Today we caught up with Andrei Alexandrescu for a “10 Question” interview. He is a Romanian born research engineer at Facebook living in the US, you can contact him on his website erdani.com or @incomputable.We will talk about some of the juicy stuff that going on at Facebook, so let’s get started.Hello Andrei, welcome on Server-Side Magazine.1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where and what do you work?Who am I? Ah, the coffee breath of one talking about himself. Well let me try. I’m a hacker living in the US, originally from Romania. In 2001 I wrot...

Hot data: An IT technician checks the network servers at a data farm. Alamy Photograph: Juice Images/AlamyPhysics has Newton's first law ("Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed"). The equivalent forinternet services is simpler, though just as general in its applicability: it says that there is no such thing as a free lunch.The strange thing is that most users of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other "free" services seem to be only dimly aware of this law. F...

The problem with shit work is that no one likes doing it, but an awful lot of people say they do.Shit workTake a look at Twitter Lists. The idea behind Twitter Lists was that users would carefully cultivate lists on Twitter of different accounts they’re following (or not following). These could be divided into lists like Family, Friends, Coworkers, People I Find Mildly Attractive, People To Murder, People I Find Mildly Attractive And Want To Murder, and so on.The problem is that, anecdotally, no one seems to use Lists. Twitter is filled with users who have carefully made a few lists, an...

Today’s biggest trends — the mobile web, social media, gamification, real-time — are changing the landscape for business. Consumers are connecting with one another, and in the process they’re becoming increasingly empowered and influential.How these connected consumers discover, share, and communicate is different than the way they used to. This change requires businesses to rethink their approach. Organizations need to examine the impact of technology on consumer behavior and understand how connected consumers make decisions and influence the decisions of their pee...

More and more I see articles popping up that bash social networks for "violating" our privacy and selling our information to advertisers. Inevitably, Facebook has been at the center of many of these "scandals". Today on HN I came across this interviewwith Disconnect co-founder Casey Oppenheim and I just don't get it.In it, he bashes Facebook (and other online advertisers) for using our information in order to serve up targeted ads. He points out that many of the " “free” services aren’t really free — we pay with our data". At one point he even says that "Facebook...

From left: The late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Larry Page, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. | Photos courtesy of David Paul Morris/Getty Images (Jobs); Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (Zuckerberg); Chip East/Reuters (Page); Mario Tama/Getty Images (Bezos).Gilbert Wong, the mayor of Cupertino, California, calls his city council to order. "As you know, Cupertino is very famous for Apple Computer, and we're very honored to have Mr. Steve Jobs come here tonight to give a special presentation," the mayor says. "Mr. Jobs?" And there he is, in his black turtlenec...

Interested in sharing your B2B content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or delicious? Do multi-option social media sharing tools such as ShareThis seem like overkill?That was our conclusion after researching the social media sites on which readers are most likely to share content from our blog focused on solutions to a wide range of business challenges, What Works for Business. We decided that Facebook, LinkedIn, delicious, and Twitter were the sites on which our target business audience is most likely to share business-related content. Rather than using the ShareThis widget ...

Copy and paste the following code blocks into your site and replace '<url>' with the link you want to Share.Text link:<script>function fbs_click() {u=location.href;t=document.title;window.open('http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(u)+'&t='+encodeURIComponent(t),'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');return false;}</script><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<;url>" onclick="return fbs_click()" target="_blank">Share on Facebook</a>Small icon and text:<script>function fbs_click() {u=location.h...