Interesting bit. I’m a newbie when it comes to actually using Facebook. I’m confused with what to do with those silly little requests. Some are cute and clever but I guess I am one of the few who just don’t get it.
I edited my Facebook profile late last night before my Internet access decided to snooze on me. I cleared the content on each tab including the “relationships” section that had the marriage field checked . The entire time, I thought the system would just leave my status hidden as per the claim below the first box:
Apps Can Think for Themselves
When I got up this morning, I got text and email messages from folks extending their support. Honestly, I thought they shared my frustration towards my Internet service provider. I let it lapse throughout the day until I received a warm message from a local social media guru sharing words of encouragement about my marriage coming to an end. I was really shocked and was about to call out foul-play thinking someone hacked my profile.
So I stormed to my account and saw on the feed/story that I am no longer married along with an image of a heart broken in half.
I then asked Aaron to check his profile and he too, saw the message.
Linkbaiting Bots? I think Sooner than Later
So I guess if you point your relationship status to the empty field, their engine defaults you as being single. But that’s expected of bots. The part that amazed me was how it created a “story” with great extremes on possible consequences. It churned up a fake story so compelling, that it evoked emotion that led to an action by its readers. It got me thinking if there could be a way to use this to our advertising advantage? I’m sure I’ll figure it all out one day. But for now, I have to buy Aaron dinner.
Feel free to share with me your thoughts and opinions on this matter. The weirder and more idealistic, the better 🙂
Hahaha! I’m so glad the fairy tale isn’t over and that you and Aaron are STILL the most adorable SEO couple…
I’ve been having soooo many good laughs today around the launch of Cuil, thanks for yet another one.
Cheers,
Lorna Li
Your local social media guru ; >
07.30.08 at 11:45 pm
I remember you being the bubbliest individual and stood out like that neat-o green 2.0 card. My facebook incident can’t touch the level of amusement that Cuil shared with us all.
07.31.08 at 2:51 am
Haha – genius. I love the idea of bots creating linkbait. Especially algorithmically learning what will provoke a reaction in us and getting us to talk about it.
Meanwhile – congratulations on not being single anymore 😉
07.31.08 at 10:44 am
You have a typo in one of your sub-headers.
07.31.08 at 12:26 pm
My bad.
07.31.08 at 1:28 pm
Tom – I’m sure UK folks will be early adopters. Lots of good SEOs out there 🙂
07.31.08 at 1:57 pm
Next thing you know, bots will be adding friends so they can break up and target dating ads to their own bot pages when people click to see what’s up.
07.31.08 at 3:44 pm
My Bot is no longer Listed as Married
There you go. I got my own back on the bots and created Link Bait about them now 🙂
08.10.08 at 2:34 am
Gab’s got it. Problem here is, facebook rarely evokes much emotion out of me other than the occasional excitement coupled with “I remember her!”
08.25.08 at 4:56 pm
Hello,
This is a very cool topic. Thank you for posting it.
You can have a conversation with the facebook artificial intelligence at the website link of this comment. The facebook robot is named Alice and she
is friendly and quite advanced. Besides facebook, Alice has her own website
at 8pla.net for a cross reference.
Thanks for supporting artificial intelligence.
08.26.08 at 9:52 am
Just to let you know the reason it probably marked you as not married anymore is how the application deals with handling the switching of a relationship. Essentially based on what you changed it marks your former relationship as their “break up” marker and marks your new relationship (in this case nothing so nothing was mentioned)…Just a little fyi…not bots…just the way it is programmed…
09.02.08 at 1:52 am
Alice your AI is trying to cold read me.
10.16.08 at 2:14 am