The most popular social networking web site (facebook.com)

Member Name: cognition

Product:	facebook.com
Date:	29/11/08 (342 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, so popular you're bound to find an abundance of people you know

Disadvantages: The design has gotten less user friendly, there are a lot of advertisements

Facebook.com is a social networking web site that was started in 2004. The web site is completely free of use, and has become the most most popular social networking web site, overtaking main competitor Myspace in 2008, currently having more than 120 million active users worldwide. The web site makes an income on the abundance of advertisements, which appear on every page within the site.

Basically, you sign up for an account, usually with your full legal name so that anyone who knows you can find you, you fill out profile details about yourself, including university details, work details, hobbies, etc. Then you upload a picture of yourself, and that's pretty much it. You can then join a 'Network' based on city, country, workplace or university, which makes it easier to find and communicate with people close to you.

If you want to find someone you know, you can search by name or e-mail address, or you can browse through the friends lists of people you already know, as there is a chance you might have friends in common. Then you just send over a friend request, and the other user has to accept your request. Voila, you are officially friends on Facebook!

Facebook offers features beyond what has been mentioned. For instance, you have an unlimited amount of online picture galleries, but be aware that the resolution of pictures you upload will be adjusted to fairly low. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Facebook owns the right to anything you upload on the site.

Facebook used to be a very clean and neat web site with a set design that was followed by all pages. Then the company opened for applications created by third party developers, and then things got out of hand. You would get five invitations every day "Your friend is a vampire and just bit you. Become a vampire you too! Install this application on your profile now!" It all got out of hand, with hundreds of applications, and Facebook was no longer neat and tidy. The company then redesigned the entire web site, so that profile designs are now standardized again, and all applications are listed on a separate page within the profile. This sounds all good, except the new design according to a lot of users, myself included, is less user friendly than the original first design.

Anyhow, Facebook has to me proved to be an easy way of keeping in touch with people I don't talk to a lot. Sure, my best friends are also friends on Facebook, but so are people I went to school with ten and five years ago, people I never speak to. It's just nice to know that they are there, in my network, available if I should need to get in touch with them.

The bottom line is, if you want to join a social networking web site to keep in touch with people you know, Facebook is probably your best choice.

Summary: The place to go for online social networking