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

[ahupp]

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]

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.

[staunch]

Wolfram Alpha shows 9993 days.

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

[baddox]

Python 2.7 shows 10,000 days.

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

[baddox]

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.

[hennypenny]

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.))

[orijing]

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.

[biot]

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...

[ptarjan]

It's right:

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

[kalleboo]

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]

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

[guelo]

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.

[kwamenum86]

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.

[DiabloD3]

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

[chunkyslink]

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

[rehashed]

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.

[cellis]

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]

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

[jarin]

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

[plainOldText]

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

[william42]

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

[zem]

cute little easter egg

[NHQ]

way to toast yrself zuck