Catching Up With Old Friends...

... and making some new ones in the process.

I'm a recent convert to the world of facebook. Yep, I got sucked into it because a girl I liked had an account, and I wanted to see more pictures of her. No. I'm not an Internet stalker. I actually knew (and still know) this girl and we met for the first time far before I knew about facebook.

Unlike myspace which is customizable via some very convoluted css (not very many nice selectors), all facebook pages look roughly the same, and I see this as a clear benefit. The facebook screen layout is very clean and simple. I can move my little pods, or "boxes" around by dragging them and this is a very nice thing indeed. I hated it on myspace that everyone's page looked different, maybe it's the programmer in me that likes things organized and orderly, but really I think it's because the focus of facebook doesn't seem to be people tweaking the look of their profile, but rather getting people in touch with one another. I must confess that there are people's profiles on myspace that I stopped going to simply because I found their page layout annoying or harsh on my eyes.

I started out on facebook as I said just to see pictures of my friend, but during the registration process facebook (with my permission) logged into my gmail, discovered my contact list, and automatically found out who I knew that was already on facebook. It then sent those people friend requests. Before I knew it -- BAM! -- I had 80 friends. Now, why none of them ever told me about facebook is another matter entirely, but the point is that setup was simple and helped me to get started in the facebook community. I also like how facebook is constantly (yet unobtrusively) suggesting new friends to me. It's not being random either, the suggestions it makes are friends of friends. So, I'm up to 122 friends as of this writing, and it's simply amazing how many old friends from my days in high school this little (okay huge) community has put me back in touch with. I've spoken recently to old teachers, classmates, and old girlfriends. But that's not all! I frequent a few popular mailing lists for programmers, jQuery, jQueryUI, CFTalk, my local CFUG, OpenBD, and numerous other mailing list (many of which are Google groups), and facebook has helped me to keep in touch with these folks in an area outside of the mailing lists. It's nice to put faces to names that you're used to reading either in blogs or in mailing list posts.

So, I'm a big facebook fan. One other thing they've done which is nice, is their approach to advertising. Yes, advertising. I hate adverts in general, but I also understand the need for the revenue that they create, and the desire of the advertisers to be seen by such a large audience as the facebook community. That said, I like the way in which facebook handles advertising. All adds are unobtrusive, and small. So far, I've never encountered any flashing or spinning or obnoxious adverts. I have run across some ads that I found objectionable, but in this regard the facebook folks were listening to their users. There is a group on facebook (groups are another neat feature of facebook, but not one that I'm going to talk much about) of people who are against offensive adverts on facebook. Particularly the way in which some of the advertisers choose to objectify women. Well, underneath every advert (except some flash ones...) there is a little thumbs up and thumbs down button. No matter which one you pick, you get to give immediate feedback to the facebook folks on why you gave the thumbs up or down. If you chose to give the ad the thumbs down, it immediately replaces the ad with a different one. I've not confirmed this with anyone at facebook, but it seems that they're doing something like Stumbleupon does when you tell it you like or don't like a site. The types of adverts I dislike I'm seeing less and less of, while I'm seeing more of the types of adverts to which I've given the thumbs up.

Currently, my high school class is planing a fifteen-year reunion, and my high school theatre group is planning a reunion of their own (since not everyone was in the same graduating class). I also, use it routinely to communicate with some folks the way I'd use my gmail account to communicate with others.

Are you on facebook? If not, why not? If so, what do you use it for?