With over 1.2 billion Facebook users across the globe, it's a good bet you're one of them. Regardless of whether you joined the social network when it was still a pet project, or joined as recently as today, Natalia Rojas, a creative technologist, probably has your picture somewhere on her website, The Faces of Facebook.
Rojas' website took about a year and a half from start to finish, though she said she worked on it only during her free time. "I accidentally discovered how to access all the profile pictures from everyone on Facebook when I was playing around with their API," she says, referring to the application programming interface. "I thought, 'What do I do with this? Maybe make something beautiful?'"
Beautiful may be an odd choice when visitors first come across the website, as it doesn't look much different than static on a television.
"At the beginning, I thought to take all the photos and make them really small," said Rojas. "But I realized that no matter what you do, you'll get this noisy thing you see."
As a result, she decided to reduce every profile picture into a single-colored pixel, making the website load faster. When the website isn't overwhelmed with users, you can zoom into those pixels to reveal photos.
"We had one million users in the first two days," she recalls. "I want everyone to access it, but the servers we have don't have the capability to support everyone."
Rojas says she is not breaking Facebook privacy rules because she is not storing anyone's name, photo or private information -- just linking out to public Facebook profiles. She also said she hasn't heard from the social network, which she thinks is good news because "I was a bit worried about things like using their name in the URL."
Asked about her hopes for the project, Rojas said she was inspired by the idea that each Facebook profile photo is an example of that person's best self, and that millions of those images together combine to present a positive, universal message.
Rojas has put a lot of work into creating and maintaining the database of Facebook information, but she's not opposed to letting other people work with her data. "It took me a lot of time and money so it's not something that I want to give away," she said. "But if someone has an idea for some more amazing and interesting results, why not?"
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