Facebook as a news source

If you are a Facebook user, you definitely have to "appreciate" the fact that whatever happens on your profile qualifies as news and is treated as such.

Case in point, have you ever noticed the number of responses that occur when a relationship that was on Facebook ends? It can be rather overwhelming. Or when it's somebody's birthday, that's a sight to see. On my birthday for instance, I had over 70 people post on my wall for no other reason than to say the obvious.

I'm not saying that it is bad that Facebook is taking over the lives of millions of people throughout the world. But in the bigger picture it is getting to be more and more pathetic that this is how we gather news about our friends.

I'm sure everyone who reads this has "Facebook stalked" someone. We all do. We want to know if you're single, who your friends are, and what you say to other people. After all, Facebook is the all-knowing and all-powerful website on the Internet.

Nick triumphantly walked into our room after class today with a great idea. Someone who is a devout Christian or Liberal or Republican, etc. should change their profile to say they are Atheist or Communist. Or better yet, perhaps switch your gender preferences around. Give the experiment 48 hours or so to cycle through Facebook and gather your results. I bet you'll get some interesting posts on your wall.

My point is that Facebook is not and should not be the final tell all for everything that happens in someone's life. We survived forever without it; let's not let it become the sole source for everything news.

A picture is worth a thousand words (and maybe an arrest?)

There is no denying that social networking Web sites like Facebook and MySpace are the most popular web hangouts of high school and college students alike. But what gets me is how dumb some of these students are.

It is astounding how many people post pictures of themselves drinking while underage. I know it happens, but that is not the surprising part. It's the logic (or lack there of) that drives someone to allow yourself to be photographed that baffles me. Furthermore, who in their right mind would post that on a public site like Facebook?

I had a friend in high school that was caught smoking marijuana because he let someone take a picture of him doing it. Long story short, the camera was lost and then found by a school administrator who found the pictures. To this day I have never understood his thought process -- why he would smoke marijuana to begin with or why he let a picture be taken.

It's kind of scary to think that our upcoming generation is not smart enough to realize that pictures can have these ramifications. Maybe we need to be taught some common sense.

As cheap as this sounds I always have felt that you could make a killing as a Facebook "rat". Basically the job would entail reporting underage drinking and saving the evidence to prove the case. I would never do it myself, but then again, someone probably will.

Scary Facebook security warning

As of an hour ago I had a story almost ready to go for today, and then I got this strange e-mail that changed the topic of what I was going to cover today. The contents of the e-mail are posted below:

Facebook Password Security Alert
From: Facebook (password+mgayqqqn@facebookmail.com)
Sent: Tue 1/15/08 1:58 PM
Reply-to: Facebook (password+mgayqqqn@facebookmail.com)
To: Cody Eding (e-mail omitted)

--------------------------------------------------------

Hey Cody,

We have reset your Facebook account password for security reasons. You will need to use the link provided in this email to create a new, secure password for your account. In the future, please make sure that when you log in to Facebook, you always log in from a legitimate Facebook page with the facebook.com domain. To reset your password, follow the link below:

https://login.facebook.com/reset.php?... (link omitted for security reasons)

(If clicking on the link doesn't work, try copying and pasting it into your browser.)

Please contact info@facebook.com with any questions.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

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At first I figured it was a hoax. So I went to Facebook and tried to log in. No dice, my password was incorrect. So I looked at the e-mail closer and saw that the link does indeed point to a secure site. However, I still thought the facebookmail.com domain was fishy.

Instead of resetting the password through the e-mail I received, I went to Facebook’s home page and reset it from there. Low and behold the reset message came from facebookmail.com as well. I reset my password and now I can log back in. Weird.

First of all, I never realized that all Facebook e-mails came from facebookmail.com. So if you do get this e-mail it appears to be legit. Why they sent it to me is unknown. I will be sending them an e-mail to find out.

My guess is that they think somebody hacked my account and is spamming the system. Why? Because today is my birthday (#19… whoo) and I’ve gotten 40 wall posts in the last 15 hours, which is much more than my usual rate. In addition, I bet I’ve written 40 or so posts back. So I guess the system has a reason to think that a spammer might have taken hold of my account. Oh well, it’s fixed now, but it definitely scared the hell out of me (i.e. virus lockdown mode with all anti-virus and anti-spyware on deck).

I will post the results of my e-mail to Facebook when I receive an answer.

Facebook continues to lose its luster

It is no doubt that Facebook is the most popular website around here at GVSU. However, it is slowly starting to go downhill, unbeknownst to many who use it.

A little while ago, Facebook introduced a new ad system dubbed Beacon. The purpose of the program is to broadcast products you buy or services you sign up for to your Facebook friends. And as a result, the program has been criticized heavily by groups that fight for privacy on the internet.

It turns out the Beacon system sends way more information than many thought. For instance, in the PC World article linked to above, an expert found that even if he was logged out of Facebook, information was still sent to Facebook that registered his activity on the internet. Also, the system is very hard to opt out of.

Like I’ve said before, Facebook has to start going back to what got it to the top: simplicity. All this over the top stuff like ads and applications are just slowing suffocating the site to death in my opinion. I cannot tell you how annoying some of these things are.

I’m still not to the point where I’m giving up on Facebook. But, they are beginning to walk the line between serious social networking site and MySpace. There are too many up and coming sites that could take over the number one spot around college campuses. To be completely honest, it’s all theirs to lose.

Yes, I’m One Too (Please Facebook, Don’t Become the Next MySpace)

The college life, it’s awesome really. Take yesterday for example. I had no classes in the afternoon; hence I should have been doing something constructive. But, what was I really doing?

I was surfing Facebook.

Something about the site is so intriguing to me. Nowhere else can you have so much interaction with others with only a few clicks of your mouse. I love it.

What is beginning to irk me, however, is the amount of freedom Facebook has recently given to its users and developers.

Facebook originated as a college only site. It took awhile before high schools and workplaces were added to the system, and now it’s open to anyone with an email address. In my opinion, Facebook should have remained a closed system; that was part of its original beauty to me. A tight control on admission would have allowed them to stop some problems that other social networking sites (read MySpace) have had.

Perhaps the most annoying thing that Facebook has done is that it has allowed for third party applications to be placed on user’s profiles. Although I don’t find every application to be a nuisance (I personally use the myBlog, Top Friends, and Who’s Your Tiger applications), they start becoming a problem when users feel the need to proliferate their profiles with them. I don’t want to have to sift through a mile long block of applications just to get to somebody’s wall. Nor do I care who drop kicked, hugged, kissed, or bitch slapped someone else.

The last thing Facebook needs is to allow that much freedom to its users. Sure it’s kind of a socialist attitude, but in this case, it’s better for Facebook’s users and for itself. I’ve used other sites in the past where color schemes could be determined by the user, and let me tell you, there were some nasty ones. I don’t want to be distracted by an annoying animation or badly chosen colors each time I try to visit someone’s profile. If Facebook every does allow such leniency, I can tell you I will not frequent it as often as I do now.