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Facebook User Numbers? CRAZY Any explanation?

2 points by ryandelk ↗ HN
I was messing around on Facebook today and found something pretty interesting.

If you type the following into a comment box: @ symbol followed by [number:], Facebook automatically replaces the symbols with names.

For example: if you enter @[4:] into a comment box, it will automatically change the comment to read 'Mark Zuckerberg.' Entering @[5:] will render the text 'Chris Hughes' and entering @[6:] will render the text 'Dustin Moskovitz.'

Any explanation for this? Theories? I can't imagine this is intentional on Facebook's part. Pretty interesting, IMO!

5 comments

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oski
those numbers are facebook user ids
ryandelk
Right, it's just really interesting that they are accessible in this way.
jimminy
It was discovered that you could embed user images for chat based on user id, or reference, a few weeks ago [1]. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't related to this as well. I haven't seen this before, but I do agree it's pretty interesting.

[1]: http://mashable.com/2011/12/26/facebook-chat-gimmick/

Turing_Machine
So who are numbers 1-3? Surely not the Winkelvoss brothers...
ryandelk
Numbers 1-3 don't exist. It's very odd.