This is funny. At 10:29 am PST this morning all 2,000 members of the Facebook Developers Group got a message that said “Hi” as the subject and “test” in the body. Since then we’ve received multiple “tips” from Facebook developers with variations of the message “I wonder if they plan on sending out some news soon?”
Well, Facebook should be announcing their annual F8 developer conference some time soon. But our guess is this was just what it said it was – a test message that was sent out by accident.
So many companies would be stoked to see conspiracy theories pop up like this around an accidental test message. What I love about this story isn’t the accidental message, it’s the excited response from the developers.
I didn’t realize that getting the ‘test’ e-mail was to such a select group.
Wow, talk about the least exciting news article this year, this could be it!
Sorry Michael, apparently I’m feeling a bit snarky today. I usually only respond when I have something to add to the conversation.
I am surprised that their are only 2000 members in the developer group. Makes me wonder about the proposed ’success’ of the Facebook platform. I would have thought the group would have had way more members.
Currently fb’s group product literally sucks. Homepage of groups app http://www.face...oups.php?ref=sb is nothing but useless. Nice to know fb is doing something to fix that app.
Actually there are 4 million members, it’s a bug that’s showing 2000 members, if you switch the tabs in the group to “officers” you will see that there are 3.9 million members in that group.
They posted that they are going to post a new update this afternoon on the Facebook Developer page, stating developers could check it out on http://www.beta.facebook.com
Aaron
Yeah I got that. Fuck facebooks app platform. THe new directory is awful, and the whole verification thing is a huge waste of money. The only way to find certain apps now is with the search. Such a joke
It sounds like you’re just bitter because your whole marketing plan was based on you not having a marketing plan. Learn how to properly advertise your product and then bitch about it later.
Actually b may be right. I got verified but have seen almost unnoticeable increase in traffic since then. seems like a waste of money to me, unless we are given some kind of priority in their new payments system
Mike, you dont’ have to make a blog post for every Tweet :}
I read my test message seconds before I saw this article. My guess is there isn’t anything cooking, the best group to test things with would seem to be the developers. But why wouldn’t they just make a group and try it then?
see.
test
Dude you work for Facebook, bad form
agree! plus, Vernal is the guy who took the facebook.com/mike vanity url, which was supposed to be mine.
test.
LOL
I am not a part of the developer group (but I am a developer) and received the message.
I am curious as to how I, a non developer of any kind, got this message in my inbox. Was this also a mistake?
Cracks me up that the subject is “hi”.
theres no way its only 2000. i got a message and i only signed up to be a ‘developer’ when the new facebook design came out so i could keep the old one.
When I saw the subject of this post, I thought that perhaps Facebook had become self-aware, and was now sending messages on its own. Oh well.
facebook is skynet
I got it a few hours ago.
For some reason had a feeling that somehow that msg will make it to TC.
This is not a test.
You were right. It fortunately reduced twitter PR.
Dam… facebook sends out a hi – test and then they get a TC post… must be nice to be a billion dollar company…. lol
TC will write about anything that happens on facebook or twitter, really. Absolutely anything. Even some useless pointless bug reports. Shocker.
Mike, sorry, you’re right, “hi” isn’t the launch of f8, Hawaii edition. This was just a bug. We were testing some functionality with sending Facebook messages and some test messages with a subject “hi” were inadvertently sent to various members of the Facebook Developer community. It’s been fixed.
I also got the message.
I guess it is basically because of the beta version @ http://www.beta.facebook.com
and also maybe because of the much talk about facebook personal page like this http://www.facebook.com/mark
Let’s wait and see what’s up
i got the msg too……..:D
How do you get “What I love about this story isn’t the accidental message…” from “But our guess is this was just what it said it was – a test message that was sent out by accident?”
So, in one sentence, you’ve decided and broadcast that, yes, it was an accident!
I got the msg too, and promptly disgarded it, but leave it to you to make a post out of it!
Michael, didn’t your mother tell you that if you didn’t have anything good to say…
It was a virus. All your base are belong to us. Wahahaha!
I have no idea if this is related in any way…
In my Facebook inbox, I have one unread message but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. It’s kind of annoying.
I am a developer, and am part of the developer group but I didn’t receive any text messages.
+1 ditto
I can’t believe my RSS reader was clogged up with this test blog post…
Apparently there is something wrong going there, im still getting 1 new message in the inbox while there is no new messages, please fix
I got the message and thought it was some virus / scam and didn’t click on it. How did we rule out a security hole already?
When I check facebook using my ipod touch I can see the test message.. when I log in with my computer, it’s nowhere to be seen and for over a day now it’s said “1 new message”. Argh.