I had avoided Facebook for awhile, mainly because it had the perception of being a clone of the dysfunctional MySpace phenomenon. But, I had one friend persistently asking me to join, which I did. I’m glad I signed up, but Facebook is not without its shortcomings.
The ads on Facebook are annoying, but are invisible if you use Firefox and install the AdBlock Plus plugin. My problem is not with some of the ads, which are basic online fare, but there are many misleading ads that unsuspecting visitors could click on. I’m surprised that Facebook would accept such advertising, but then again, it’s all about money.
Another annoying aspect of Facebook are the “games”. I could care less about something called “Mafia Wars”, or any other side show they try to foist on us. Any time a friend sends through anything like this, including quizzes, I block the game/quiz the moment I see it. Most want to access your personal information, which I dislike. There’s no guarantee any of these third-party application developers won’t find a way to use your information without your knowledge.
I am on the fence about being “tagged”. I do like some of the notes sent my way (list the first 25 random songs on your portable music player, for instance), but I hate to bother anyone by sending them out myself. That’s just me, though! I still like reading the notes that others tag me with. Many are just “getting to know you” lists.
So beyond the few annoying quirks, I’ve found a lot of value in Facebook. Unlike the cesspool that is MySpace (mostly kids, spammers and sexual predators), Facebook is more oriented toward adults. I signed up and, within a week, had located about 40-50 friends. I am well on my way to 100 right now! The member search feature isn’t all that good, but I’ve managed to find quite a few freinds I had lost touch with. I found the childhood friend I grew up with. I found at least a dozen close high school friends, who I was in band with. I found a couple of ex-coworkers of mine, who had long since moved on. I’ve also had many online friends over the years, dating back to our days at Compuserve, up through the present, and I have found many of them as well.
I got my better half to get active on Facebook, and I not only found some of her cousins online, she did her own searches and found her uncle’s family in New Zealand, not to mention some of her own high school friends. I even found a picture of her , at five years old, with her cousins, in a family portrait at her grandmother’s house. Pretty neat!
What is interesting is that, when you make a post or “share” something on your wall at FB, you get comments. The results are an interesting mash-up of friends from all of your different corners of life. It’s almost like having your own forum, where everyone you know is a member and interacting with each other. I’ve had high school friends, and friends from two different forums, responding to my posts (and to each other) in comments.
One last little peeve: I do wish the member search feature was improved. More criteria, such as being able to search on hometown, current location, schools attended, age (or range of ages), etc. Many results come back with only a name, and no picture or listing of friends, so you sometimes have a hit or miss search experience. Part of it, though, is based on a person’s privacy settings. I have my own privacy settings quite tight, so I know I don’t even show up on member searches. But for those who are public, having a way to fine tune searches would really help out.
For making contacts, Facebook is one of the better things going right now. LinkedIn is good for the professional and business side of contacts, but Facebook helps you stay in touch with everyone else. To be honest, I don’t know how a site like Classmates can stay in business–Facebook is free, and I’ve made more contacts in the past month on Facebook than I have in the ten or so years I’ve been registered on Classmates.