The many faces of Facebook

What would it look like if all of Facebook’s 1.2 billion users were stuffed into one massive profile picture? Now, we have a chance to find out.

Created by programmer Natalie Rojas, a website brings together all of Facebook’s users’ profile pictures into one collective mosaic. On the website, you can zoom in to the mosaic to view other people’s profile pictures from all over the world and by connecting with your Facebook account, you can find out where you are, where your friends are and who your first friend to be put into the mosaic was. Hovering over a face can give you their name and their face# (representing the order the Facebook profiles were created). Mark Zuckerberg, current Facebook CEO and one of the Facebook founders, is face #1.

In the description, Rojas offers the following explanation: “Because there we are, all mixed up: large families, women wearing burkas, many Leo Messis, people supporting same-sex marriages or r4bia, chihuahuas, Indian gods, tourists pushing the Leaning Tower of Pisa, selfies, newborns, Ferraris, studio black and white portraits, lots of weddings but zero divorces, ID photos, faces framed in hearts, best friends, manga characters, political logos, deep looks, love messages, eyes memes, smiles, sweet grandparents and some not-yet-censured pictures.” I thought the description was very reminiscent and touching… as when we go about our busy daily lives, we often forget to appreciate the diversity of the people around us, and appreciate the fact that even though we have different ethnicities, habits, dialogues, thoughts, feelings and opinions, we are still all human beings and in us is the wonderful and inspiring spark of human life. As for the privacy concerns people are bringing up, Rojas aptly replies that “Relax. We’re not breaking any Facebook privacy rule because we don’t store anyone’s private information, pictures or names.” While it is true that when you click any of the Facebook profiles on the mosaic, it takes you to the original Facebook profile on Facebook itself but its nothing that people can’t do while browsing Facebook themselves. Also, if a profile is marked private, no information that isn’t publicly available is shown here or when following the link to the full profile.

Check out The Faces of Facebook website for yourself, and reply in the comments as to how you found the experience and which number you are.

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