Facebook kicks MySpace into touch and is free to re-unite with your friends. (facebook.com)

Member Name: dididave

Product:	facebook.com
Date:	29/07/07 (331 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy and quick to navigate, huge variety of things to do.

Disadvantages: Not as customisable as MySpace and fewer members you may know than Friends Re-United

Facebook is a strange hybrid in the Internet’s world of social networking. It combines both the social networking of a site like My Space with the “friend finding” ability of Friends Re-united. In combining the two elements, the people at Facebook have managed to create a rather unique site which has its own personality.

Registering for Facebook is very straightforward and involves the standard online form filling you would expect from any site worth its salt. Registration also heralds the beginnings of the creation of your “Personal Profile” and how much you put into this is entirely up to you. You can be as in-depth as you like including schools, workplaces etc or leave it just to the basics. Once you have registered a confirmation email later and the world of Facebook is yours to explore!

Once registered you are confronted with your own profile page and from here you can personalise it to your hearts content. Many people will compare the layout to My Space and you will notice that Facebook’s general site design from the profile page and beyond is far more minimalist and basic looking. A blue on white background gives Facebook a clean, fresh feel although those used to creating a mass of colours on My Space may well be disappointed. Whereas MySpace allows you to pretty much create your own website incorporating all sorts of gubbins, Facebook is more about the content and I am all for that. Your profile page becomes a far more personal affair were you can put as little or as much info as you want onto the page. You can tell people about the schools, colleges and workplaces you went to, your likes and dislikes be it music, film or anything else and whether you are in a relationship, married or single.

Interestingly, you are also able to specify whether you are looking for something in particular be it friendship or a relationship and this means that you can largely ignore the “Nutter element” that you get from My Space. This is something further helped by the friend request and acceptance system. On sign up you can have Facebook browse through your email contacts and send the ones you tick off requests of friendship. This gives you an initial network of friends to start with and you often find that these friends are linked to other friends you know but did not have as email contacts. Like MySpace users can accept or reject your offer of friendship which again, avoids the contact of needy nutcases trying to get in your knickers. However, if you do accept a friend request you can also specify how you know the person and what sort of terms your friendship is on now!

Navigating is, in my opinion far easier than any of the other social networking sites I have encountered. You can easily hop from friend to friends profile with one click and the uncluttered layout makes it very user friendly. Facebook does occasionally suffer from slow log in times but once in, I have found all pages navigate quickly and effortlessly in my two browsers of choice IE and Firefox. This is probably due to the fact that each page is not covered in complex images, backgrounds and a plethora of crap music!

Some people might complain about the lack of variety to profile pages as despite the fact you can move around everything on your page bar your basic details they can look the same. Fortunately, Facebook has a cracking and hugely entertaining list of add-ons or applications that are available in their hundreds on the site. All profiles come with a “wall” to post messages on for public viewing as well as a private messaging system. However, you can also add a “funwall” which allows you to add images and videos to you and your friends profile, add a graffiti application for scribbling on each others walls or even have your very own virtual pet to look after/abuse as is your wish. There is a huge variety of applications to choose from and personalise your page from the practical to the downright ridiculous. All of these allow you express yourself and your individuality while offering variety to your visitors. My page includes a beer rating system, musical profile, book review section and likeness quiz among other things and their really is no limit to what you choose to include.

As you can see there is much to do on Facebook which makes it far more than merely another social networking site. You can play games, write reviews, become a zombie or simply chat to each other. However, the meat of the site is not the silliness above but the friendships to be made. It is a this point I should perhaps compare Facebook to Friends Re-United and first things first…Facebook is completely and utterly free! No charges once you have browsed and found a friend, no sales pitch, nothing. As someone who has used Friends Re-united but has been put off by the fees when trying to contact someone this gives Face book a distinct advantage over the competition. Finding people on Facebook is very easy too. You can search by name, school, workplace or group and if they are registered, they will appear. However, the only downside compared to Friends Re-United is that the amount of people registered with Facebook compared to Friends Re-united is largely inferior. Most of my classmates from High School are registered on Friends Re-united whereas only a handful are on Facebook. Also, as Facebook is fundamentally a US based site, your school or workplace may not always be listed.

Fortunately, this is were the groups on Facebook come in. You can create, search and join thousands upon thousands of groups of all types. Groups could be a place to worship your football team, reminisce about your school days or the nightclubs you used to haunt. There is even a group for the local eccentric rollerblading Granddad in my area! Groups act as discussion groups and you can even post photos on the group. Examples of the diversity of the groups on offer are perhaps best illustrated in my own profile. A selection of the groups I am a member of include “Anyone who hasn’t seen Red Dwarf is a smegging smeghead”, “Douglas Adams, there was a frood who knew were his towel was” and of course, “dooyooers”. There is really a group out there for every interest and as such millions of new friends to meet.

So, what have I forgot mention in my long and meandering review? Well for s tart you can be “tagged” in photos so you are notified when people who know you include them in their gallery, each time you log in you are taken to a “news feed” outlining the actions of your friends and you can access an “Amazon style” marketplace to buy and sell items. There really are a million and one things for you to discover on Facebook but I think I should stop here and let you find out for yourself. Easier to use than MySpace and without the cash outlay of Friends Re-United, Facebook really has it all.

Summary: The new leader in social networking.