Tuesday
Jan262010
Facebook Tracking
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 6:30PMOk, I just noticed something ... 
Facebook's "internal URL" (for lack of a better word) is reflected by your entry page, not your account; a # sign is then displayed - as you visit each page.
For instance, I have www.facebook.com/TalkNerdyToMeLover bookmarked on Firefox. When I surf Facebook profiles, it keeps my entry page on lock, and then enters in the URL for each subsequent page view. Ex. www.facebook.com/TalkNerdyToMeLover#/JenFriel is displayed when I view my own profile page.
Anyone know why they would code it like this? It's gotta be for tracking, right?
(PS. the image has absolutely nothing to do with this post, except for the fact that it is AWESOME!! HA!)
Reader Comments (4)
I noticed that too. It can result in some really funky URLs. They have to be doing some kind of tracking with it, because a site of this magnitude wouldn't have just random poor coding like that.
Absolutely, its gotta be!! But why Facebook!? Why?! What do you know that we have yet to learn ... teach us the way ... haha
That's possibly, but I think they can track you regardless of the URL. They've been tracking us for a while. Check out this interview with a Facebook employee:
http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/
I agree with JK, there are much easier ways of tracking people with single pixel trackers.
Could be the way their architecture just routes folks.
Plus, I would be shocked if they were not cookie dropping on the site for tracking as well, and then just fall back to a pixel tracker.