Facing the truth: Facebook rocks

Posted on Apr 30, 2008 in Design, Web Dev | 1 comment

I admit it. I’m a Facebook fan.

If you’re not on Facebook, you’re one of the few. But, I can’t get too sanctimonious though; I’ve had my account for all of a week now. But I’m impressed.

MySpace may be the older, more well-known social networking site but it’s crap. Since Newscorp bought it, MySpace has been changing for the better but it still sucks—from a development standpoint, of course: Nested tables, no API, and basically a horrible interface. It’s like anarchy.

Facebook occupies the other side of the social-networking coin: it’s like a well-run democracy. What struck me most was the ease and fluidity with which new accounts are made. Enter your name and you’re off. Want friends quickly? Import them from any of the major sites: AOL IM, Google, etc. and Facebook’ll bring them in. Enter your company and/or school and the year you graduated (FB even auto-completes your entries)… bam, you’re staring at the avatars of your work- and classmates. Click them and they’re invited to be your friend. All this is done with such web grace (thanks to graphic embellishments from a script.aculo.us-style framework) that it’s a joy to use.

There are security/privacy issues to be aware of. And the huge advertising dollars at stake. I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that for now. I need to get over to my page and change my status… it’s addictive!

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