Archive for October, 2007
First of all, let me quote Steve Ballmer as he’s been covered all over the media for saying:
“I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”
Ever since he mentioned this a lot of people have been saying he’s wrong. Some people have been saying he ‘could’ be right. Well, I’ll go ahead and say it. He “IS” right.
Is Facebook doomed? Not necessarily. They could clean up their act before its too late. Let’s get to the gist of the matter. What have they done wrong? They gave 3rd Party Applications too much power.
A lot of the people that I’ve talked to (original Facebook fans – not the latecomers: i.e. if you signed up less than a year ago, you’re a latecomer) agree with me that one of the major appeals of Facebook in the beginning was its clean cut and direct interface. It was very simple to navigate. If I wanted to see something on my friend’s profile, I could do it easily because both of our profiles looked the same.
MySpace on the other hand was all over the place (and still is – although, they’ve learned their lesson and are trying to change). You could go to some MySpace pages and your browser would freeze because of all the stuff that took over your screen… worse yet, you could get a seizure as a result of all the flashing lights and widgets… so, we all took refuge in Facebook.
Now Facebook allows 3rd parties to develop applications… this is fine…BUT, they SHOULD NOT be allowed to drastically modify the way someone’s profile appears to others. Just today I wanted to write on my friend’s wall and I had to scroll down through about 10 applications, one super wall, one fun wall, and then finally to the regular wall… its become ridiculous… If someone wants to change the way their profile looks to themselves, that’s completely fine. However, they should not be able to change the way it looks to others.
Not only that, but I am getting invitations from about 10 different applications a day. Some of my friends get even more than that… Spam anyone?
Facebook’s most important asset right now is what they call a Social Graph. Their database contains info about us and who are friends are. That is the most important aspect of Facebook. I hope they are smart enough never to allow that information to be exported from the site because if they do, its all over.
Aydin.
Posted by: Aydin Mirzaee.
Starting from NYC…
I grew up in New York City and now live in Ottawa, Canada. Back in the day, Facebook was only for college students. In other words, you had to have a .edu email address or your university/college had to be listed on facebook for you to be able to sign up. Every time I visited New York, people asked me: “are you on Facebook?” But of course the only Canadian University that was on Facebook back in those days was McGill (mainly because McGill has such a big American population).
Facebook registered in Ottawa, Canada!
Wanting to see what this Facebook phenomenon was, I registered the University of Ottawa on Facebook. I went through the drudgery of listing all the classes & majors available at the school to get us registered. About a month later, the University of Ottawa was added! Success! I was the first person to sign onto Facebook in Ottawa. I needed to get more people to sign on. I started to tell friends about it and managed to convince a group of people.
The Nay Sayers…
Most people though said things like “why would I want to expose myself on the internet?” Most people didn’t see a point in giving away their privacy. Those that were into social networks were typically using Orkut, Hi5, and Friendster and did not want to change.
But, Facebook took over anyway! Why, you ask?
1) Facebook had a clean-cut and predictable interface.
2) Facebook was exclusive. It was only for University/College students.
3) Facebook was amazing for photo-sharing. You would attend a party and then get to share all those photos with your friends.
At the end of the day…
The Nay Sayers ended up being the biggest Facebook addicts… No names mentioned 
Aydin.
Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee
We all know Facebook started out as a college network. We all know that now it is an “everybody” network (to the dismay of many 
). A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that her mother added her on Facebook. I was amazed. A few days later, my father added me as a friend. Weird, but true. Well, what’s wrong with this anyway? Well, I like to think I have one of those cool dads, so in this case, nothing. But, do you really want everyone to see your party pics? Well, I guess, its a personality thing and therefore the answer is: it depends.
To think, now, things like this are possible:
In any case, Facebook is here to the rescue!
In the next little while, Facebook will announce that you will be able to classify your friends in different categories (i.e. business associates, colleagues, friends, close friends, family, etc…). Each one of the categories will have separate privacy features that will allow you to decide who gets to see what…
Good For Everyone? Not Exactly...
In general, this is good news. A friend of mine, though, was working on a startup company to implement this very feature. Well, Facebook beat him to it. That’s OK though… he has since been spending more time on his other project (which I think is more interesting anyway…).
Aydin.
Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee
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