Facebook is probably the most popular social networking site around at the moment. Even my mom and dad have Facebook! As well as my boss, my ex(es), my friend's cat, even my friend's stuffed animal has a Facebook page! So what is it that makes this web site so popular and addictive, how did it take over my life and what use does it really have?

How does it work?

Firstly you set up a profile (a name is compulsory but doesn't have to be your real name). Here you put the information you want people to see e.g. birthday, religious views, relationship status, favourite quotes, education and employment history etc. and add a photo if you want. Then you have to add your friends by sending friend requests. This allows you to see their profile and you can use your messenger contact list or search for names and addresses. When you have friends you can then write on their "wall" and they can write on yours. The wall is basically where people can leave you messages that are visible to everyone. You can also send a private message if you don't want everyone seeing your business.

You can upload your photos into albums of a maximum of 200 photos per album. You can also "tag" your friends by clicking on them so it shows up on their profile too. You can also de-tag yourself (more on that later!!!).

You also have a status box where you can update in a couple of sentences what you are doing or feeling or whatever takes your fancy. Your friends can also comment on your status and say if they like it and vice versa. Only yesterday they started allowing you to tag people in statuses.

Your news feed is where you can see what everyone is doing and on this page you will see status updates, photos added, relationship statuses changed. Your actions will also show up on your wall but you can delete them if you so choose.

Then there is the world of applications. This was when Facebook got complicated and ridiculous. You can have a virtual farm, garden, send a daily hunk, see who has interacted with you the most, get a daily horoscope, throw some sheep. Just really it is small programmes you can add to aid you in spending more time on FB.

You can add an event or be invited to an event. They are almost like mail invitations that tell you whats happening and where and you can create your own to send to your friends.

You can also have groups on their for causes or support or just something you generally enjoy and find like-minded others.

There is also the "poke" utility where you can click on the hyperlink and your friend will see you have poked them.

Everytime someone writes on your wall or tags a photo etc. it will come up as a notification. You usually also get an email providing you haven't disabled it. For messages there is your Inbox and Outbox, which works like a normal email.

Friend's birthdays come up the side of the panel.

In your settings you can "be in a relationship with", "be complicated with", "be in an open relationship with", "be married to", whoever it is that you are doing whatever with if they are on FB. This then shows up on your profile. Recently you have also been allowed to add parents, children and siblings.

What is good about FB?

Well from my point of view living in a different country has its limits of communication. Yes, I can call and yes I can use messenger but no I can't see everyone's photos and I can't afford long distance phone calls. When I have no credit I know that most people check FB daily so I can send a message and they will receive it. I can keep in touch with friends all over the world for free. And not a lot comes for free these days!

I like to see people's photos and keep up with what they are doing. I love when an old class mate adds me and I can see how they have changed and what they were doing now. My whole high school class is on FB and most of my primary school class too.

Events at uni are always on FB so you can see what's going on and there is no worry about losing the flyer or invitation because you already have it because you have agreed to attend!

You will never forget a friends birthday again because it shows up on your home page.

You can while away many an hour of boredom but it becomes highly addictive and if you like to find out everyone's business you can spend hours doing so and with the load of recent applications you can always find something to do.

What's bad about FB?

I mentioned earlier that I had my parents on FB. Well that is a certain downside. They can see all my photos, I can't swear on my profile, I have to censor what people write on my wall, I have to talk to my mom everytime she's at work bored. I also now have all my moms friends on there too. The thing is with FB is that it is private to an extent unlike MySpace. You have to accept someone as a friend before they can view your profile (they can also view your profile if you change the public settings so everyone can see and also if you send someone a message they can view it for a period of time). Now when your mom sends you a friend invitation you can't really turn it down. I am sure she has trawled through every one of my pictures and I am sure she has had near heart failure on some. She started writing comments about everything and sending me private messages with all the moaning she had to do. So I deleted her and sent her a message telling her why. This greatly upset her so I had to add her again on the condition that she doesn't make these comments or send these messages. Currently we are on peaceful terms but I still get reports back from grandma telling me that she has seen this or that on FB.

On the same sort of note FB created so many problems with me and my ex as we lived across the sea from each other. Every new friend of the opposite sex was a suspicion, every photo where opposite sex popped up in, everytime opposite sex wrote on wall, everytime a friend mentioned opposite sex. It was an absoloute nightmare. Because of the private message thing we were constantly suspicious because if you are friends on FB then everything is public between you except these. I think that it actually contributed a great deal to our break up.

On the relationship issue, one of the best parts of FB is knowing who is in a relationship with who (yes, I am nosey!) but then when it ends the relationship status has to end and you get the big fat "single" slammed on the news feed for everyone to see! Lovely! I couldn't change mine for months so I was "in a relationship" with no-one. As my ex had put himself single I was just "in a relationship". Sounds silly but now relationships are almost defined by FB relationship status. On my new bf when we put the status up as us being together I got a load of messages saying "I see you decided to take the plunge and make it official!". Really it has gotten out of hand. And the worst is when you get people changing them every couple of days. Becomes boring after a while...

These applications mean that you get notifications constantly that are completely useless and that you really couldn't give a wotsit about! You add them and then they pester you for the rest of your FB life! An example of my last two notifications: 1) "It's Patrick Swayze week on Send A Round. Last chance to get the Ghost Shot, inspired by the 80's movie!". 2) Click here to unlock more items in Romanian Specialties! 3)Find out if your friends have been taking the "When will you get Knocked Up?" quiz. As great as it would be to sample a Romanian speciality whilst getting knocked up with Patrick Swayze and a Ghost shot, I would rather them not inform me of this possibility.

The Verdict

As much as I have complained about FB I am completely addicted to it as are most of my friends. It is one of those things that I just love to hate and when I am without it I feel like I'm missing out on what's going on. Sad but true...