a few days ago, after having re-introduced myself to facebook for about 24 hours, i was all like “facebook is amazing“. now, with a few more weeks of facebooking under my belt, i think it appropriate to give my thoughts again.
i feel i now have a better understanding of the “bigger picture” and am not nearly as wound up as i was last time. part of my understanding comes from actually using facebook itself, and another part comes from reading other people’s opinions on the matter.
on the whole, facebook is probably one of the best “general” social-networking sites around. there are plenty of other social-networks out there that specifically revolve around photos or activities or genealogy or music or even surfing the web. facebook used to be about school, now it’s about anyone, now it’s general.
it does a lot of things well. it looks good, it flows well, it provides it’s users a lot of options, and there aren’t thousands of flashing ads all over the place. unfortunately, facebook does one thing that almost outways all the positives: it’s completely private. if you aren’t a member, the site is completely useless (you don’t have to be a member of Flickr to look at my photos).
and sometimes things are too private even when you are a member. for instance, if i am searching for a real-life friend of mine that i’m not already “friends” with, facebook only gives me 1 picture, their name, and their location. sometimes that’s not enough, sometimes i need more (they could always just offer a “private or public” option).
as much as i hate myspace, it at least provides me with a permalink (myspace.com/eliduke) to my space and allows non-users access to some of my information. i can even write blog posts on myspace that non-users can read and subscribe to using RSS. there isn’t a single RSS feed anywhere on facebook.
when facebook opened the doors to highschools and then businesses and then anyone, they should have also opened at least some of the doors to non-users. why the hell not?
