the new guy. It's just hard to take you seriously at this point. Web 2.0, look into it.

randomusement

I don't think that the field of mathematics has conjured a term capable of delineating the number of times I have heard the following phrase while walking around New York City:

"And then he friended me on Facebook and I was like, 'what?'"

You all make me tired.

UPDATE: Nevermind. Found it.

Broken News: Guy pretty sure ex-girlfriend impressed by renovated Facebook profile

DETROIT, MI – Newly single advertising writer Nate Matheson now justifies getting out of bed each morning by obsessively updating and exaggerating his Facebook profile.

Convinced his former girlfriend, Lisa Stanton, is as interested in his life post-breakup as he is hers, Matheson fleshed out his profile with Ambrose Bierce quotes, vastly expanded "Interests" and "Activities" sections, and an oversized iLike widget crammed with album names he found on the Pitchfork and NME review pages. Matheson has also aggressively courted over 100 new "friends," virtually none of whom he has actually met in person.

"She totally sees every update," claimed Matheson, near tears. "I bet she would have loved the new Portishead record. And I could have recommended it to her and everything. And we could have finally gone hiking together, like she always wanted. But too bad for her."

When implored by friends and family to de-friend Stanton and save some small measure of dignity, Matheson steadfastly refused, claiming, "I want her to know I'm having a great time without her."

Asked what he has been up to since the break-up two months ago, Matheson replied, "Tons, you know? I put all of my pictures of her in a box in the closet and haven't opened it in almost a week. And I deleted all of her voicemails. Oh, and I gathered everything she left at my apartment and dropped it off at her place last Tuesday when I knew she wouldn't be there because she has this pottery class every Tuesday and on the second and fourth Thursday each month."

“She’s doing this method, handworking the clay into a nineteenth century Roseville style. Based on the emails she's been writing her sister, she's really into it.” His mood visibly darkening, Matheson continued, “But this teacher of hers is pushing her into a Winchcombe style on a pottery wheel. That’s not Lisa at all. Maybe I need to have a talk with this teacher and tell him what the goddamn score is. He just doesn’t get it. I do! I understand! I joined the Pottery Heads AND the Raku Art of Earth and Fire groups on Facebook! Doesn’t she know that?”

Matheson's best friend and roommate, Jake DeLong, expressed mild irritation at the mention of Stanton's name. "I never knew what he saw in that cunt. I mean, it was clear as day she was cheating on him the whole time." Staring down at two rocks glasses placed next to a full bottle of Jameson, an impatient DeLong added, "Sure, she's hot, but it's not like she ever had anything really interesting to say. The girl never really even had any friends except for those lamers she got drunk with at work. Guy just needs to sort his head out."

In addition to his newfound affection for social networking, Matheson has signed up for a Pilates course, begun taken German lessons (Stanton was raised bilingual), and now listens almost exclusively to worldbeat swank global groove bands. "I just don't think I paid enough attention the whole time," said Matheson from behind the dumpster outside Stanton's apartment. Peering through a pair of binoculars, he continued, "I should have paid attention to what she liked, you know? Shoes, tapas, US Weekly, horrid music. Maybe if I can convince her that I like all those things too, I could--"

Editor's note: At this point in the interview, Stanton emerged from her apartment, clad in a classic little black cocktail dress, and clearly in a hurry to get somewhere. Apart from the repetition of, "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!", attempts at transcribing Matheson's statements yielded nothing useful, as the tape was filled primarily with weeping and the sound of a fist striking a forehead.

Stanton, who has already heard and enjoyed the new Portishead record, could not be reached for comment, as she was spending the week upstate with Tucker Romans, a Princeton-educated investment banker, two-time Olympic gymnast, notorious pussy hound, and heir to the Romans Potted Meat fortune. Romans also recently passed the bar, elected not to enter residency at Temple University Hospital for fear of boredom, and will be running his ninth marathon next month.

John McCain has no status

After yesterdays overblown media wank about Wes Clark not insulting John McCain's military service, this was Wes Clark's facebook status:

Clark wants to do the man dance Johnny, next dance is yours. Tell your staffers to fire up the google and get you on the facebook. It's all web 2.0 up in this bitch.

These 'Hussein' Bastards

Obama Supporters Take His Name as Their Own

So this is apparently the hip new thing on Facebook. 18 and 19 year old kids changing their middle names, on Facebook, to "Hussein". Which, if you don't know because of some immunity to race-baiting GOP press releases, is the middle name of Barack Obama. The one that proves he's a muslimofascist. Apparently the plan is to convince rural, white, low education, low information Republicans who are also on Facebook, that Barack Obama isn't a muslim.

This is well intentioned, but painfully, painfully, painfully, painfully white. So much so that I'm feeling an ache in my white bone right now. In fact, I'm a little disappointed it isn't up on Stuff White People Like yet.

#105 "Appropriating ethnic names to naively identify with a political candidate and hide the fact that you're painfully white."

Being painfully white and a member of "the Facebook", I was going to do this. But sadly my middle name is already actually Hussein. Not because I'm all that into Obama, but because my parents had it legally changed to Hussein in 1988, after Saddam Hussein. You see, they're really, really into chemical warfare. My original middle name was Fritz Haber.

Sorry white, Facebook loving, eighteen year olds, I'm gonna have to let this one slide by without the coveted TB blessing. Good luck though.