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Oooh, now that's the way to get real names + addresses out of people. Neat. It also involves social pressure -- now not giving away your address will mean rejec

Oooh, now that's the way to get real names + addresses out of people. Neat. It also involves social pressure -- now not giving away your address will mean rejecting a gift.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Not to mention those among us who may have been less than truthful about their birthdates. I swear, I really was born on 1/1/1970. I'm a epoch baby! Ok, maybe not.
- lmm 14y ago
  If you lied to facebook about your birthdate, your friends will get incorrect birthday notifications from facebook. This surprises you why?
3am_hackernews 14y ago
I think at this point you will just have to hide your birthday from fb.
- gfodor 14y ago
  And miss out on getting a bunch of stuff from my friends? Ha!
theunixbeard 14y ago
That's an interesting insight! I'm curious, does anyone know how much more valuable a user is (in $$$) if they have a confirmed real name + address vs. unconfirmed?
- kerryfalk 14y ago
  Hugely... Especially if you're developing a payments platform.
gsharma 14y ago
I thought about the address part too. However, don't they already have locations from smart phones to determine where you live, where you work and where you hang out.
rm999 14y ago
Doing anything with addresses is risky from a legal and privacy perspective - I doubt facebook can get away with snailmail spam without permission, for example. Nor do I think they want to do that. For geographic targeting IPs and user-entered information are usually good enough. Also, as gsharma mentions, facebook has tons of geographic information on users from mobile, which is better because it reflects where you actually spend your time and doesn't go stale. I doubt facebook will extract much value from physical addresses. Rather, I think this is purely part of their monetization strategy. They can double the average user's contribution to their revenue from a single five dollar purchase. Also, I'm wondering if this is facebook's attempt at building a payments platform. I think this industry will be worth tons of money in the short and long term future.
- Jamiecon 14y ago
  I've believed that building a payments platform is the road to riches for Facebook for a long time. They have such a headstart on the fraud and identity issue, and they have both the merchants via FB connect, and the customers (obviously).
- jfager 14y ago
  FB doesn't want real names and addresses so they can start sending out snailmail spam, they want them so that they can start user matching with advertising partners' CRM databases.

Oooh, now that's the way to get real names + addresses out of people. Neat. It also involves social pressure -- now not giving away your address will mean rejecting a gift.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

Not to mention those among us who may have been less than truthful about their birthdates. I swear, I really was born on 1/1/1970. I'm a epoch baby! Ok, maybe not.

lmm 14y ago
If you lied to facebook about your birthdate, your friends will get incorrect birthday notifications from facebook. This surprises you why?

3am_hackernews 14y ago

I think at this point you will just have to hide your birthday from fb.

gfodor 14y ago
And miss out on getting a bunch of stuff from my friends? Ha!

theunixbeard 14y ago

That's an interesting insight! I'm curious, does anyone know how much more valuable a user is (in $$$) if they have a confirmed real name + address vs. unconfirmed?

kerryfalk 14y ago
Hugely... Especially if you're developing a payments platform.

gsharma 14y ago

I thought about the address part too. However, don't they already have locations from smart phones to determine where you live, where you work and where you hang out.

rm999 14y ago

Doing anything with addresses is risky from a legal and privacy perspective - I doubt facebook can get away with snailmail spam without permission, for example. Nor do I think they want to do that. For geographic targeting IPs and user-entered information are usually good enough. Also, as gsharma mentions, facebook has tons of geographic information on users from mobile, which is better because it reflects where you actually spend your time and doesn't go stale. I doubt facebook will extract much value from physical addresses. Rather, I think this is purely part of their monetization strategy. They can double the average user's contribution to their revenue from a single five dollar purchase. Also, I'm wondering if this is facebook's attempt at building a payments platform. I think this industry will be worth tons of money in the short and long term future.

Jamiecon 14y ago
I've believed that building a payments platform is the road to riches for Facebook for a long time. They have such a headstart on the fraud and identity issue, and they have both the merchants via FB connect, and the customers (obviously).
jfager 14y ago
FB doesn't want real names and addresses so they can start sending out snailmail spam, they want them so that they can start user matching with advertising partners' CRM databases.