Today (in fact, just a few minutes ago), Facebook officially launched their “Pages” platform for advertising. This was something I have eagerly been waiting for, as it finally allows businesses to have their own pages on Facebook, allow discussion, have “fans”, and even add their own applications on their pages. This truly gives businesses a presence directly within Facebook. This is huge news! You can sign up here.
The one little thing they revealed with this launch that I doubt will get much attention, is it seems they have finally revealed their full reason for using 64-bit profile ids. If you look at SNAPlicate, Inc.’s (my company) Pages profile that I created, it uses the exact same “profile.php”, with the exact same “id” tagged onto it. I’m guessing their database has some sort of profile_type table that tells if it’s an individual or business profile, so the application can act appropriately. Therefore they had to accommodate for all the additional profiles they would add through businesses. This 64-bit id was actually a hint and we never knew it!
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