August 27, 2008
Facebook Where I've Been Countries Map Application
This will be a rant. You have been warned.
I really really hate this Facebook application. It's also for Mysapce and some things I've never heard of. I recently found an old college friend on Facebook and she had this application installed. It was the first time I had seen it. It didn't really excite me - you scroll over China and it says "Jane Doe wants to go here". You scroll over Hawaii and it says "Jane Doe has been here." Then I saw something about how she had seen 5% of the world. I thought 'that can't be right'.
A day or two later we're catching up and she says "I've been to 5% of the world which I think is pretty sad." I thought 'can she really think that?'
From her map it looks like she has been to about 10 states in America plus Ontario. Basically you fill in the information and the map shows people where you've been, where you've lived, and where you want to go. Then it 'calculates' how much of the world you've seen.
It's pretty ridiculous as far as I can tell. The US gets divided into states and Canada gets divided into provinces, but China is just China. Only the US, UK, Canada, and Australia get divided up. You can actually choose cities, but they don't seem to have smaller towns and I didn't see a chance to enter cities in China or wherever. Mostly North America I guess.
Now I was in China for 2 or 3 days. I saw 2 airports, 1 city, 1 dirty massage (well almost), Confucius' home, and a mountain. Have I seen China? I lived in New York for 12 years. Have I seen 5% of New York? Can you now calculate how much of the world I've seen?
I couldn't get the stupid thing to tell me how much of the world it thinks I've seen, but if 10 US states plus Ontario = 5% I must be up around 20% or maybe 30%. Yet I know that I've seen way less than 5%.
In the end, it's not the map that shows people where you've traveled I have trouble with. It's that only 4 countries get divided into states / provinces / whatever. And that they give you a crazy percentage of the world you've 'seen'.
Tripadvisor paid 3 million for this thing and I'm sure the exposure and advertising and awareness they get is totally worth it for them. But I still hate it. Better to just leave a comment here if you ask me.
Posted by James Trotta at August 27, 2008 9:50 PM | TrackBack
GET A FRIGGIN GRIP!!!
Life must really boring for some people....
Who on Earth cares that the application isn't 100% accurate or doesn't break every country down to states and cities.
Well, just to let you know, you can chose in the options menu to disable breaking the US/UK/Canada/Australia into states, which is a good thought. However, i dont know if this is reflected in the overall world visited percentage.
more importantly though, i think this app is added by people because people LOVE to brag about where they have been - myself included. At times, when you step across a border, a major motivation might just be so that you can tell your friends you were in this exotic and distant country. So this facebook application lets you broadcast your accomplishments to the world, and therefor fufills the purpose it was added for.
Posted by: woody at August 28, 2008 1:29 AMXman - I care. If you're going to do something, I think it should be done correctly.
Woody - Good point. I agree.
But I still don't like it because I think it's misleading. By the way, anyone who wants to my Facebook friend is welcome to send me a request. Just add a note saying you read the blog - otherwise I spend hours trying to remember how I know someone I never even met...
Posted by: James Trotta at August 28, 2008 2:27 AM