Facebook is showing a real time like count on Mark Zuckerberg's status updates

http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/999900229761

by schlichtm • 15 years ago

57 43 15 years ago

facebook.com

william42• 15 years ago

Seems buggy to me; it doesn't register my like and unlike very well.

ahupp• 15 years ago

This has worked for a while, it's just much more apparent on his posts:

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=496077348919

schlichtm• 15 years ago

ahupp - That is referencing the real time comments (where comments are pushed to you without reloading the page).

This is different. Facebook is showing the actual like count change in real time. This is fantastic feedback for big brands.

aristus• 15 years ago

You might want to check the credits at the end of the post ahupp linked to. :)

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

"big brands"? What brand is getting enough traffic to justify the overhead of truly realtime like updates, besides Facebook or Zuck?

staunch• 15 years ago

Wolfram Alpha shows 9993 days.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+14%2C+1984+to+today...

orijing• 15 years ago

That's wrong if you do the math yourself. Try this: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Sept+30%2C+1984+to+toda...

It says 9855 days, which is 365 * (2011 - 1984), which is obviously not right and missing leap years.

abduhl2• 15 years ago

The correct formula that Wolfram should be using here is floor((cur_yr - old_yr)x365.25), assuming you are interested only in the recent past where the 365.25 holds true.

As an aside, floor(365.25x(2011-1984))+138 gives 9,999 days elapsed which would make today the 10,000th day, as stated by Zuckerberg.

EDIT: this formula only works when you begin on a day after a leap day during a leap year, thanks hennypenny

hennypenny5• 15 years ago

I think what he actually wanted was http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+14+1984+plus+9999+d...

Which would be 10000 days inclusive of May 14. (Wolfram says in this case that it was Sept. 29, which is correct. (ie Mark is celebrating the wrong day. But kudos to him for being aware of it in the first place. I celebrated mine July 23.))

baddox3• 15 years ago

Python 2.7 shows 10,000 days.

    >>> datetime(2011, 9, 30) - datetime(1984, 5, 14)
    datetime.timedelta(10000)

baddox3• 15 years ago

Also, Ruby 1.9.2 shows 10,000 days.

    irb(main):017:0> (Time.utc(2011, 9, 30) - Time.utc(1984, 5, 14)) / 60 / 60 / 24
    => 10000.0

hennypenny5• 15 years ago

By subtracting the day he was born you're not counting it. You're making it 'day 0'. 2 days - 0 days = 2 days.

baddox3• 15 years ago

Wolfram Alpha has a bug.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+14%2C+1984 shows it being 10,000 days ago (if you view it before midnight on the 1st), but performing explicit ranges shows a different number.

hennypenny5• 15 years ago

If I were to say 1 day ago, I would mean yesterday, which would mean we were on day 2. Thus yesterday would have been day 10001.

ptarjan• 15 years ago

It's right:

http://nerdiversary.com/1984-05-14

biot• 15 years ago

What units are "[specific date] to today" in? Does converting that to days take into account leap years? A more natural query:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=days+since+May+14%2C+19...

kalleboo• 15 years ago

The like updates are timed improperly and the number keeps going down and then up and then down. I got a lot of shit at work for a similar bug on a JS ticker, I'm glad I'm not the only one!

nicholasreed• 15 years ago

Could this be because some people (at 120,000 now) are unliking and dropping the count for a moment?

dreamux• 15 years ago

More likely a propagation/aggregation issue.

jarin2• 15 years ago

It's probably just because it's firing off a ton of ajax requests and just displaying the results as they come back, regardless of the request order.

guelo• 15 years ago

Doing a little network sniffing this seems incredibly inefficient. Apparently the page is polling the server up to 8 times per second and getting back a 7-800 byte chunk of Javascript. The infrastructure to support this at Facebook's scale is mind boggling. This is the kind of stuff that Websockets was invented for.

kwamenum862• 15 years ago

web sockets or, in most browsers, long polling. long polling is easy to implement and they must already have the infrastructure built out since they have chat...silly Facebook.

[edit] just took a closer look at the network activity. this really is the worst way to implement this feature. polling several times a second, sending back a bloated response, and updating much more of the DOM than necessary. this is just terribly hacky. probably done very quickly at the last minute though.

wgx2• 15 years ago

Zuck maybe wrote it himself for fun?

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

"most browsers"?

Not really. Between Firefox and Chrome's market share, the "right way" is far more in line with WebSockets. Facebook doesn't use WebSockets. It's not even an issue of browser support but rather the lack of proper progressive enhancement on Facebook's part. Also, sorry, but I laugh at the notion that "long polling is easy to implement". Even if it is on some level, it doesn't make the right strategies any harder (nor does it excuse the flaws or performance issues of current long-polling techniques), nor does it excuse the lack of progressive enhancement.

DiabloD3• 15 years ago

I don't have a Facebook account, does it only work for logged in people?

chunkyslink• 15 years ago

Probably, I don't click anything with Facebook in the URL.

cellis• 15 years ago

If they keep adding people at the rate they are, in 10 years they'll have wired together the entire human race. I'm not sure if I should be scared or thrilled or skeptical.

hack_edu• 15 years ago

But they won't and can't. These sorts of hyperbole are getting really old.

jarin2• 15 years ago

In 20 years, they'll have quadruple the number of people that have ever lived!

NHQ• 15 years ago

way to toast yrself zuck

zem• 15 years ago

cute little easter egg

rehashed• 15 years ago

It has done the exact same thing for my friends posts for a looooong time. This isn;t specific to his account, its just more prominent because there are more people "liking" it.

plainOldText• 15 years ago

On my client if js is disabled then yes the count is "real time" otherwise nothing happens.

Facebook is showing a real time like count on Mark Zuckerberg's status updates

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