Hello,
Shortly before I started using facebook, I was hooked on the social website myspace. I’m still unsure as to why facebook trumped myspace somewhat because they do offer similar services but myspace even has a great music and band component that facebook doesn’t have. Anyways, facebook grants users free accounts in which they invite friends to be friends with them on the website. Each user has their account profile in which they add information about themselves such as pictures, quotes, favorite movies, favorite music, etc. Facebook also allows users to post comments on their profiles, friend’s profiles, and on pictures. These comments are always attached to profiles or pictures and all comments are date and time stamped to the nearest second, allowing other users to see exactly when comments are made. I believe that ‘comments’ are the biggest aspect of facebook and make up most of the new activity on the networking site.
When a user makes an account they must be aware that other users will see their profiles and see all their pictures and comments. If you are truly friends with someone then having these people see your profile, pictures, and comments isn’t a big deal. Though if you add friends to your facebook account that are more like acquaintances, co-workers, or bosses, then this greatly changes the level of privacy that your facebook account possesses. You must then be aware of all the people who could potentially see everything you have added to your profile. You must also think if these people would judge you by your comments, or in other words how seriously these acquaintances or co-workers will take your comments, pictures, etc.
If I was to list the most useful aspect of facebook, I would say that it would be the ‘event’ creation service that allows users to create an event and send e-invites to friends of facebook. Yes, numerous e-invites can get annoying but I find that this aspect of facebook is very efficient in finding out who will be attending and who will not. The electronic event creation ability of facebook eliminates the need for actual paper invitations and it makes it easier and cheaper to distribute the invites to your friends.
I also enjoy using facebook’s group creator which allows users to create groups of common interest. Once the group is created the moderator or creator of the group can then select which friends they want to send invitations to in order to join the group. If the group is a public group then users I send invites to, can then invite others who they feel may be interested in joining the group.
I am a co-moderator (officer) of a group called ‘Taylor Box Hockey’ at the following link: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=2486591360 A friend and I created this group in order to better organize outdoor street hockey games. We play street hockey on rollerblades during the summer in a lacrosse box. We use the facebook group site as a way to better organize drop-in games. It’s great because we can post a game day and start time and then have people show up to play that wouldn’t have otherwise known about the game without the site. One bad aspect of these groups is that if it’s not updated frequently then users and members just quit checking the group site and it eventually becomes obsolete.
I feel the one main drawback or negative aspect of facebook is its privacy settings for user accounts. At one time my wife had a facebook account but deleted her account because she was upset by the fact that user comments could open up one’s profile to exponential numbers of other users who aren’t necessarily friends with you on the site. Meaning if I were to make a comment on a friends picture, then all of my friends could view that comment and further view my friends entire account including all past pictures, comments, etc. On the other hand if one of my friends makes a comment on one of my pictures then all of their friends can then view my entire profile and all of my past pictures and comments.
A possibility of using facebook within a school would be to organize events. Sporting events could be better organized using the event creator on the facebook site. A facebook group site could also be created for the school staff to discuss topics pertaining to social gatherings or specific student’s academic achievement. Creating a group site for a schools staff could make it easier to message everyone at the same time instead of using individual messages or the schools email list.
And yes, I did see the movie 'the social network'. I thought it was pretty good but wasn't sure if it was that accurate or not. I don't know the real story of how facebook was created but the movie did a good job. Especially liked the aspect of the creator not wanting to add advertising to the margins of the facebook page to give it a cheesy look.
Thanks. -Regen
No comments:
Post a Comment