Anyone use Facebook?
It's constantly in the news but I can't for the life of me figure out what that damn Facebook is all about and why people are apparently getting addicted to it. I've looked in at the site a few times and have read user guides about it but am still none the wiser. No doubt the best way to find out is to actually use it but so far I have not the slightest inclination to do so - nor do I know anyone I like well enough to want to keep in regular touch with them - which may explain why it's all going over my head. From what I gather, you create a little cluster of friends around you (egocentrically enough), and those friends all have access to each other through your page (why on earth would you want that??).

Can anyone explain exactly how it works and what's so good about it?

My son uses it to keep up with his friends from school and work. I signed up just now to see how it works and the pictures, of those that posted them are too small to really get any idea what they look like. Maybe I'm missing something there. I'll have to ask him about that. It's a good way to keep in touch with friends if that's your bag.

But isn't it the case that whatever you write, everybody in your cluster gets to see? That's what I don't get... that sort of group communication seems senseless to me... surely you want to be saying different things to different people. And if you want to write to someone one-to-one, well, there's email or messaging for that...
Clearly I'm missing the point somehow...

Well you can send messages to anyone who is a member. As far as I know, no one else can read it. But being a member will give you access to all of another members friends and any other information you have posted about yourself. Secrecy is not the object. Why don't you sign up and look up some old school friends. It's easier than most such forums.

it's just another way to communicate. Here is an image of a cool bike and you can send it to friends by a number of ways. You can see the facebook button in the upper left.




If you fancy the bike, more here:
http://www.nonobjectbook.com/nUCLEUS/

I'll try my best to explain it, but I'll doubt my conveyance will do you any good.

Basically, you make an account, and the first thing you do is search for your "friends". Most people don't just add their friends; they just add literally every single person that they can find on their that they've somehow met through their worldly encounters. I think there's a way in which you can automatically add everyone from your email account.

Now, assuming you've not done most of these "friends" any disfavours, they'll all accept your invitation. Because adding them doesn't mean they're automatically on your friends list, they just receive a request from you, asking them to be your Facebook friend. So the acceptance means they're your friend.

From that moment on, you can see everything that's going on with them. I mean, you can access their page, their photos, their videos, et cetera. People comment on each other's "wall". The wall is the person's page. By clicking on one of your friends, you're taken immediately to the wall, which illustrates what your friend has been up to. Walls are generally just covered in comments by other people (usually whom you don't know), talking about social events, what's been going on in their lives, et cetera. But it also tells you if they've commented on any photos, whether they've updated their "personal information", and random stuff like that.

That's not to say it's exposing everything. There is an "inbox", like on forums, in which you can privately message people, et cetera. But if you're not wanting to converse publicly, then it's not really worth having. PMs on Facebook should only really be about personal matters which you'd rather keep between yourself and your closest friends, or whatever.

When Ganymed claims that the pictures are too small to recognize the individual, that is most likely because the images he's trying to access are of people that he's not "friends" with, at least not according to Facebook.

I'm not sure what else to say...

I mean, if you're under the age of, say 25, then I'd say it's an essential thing to have, because when you're young you're naturally very sociable, or at least most youths are in this day and age. If you're older than that, its relevance will vary, depending not only on your actual social life, but whether those that you socialise with in person have any attachment to the internet. If that makes any sense at all, haha...

Yeah, that's just about all I can say for now. If any of you have got an account and you're wanting to have a closer look at what it offers, feel free add me on there, and I'll accept your invitation so you can have a closer look at the kind of things that it offers. In which case you'll need my name, which is "Alexander Beuttell". :roll:

there are privacy settings on it so you can change what others can and cant see about you and your activity.

it can be very annoying though with superwall, funwall and application invitations bobarding you every time you log on.