Social networking... for grown ups. Maybe. (facebook.com)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	facebook.com
Date:	09/08/07 (263 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can track down long-lost friends and get in contact

Disadvantages: Too many bells and whistles potentially distract from communication

To give Facebook its own thirty second overview, it's essentially a mature MySpace or a MySpace for the more mature person (take your pick). That's not to say that it's not fun. Mature doesn't necessarily mean that there's no fun. It is, but I think it relies more on your interaction with other Facebook members rather than MySpace, but that's not saying a lot. MySpace is the kind of site where I get the impression it's more a matter of bunging as many features onto a gaudily coloured home page (often with dire music plugin) and getting as many people as possible to leave you inane messages than it is about the actual inter-personal relationships themselves.

Of course, I may be missing MySpace's point entirely.

I'd only heard about Facebook recently when an acquaintance had posted on a message board that there was a 'dooyooers' group on Facebook, so I decided to take a look about. Typically, I'm not a big fan of these social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Friends Reunited etc.) In my opinion, if you want to stay in contact with someone, then why do you both need to join a website? Just send an email! (Note: this point of view may or may not have been heavily influenced by having an ex-girlfriend who can't send an email telling me how she is, but can jam up my inbox with invitations to every networking site known to man).

I was intrigued about what Facebook could offer me and joined up just for a bit of fun. I had no interest in hunting down long-lost chums from my murky past or making new internet friends, but I could have a bit of banter with some fellow Dooyoo members. During my quick browse around the site, I was impressed by the simple, clean design (which reminded me a little of Wikipedia) and ease of navigation.

I found the sign-up process to be quick, simple and took around five minutes. I created a new email account purely to deal with Facebook and so far (roughly five weeks of membership) I've received nothing apart from Facebook related emails. Once I'd done that, it was simply a matter of logging in and modifying my homepage.

The most important thing to point out is that, like any other site on the internet, you have to be really careful about what information you give out. My advice is that, as soon as you've joined, you think carefully about what information you want to divulge and make yourself aware of Facebook privacy settings and how they work because they can be very effective. Anyone who sees my name in a search is given just enough information to confirm my identity (along with a photo), giving them the option of getting in contact.

There's also the matter of photographs. It's possible to upload photos to share with your friends and people within your own networks and groups, but the privacy issue is at stake here, too. I try not to upload pictures of anyone that's not a Facebook member without their permission and I certainly wouldn't think if naming non-members within photos, but I have seen this happen.

Getting back to the site, once your profile is set up, then the Facebook world is your oyster. Facebook offers some very handy tools for finding your friends via your email programs and IM programs and I was very surprised to find a couple of long-lost chums and even some family members on the site, which made me rethink the purpose of my membership. I decided that I would use Facebook to see if I could contact some old friends as well as have some fun with current friends.

You can add extra features to your profile page to keep you and your friends entertained. Most are of no interest to me because I'm an old-school contact person. I personally feel that these kinds of bells and whistles, while pretty and fun, don't encourage communication and perhaps even detract from it. All I want to do is chat to my friends, perhaps find old friends and swap information. For the most part, the extra features I've added to my own profile reflect that… I haven't added that much for people to come to my profile to play with, but I have added the Books and Last.fm plugins so people can see what I'm currently reading and listening to.

I do have an additional problem with these extra tools (which are often third party tools, not developed by Facebook). I continue to get "invitations" to add these to my profile when another of my Facebook chums has added one to their own. Most are of no interest to me, but every now and again I'll pootle on to someone's profile to see a funky little gadget. If it's something that tells me a little bit more about my friend, I might click on it. The majority of the time, though, I'll have to install it myself in order to interact with my Facebook friend. If you have a number of active friends, this could end up giving you a very cluttered profile! It would be much better if a user didn't have to install the widget to interact with their friends and this is a fairly huge flaw in the site in my opinion. To be honest, I would interact a lot more with these widgets if I didn't have to install them myself, because some of them seem rather fun! On the plus side, even with lots of widgets added to people's profiles, the site navigation doesn't really slow down (though this doesn't balance out my negative opinions relating to widgets).

Perhaps it's the kinds of friends that I have and what I desire from contact, but I'm not sure that Facebook offers that much to me. I do have close friends on Facebook, but I'm in contact with these people fairly regularly via phone, email and MSN. The people that I'm not in regular contact with are not suddenly going to become more chatty simply because we're both Facebook members. Where I have found Facebook useful is the fact that so many people may be listed there and it may be possible to find someone whose contact details you may have misplaced.

I've managed to find two or three people from my various travels around the world on Facebook whose details I'd misplaced (or still had, but couldn't read). Nevertheless, I'm still reliant on these people wanting to regain contact with me and then maintain it, possibly (and preferably) away from the site. Ideally, I'd like to find more 'lost' friends (I have a few) just to make it feel like it was worthwhile joining up, even though I joined for completely different reasons.

One flaw that's apparent to me is that I can't seem to track my own behaviour around the site. I get plenty of notifications when people do stuff... change profile pictures, write on walls (leave messages) and all that malarkey. Can I keep track of whom I've requested "friendship"? If so, I haven't yet figured it out. I haven't been told that anyone's rejected my friendship, but is that how it works? I have no idea. This area of the site is a little lacking, in my view.

While I have to admit that I'm currently having a fair bit of fun, I can't see Facebook keeping my interest for much longer, to be honest. It's a nice basic tool and a handy directory for tracing lost contacts but it's nothing that couldn't be achieved elsewhere on a messageboard or a blog or even good old fashioned email. In the long term, I'll probably just use it to source contact points with existing friends and acquaintances rather than as a tool to meet new people (though never say never) but I prefer my contact to be direct, using the normal (and arguably more personal) methods of communication – IM, email, snail mail and telephone. When I eventually exhaust my list of lost contacts and once (if) these missing-in-action friends of mine make contact, I'll probably take our communication and just drift away from Facebook or close the account entirely.

It's not that Facebook is a poor site; it's probably one of the best of its type out there, though there are improvements to be made. I just don't see the need for it.

Summary: Social networking site with a more mature audience than MySpace etc.