Awesome Russian Pavilion and Facebook ‘Like’ Crackdown

Reading the news and looking at the awesome pictures some people took of Russia’s futuristic giant QR Code Pavilion which was introduced at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, we would like note that QR Codes just got even more awesome than we thought possible. The entire interior of the building is covered with huge QR Codes that can be scanned with a smartphone camera! The codes will show mobile phone users floor plans and images (I am assuming this, of course) of Skolkovo. Skolkovo is, apparently, a city dedicated completely to science and technology and development is currently underway. Simply awesome.

On another front, if you have not heard, Facebook is getting serious about clamping down on fake ‘likes’ on the giant online social networking site. One may wonder about the triviality of the crackdown. Well, you see, Facebook has been banking in on ad placements from companies and individuals who wanted to promote their pages. They have a purchase-as-you-go system which some people prefer over Google Adwords.

But their decision to crackdown the fake ‘likes’ has nothing to do with Adwords – it has more to do with delivering better and more accurate results for their advertisers.

Facebook wants to know that when they offer the advertising means to its’ users, advertisers are getting REAL clicks from REAL people, and not some robots or malicious programs. Therefore, you can say that it is their attempt at restoring credibility to their system. A report stated that pages and accounts may expect a drop in ‘likes’ of about one percent once the cleanup is complete. The announcement made via their official blog post attracted attention from advertisers and major search engines alike.

Because of the growing number of pages and users on Facebook, bringing things back to reality is actually quite necessary. They need to try to correctly or as accurately as possible identify accounts created by the ever-growing black market who are the actual mastermind these suspicious accounts.

The black market is also creative enough to come up with programs that forces people to automatically ‘like’ a page even though their intention was to view a posted image or video on Facebook. Some of these auto-likes go unnoticed by the owner. And of course, by performing this crackdown, users of Facebook will also be assured of less spam and unsolicited messages from users who do not follow the unwritten rules related blatant online advertising and push-sale tactics.

In other words, we may have more peace of mind when using Facebook in the future.