We noticed a new poll appearing on the right-hand side of the Facebook homepage – dispersed inside the ads. It asks users how well they know certain friends and provides these five options: One of my best friends; I know them well; We sometimes meet; An acquaintance; and I don’t know them.

Facebook says your response is private, and it will be used to show better content in the news feed.

As you know, Facebook’s News Feed algorithm “uses several factors to determine top stories, including the number of comments, who posted the story, and what type of post it is.”

And if you don’t like the mix of what you’re seeing – you can always go fiddle with it manually. But this little questionnaire is just one way Facebook is attempting to better learn who you really want to hear from inside your feed.

Facebook’s News Feed product is in the process of getting an upgrade, of course. Back in March, the company unveiled the new news feed – a much more visual experience that gives users more control over what types of feeds they browse. Alongside the default News Feed that pulls in top stories and recent stories, users will be able to browse feeds of “all friend”: activity, as well as hyper-specific feeds for photos, music, games, groups, and more.

But the New News Feed rollout has been slow. Facebook warned us that it would be – and they weren’t lying.

But it looks like Facebook is trying to make its algorithms better, so that your news feed will continue to show you the most relevant content. And they’re making me make decisions about just how much I like some of my friends.

OPPA CHANDLER STYLE.

Comedy Central UK created this amazing little mashup for a New Year’s Eve Friends promo which features two incredibly popular internet memes. First, Gangnam Style (of course). Second, the Chandler dances on things meme, which as the title suggests, consists of Chandler Bing doing his little dance on various objects. Pure internet gold.

This is probably the best use of the Chandler dancing meme since someone decided that Chandler Bing needed to dance on the Bing logo. Which he does.

[via The Daily What]

“Whether a silly or inappropriate picture, a tweet, or a status update, everyone has friends or is associated with an entity who does questionable things both online and in-person — the “culinary snapper,” the “needless quoter,” the “unnecessary hash tagger,” etc. The only way to previously express disdain for these actions, however, was by writing something in the comment section of a post, or by retweeting with commentary,” says Defriendtion.

Well, not anymore. Now there’s an app for calling out people who make an ass of themselves on Facebook. It’s the next best thing to a dislike button, which we all know we’re never ever ever going to get.

The app is easy to use. All you have to do is choose the offending friend and then select their Facebook crime. The app offers some generic reasons such as “Because I disagree” and “Because this is ridiculous,” but it also lets you add your own reason for defriendtion. After that, you simply choose the amount of time they’ll spend in defriendtion and post some evidence (a photo, link, or quote).

Once you submit the form, the defriendtion slip will be posted to the offending friend’s Timeline, where it will show up on news feeds everywhere. You can even link it to Twitter to spread the shaming even more. I’m not sure if the app will catch on, but this promotional video is pretty damn funny, so there’s reason to hope:

When you sentence someone to defriendtion, a disclaimer reads that the service is “meant to be used in good fun” and advises users to refrain from “being a bully.” Despite this, I’m sure things could get pretty ugly. When it comes to public shaming, things usually do.

[via AllFacebook]

I’m sure that if you were asked to list the top 9 things that people do on Facebook that really grind your gears, you’d list 15. But thanks to a survey commissioned by Australian company Amaysim, we have a nice, clean roundup of the top actions that are likely to lead to an unfriending.

1. Using Facebook as your diary.  42% said that this was the most annoying thing that could be done on the social network.  Before you post some trivial about your day-to-day life, remember to take the number of people you think care about your activities and divide by two.
2. Food photography.  40% of those surveyed hate it when you incessantly post pictures of your meals, no matter how exquisite you think they are.  There’s a place filled with food photos where you’ll never be called annoying for being filled with culinary enthusiasm, and it’s called Instagram.
3. Copious check-ins. Suzy was here.  Suzy was here with Sally.  Suzy was here with Sally and 4 other.  Stop.  I haven’t left my couch all day and you’re making me feel like a slob.  38% found this annoying.
4. Relationship posts.   29% of those surveyed don’t want to hear about your boyfriend, girlfriend, or crush.  Also, your husband, wife, or domestic partner either.  Let’s add friend with benefit to that list as well.
5. Game invites.  This is a no-brainer.  26% of respondents hate you when you request that they they join you in a rousing game of CityVille, and we’re surprised it’s only 26%.
6. Inspirational Quotes.  So, Marilyn Monroe said that you need to be a girl with sass?  Albert Einstein said that Obama is a socialist?  25% of your Facebook friends are rolling their eyes.
7. Vaguebooking. Say what you mean.  Passive aggressive updates drew the ire of 24%.
8. Baby photos.  According to 21% of those surveyed, your baby is only cute to you.
9. Posting terrible photos of your friends.  I know it makes you look better by comparison to be standing next to your derpy friend, but cut it out.  13% of people really hate that.

Of course, this is in no way an all-inclusive list of crap that can get your unfriended on Facebook. But if you’re looking at ways to be a better Facebooker, it’s a good place to start.

[via News.com.au]

The project is a comedy called “We’re The Millers”, which stars Jennifer Anniston and Jason Sudeikis as a prostitute and a pot dealer on the run. They tap Roberts to pretend to be their daughter while they drive cross-country, presumably on the lam. Roberts gushed about working with the stars on Twitter recently, calling it a “dream come true”.

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Emma Roberts
@RobertsEmma

SO happy to be a part of We’re The Millers!! Dream come true to work with Jennifer Aniston!

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21 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Of course, Roberts is descended from Hollywood royalty; Julia Roberts is her aunt, and Eric Roberts is her father. Looks like no one is immune from being starstruck when they get to hang out with someone they admire.

Roberts’ latest film is due out this year; “Adult World” stars Cloris Leachman and John Cusack, and is where she met her boyfriend, “American Horror Story” star Evan Peters.

I also love Game of Thrones, but it’s doubtful that I’ll meet any resistance on that one.

Putting the two together produces exactly what you’d think – a pure delight.

The internet is filled with its share of TV show/movie reimaginings that attempt to paint the original in a new light. Viral vids like “Shining,” a classic that turns Kubrick’s The Shining into a family comedy, have proven that all you need is some clever editing and the right music and anything can be misrepresented.

That maxim holds true here, as I’m sure you already know what song you’re about to hear as the new soundtrack for Westeros.

Oh, and just because, here’s Chandler Bing dancing on the Bing logo:

[via UPROXX]

We recently changed the way we count the number of people you are friends with to include some accounts that are not currently active on the service. It is important to note, that while we are showing different counts, no additional user information will be available. Due to our internal infrastructure we can provide an even faster experience for those that use our service by showing these modified counts.

Facebook said that the reason they show you your deactivated friends on your list is so that you can defriend them and to “prevent any possible security risk posed by temporarily deactivated friends.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Although my Facebook Timeline says that I have 593 friends, I actually only have around 564 at the moment. It appears that the discrepancy is due to friends that I once had – but have now vanished from the Facebook landscape. You know, the ones that got away – the deactivators.

And apparently, I’m not the only one. One of my Facebook buddies recently posted a status that read “Apparently, FB did a recount today and gave me 120 new friends…WTF.” Tons of other users responded with similar stories. “I got like…40 new friends,” said one user. Another said, “yeah, I gained like 100 myself.”

It appears that the extra friends appearing on people’s friend tally are merely phantoms, sadly. You’ve haven’t had an overnight boost in popularity – the increase in your total friends is coming from the inclusion of deactivated accounts in the figure.

One reddit user posted that Facebook was showing deactivated accounts on your friends list, to which they received a reply:

“Yep. And my friend count jumped up more than 30. I just happened to see it the other day, and saw a friend post that there number had mysteriously gone up so I checked.”

A quick look at my friends list confirmed that Facebook is displaying deactivated accounts in my friends list:

Clicking on the names of one of those deactivated friends prompts this message from Facebook:

It’s true that only you can see your deactivated friends on your friends list. If anyone else looks at your friends list, they’ll simply see a blank whitespace where a friend should be:

Facebook explains the difference between deactivation and deletion of accounts in their Help Center.

[With deactivation], people on Facebook will not be able to search for you. Some information, like messages you sent, may still be visible to others.

We save your profile (timeline) information (friends, photos, interests, etc.), just in case you want to come back to Facebook at some point. If you choose to reactivate your account, the information on your profile (timeline) will be there when you come back.

While your former friends who have deactivated their accounts are indeed invisible to everyone but you, they are still being included in your friend count. The rash of users commenting that their friend count jumped up overnight would lead us to believe that this is something new – that deactivated friends we not always counted in your total. I’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this article accordingly.

There is a sharing behavior that is similar to what happens in the real physical world that disproves the past marketing practice of using influencers to reach audiences. The behavior can be witnessed on both BuzzFeed and StumbleUpon. Online sharing, even viral, takes place most effectively through many small groups not by an influencer or even a few influencers making single posts or tweets. Influencers can reach a wide audience but their effect is actually only for a short time. Content really goes viral when it is shared beyond particular spheres of influence and spreads out across the social web by regular people sharing the content with their friends.

The largest stories on Facebook come from the intimate sharing of people, not from one person sharing in hopes of getting thousands to follow. Sharing is often compared to “word-of-mouth,” but when something is recommended in a casual conversation it’s far more memorable than if a bullhorn is used to spread the message. Intimate sharing is remarkably more effective than broadcasting. Sharing directly with friends is the most common outlet for content. To get content shared, marketers and publishers should focus on content that will resonate and get people talking to their colleagues, friends and families. Social media is about engaging people in conversations, like the real offline world.

Yesterday on the Facebook developers blog, the company announced the ability for app developers to implement friend tagging and location tags to Facebook updates made through apps. It’s the same as if you were updating your status, now it’s just through apps as well.

To get into the nitty gritty of it all, the new features are:

Setting location on posts — with Open Graph actions and objects or with stream publish stories
Tag friends on posts — with Open Graph actions or with stream publish stories
Improved search for places — including optional latitude, longitude, and distance parameters as well as support for finding posts from friends around a place
Read posts with location — using the FQL table location_post

Controlling tags on apps is the same as it is on Facebook. Users can select who they want to share their activity with through the apps.

As an added bonus, Facebook now lets developers who create photo or video apps access Open Graph. This allows users to display large user generated photos and videos on their timeline.

For the specific code that developers need to use in their apps to enable these features, check out the blog post for all the details.

“3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!”

He also tweeted, asking a follower a question:

“free this week for a quick gossip/prep before I go destroy America? x”

Upon arrival to the states, the two were detained for extensive questioning. Van Bryan was held in a cell with immigrant drug peddlers, while Bunting was detained in a separate cell. Van Bryan explained to authorities that the term “destroy” was British vernacular for “party”. The two were later released and sent home on a plane.

Both Bunting and Van Bryan feel U.S. officials took their seemingly innocent tweets too far. They say they were simply on holiday to America and just wanted to have some fun.

With this recent news, do you feel government has taken security too far or do you feel that you can never be too careful? Let us know in the comments.