Will Facebook Turn In To Another MySpace?
Just exactly what is Facebook.com? That’s certainly a question I’ve asked myself quite a few times over the last month or so. It seems that as more and more of my friends discover this latest fad in online social networking I get more and more invites to join Facebook.com. As somebody who openly despises MySpace and everything that it stands for (mainly garish slow loading web pages with annoyingly loud background music from the latest crap band that nobody cares about) I would take a lot of convincing that Facebook was going to be any better, long story short, I’m convinced!
You see, MySpace started of as an idea of allowing people to stay in touch (the same as Facebook.com), unfortunately the design is shoddy (in my opinion) and it was soon taken over by spammers only interested in making money, celebrities wanting to appear cool by having 50,000 friends and pedos looking for their next victim. For now Facebook appears to have avoided these problems, it really is far more about staying in touch with your REAL friends. I’ve only been using it for a few weeks and I’ve already had more contact with people I haven’t spoke to since school that at any other time in the last 12 years, Facebook.com works! The key to this is the interface, a very pretty standards driven clean interface with drag and drop are at the heart of Facebook and that’s what makes it so accessible to the “normal” people on the internet. It also makes it easy to update, I’ve noticed that most of my friends update what they are up to at least 2 or 3 times a week.
Of course with Facebook.com you can add the extras to your profile page, from a fish tank, a pet fighting rabbit, X me, Buy Me A Drink to a Places where I’ve been there are numerous free plug-ins available. Even when they are used they all appear to fit in very nicely with the main Facebook interface, and there’s always the option of minimising each individual plug-in if things do start to look a little cluttered. To be honest most are nothing more than gimmicks, the real heart of Facebook.com is the social networking, and for me it works so much better than anything else that is available.
So who would I recommend Facebook.com to? I think it’s ideal of you’re 20-50+ and looking to keep in touch with your friends from back home or around the world. You do not have to be a computer expert to use Facebook so if your friends aren’t already using it then get them involved. If you’re looking for a dating website then I’d suggest looking elsewhere, not that I’ve looked into it much being married and all that. It just seems that most people tend to keep to the people they know, perhaps this is the reason why the dodgy groups on the internet haven’t been able to spoil Facebook.com for the rest of us yet? Either way if your past experiences of online social networking are limited to MySpace then you really should give Facebook a chance, it’s superb.
Just in case anybody wants my Facebook address it is..I’m not going to say. It’s the natural pattern of forming friends through mutual friends that makes Facebook.com so good (for me) and I’m not going to risk that now.