Posted by binsar on 07 Dec 2007 at 10:19 pm | Tagged as: Article, Opinion
At first I was not in to this social network thingy since I have my own real life outside, let alone I’ve already got too much on my hands with my Friendster and Blog. Since I have lots of invitations from friends who are already trapped within the network, I can’t see the harm in joining. But that started the curse on me. I was ensnared and bewildered in the confusing world of Facebook. This was exactly the thing that I’m looking for, more activities that can distract me from my important writing work.
After exploring it for some time, I was pretty much addicted. I understand now why it’s the second biggest social networking site behind Myspace.com, and why it has raised interest from Microsoft to invest $240 million for just its 1,6 percent stake. Now I can see why Facebook is even more popular than porn. You don’t believe me? I can’t believe it either until I saw this article by Bill Tancer. He is working at Hitwise where they check where people age 18-24 in the US go on the internet. It turns out that porn is not no. 1 hit. For people above 25, porn is still number one, but not for the current college generation. Social network is the first hit for people in this category, followed by search engine, web based email, and shockingly … porn stands in number four.
Facebook has a lot of applications made independently by developers. Basically there are thousands of applications that you can choose to be displayed on your profile, besides videos and pictures. I started with an application called Fluff Friends, its a virtual pet that needs to be petted and fed. You can buy food for them to gain more speed that you can use for racing with other friend’s fluffy friends. Believe me, it might sounds silly, but I was able to figured out how to mass-pet other people’s fluffy friends in no time. Then there’s this superpoke apps which you can use to do literally whatever you want to your friend, including throwing a cow; and iLike with which you can dedicate a song for someone. But be very careful in using these apps, you don’t want to send something to someone else’s gf/bf with them, because you might get into trouble (haha!).
Then there’s this vampire, slayer, werewolf and zombie thingy that can fight each other. My vampire score is 2717 at the moment, and the highest score on Facebook is more than 80,000. I don’t know about that person’s life but I’m pretty sure he has less friends in the real world than his Facebook because he has to be in the state of war all the time! This is probably why there’s a concern that people are holding hands, kissing, and making out on facebook instead of the real world. Where’s the fun in that?
Facebook also changes the way of friendship. First I thought you have to meet your real friends in person to be able to add them on your social network account. It turns out that more people are doing the other way around now: people meet online first then meet up in person later (if they are going to meet ever).
Some people questioned the security of your personal data. Some people don’t feel too comfortable about this openness. For instance, you can see the history of someone’s relationship status during his time in Facebook. So, the next time you see someone with relationship status that varied every other day, stay away from that person. Facebook also sends a picture of a broken heart to all of your friends when you are breaking up with your partner, and the moment you did that, questions will come pouring down about your status.
Recently Facebook developer apologized for applying Beacon, which is a tool that enables Facebook to track its users’ purchases and actions at dozens of Web sites and then broadcast the data on the pages of their listed friends within its social network. This means that all your activities on the site will be noted and can be used for advertising purposes. Not even that, they can also send your data to your social network. The application was perfected with the option to turn them off on your profile.
Anyways, Facebook changed the life style of today’s youngster, at least in the United States. However, I assume Friendster will still be the number one social network site in Indonesia as long as fast speed internet connection has not arrived to most people. Yet, the term friendship will never be the same anymore, and dictionary makers should consider putting on the input of ‘online friendship’. I think I will be stuck on Facebook for sometime in the future. If you want to add me as a friend on your Facebook, look for Binsar Pakpahan or click here, and I will approve our friendship!
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PS: If you have lost of free time, you might want to watch these special clips of songs dedicated by facebookers to facebook!
2 Responses to “On Facebook: More Popular Than Porn?”
- on 12 Jan 2008 at 12:44 pm # B
I read on FT, facebook is the next google! - on 14 Jan 2008 at 4:15 am # binsar
yea, i guess facebook would be the best thing for marketing companies to check out their future costumers, and for human resources department to know what kind of people are the ones who apply for vacancy.
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