Thursday 20 August 2009

Grr, Facebook

Facebook kinda sucks. It's recommending a friend for me, a woman who I met in Norway six years ago and who I've emailed once or twice since then (and I ran into her walking across the harbour bridge one day in Sydney some years ago. Apparently she was in Australia on holidays and she was leaving that afternoon on, coincidentally, the same flight as Reto. This was back in our long-distance days, so Reto was always coming and going, but still. What a coincidence. I was surprised we recognised each other, actually). Anyway, an email or two and years later here she is being offered to me by Facebook. I wouldn't have thought I even had her in my current email address book (I swapped emails a few years ago and I wouldn't have thought she would have made the list to come with me) but I guess I do and I guess Facebook made a note of her at some point and never threw it away.

I feel a little bit like I invited Facebook over for a nice cup of tea once and it hid in my cupboard and went through my stuff forevermore instead of leaving. Grr.


update: now they're recommending me some woman I've never heard of, have no friends in common with and don't seem to share anything else with either (like the country we live in or come from or anything).

4 comments:

Ms Mac said...

I have another Facebook friend going through the same thing. It has recommended she makes friends with someone she bought a bike off years and years ago and referred to once in a blog a few years ago. That's a little bit spooky, really.

Tawns said...

Also, have you noticed how they tailor the ads to what you search on on the internet? All my ads at one stage were about losing belly fat (which was coincidentally right about when I was doing Weight Watchers) and I mentioned it to a mate who said she never saw a weight-related ad but had loads and loads about babies (coincidentally when she was about to give birth to her second child). Stupid privacy-invading facebook!

rswb said...

Yeah, I've really noticed the ads on websites being targetted specifically at me, or who my computer makes people think I am. I see ads all the time in french and german, but on websites like smh.com.au. Which makes me think something funny's going on.

Or not funny.

haikusan said...

Just further proof, as
If we needed any more,
That facebook eats souls.
(cue: prolonged maniacal laughter)