The New Facebook

One would usually think that things fixed would have been at one point or another broken or malfunctioning. It is from my personal experience that I can say with complete confidence that the old facebook layout was absolutely satisfactory and that the new and "improved" layout is better off non-existent.
Although everything looks nice, neat and tidy, it has become increasingly difficult to find anything you need which may or may not defeat the purpose of the new layout. The tabs which have suddenly exploded into every corner have become a) redundant since the same tab can be located twice on the same page, and b) a waste of viewing space which makes it more difficult to see the actual content of the page you're viewing. The infamous flaw of the new layout is the Online Chatting tab at the bottom of the page. Almost never functional, the chat tab has become a nuisance because of its evanescence and incoherency during any given chat. So until the bugs are actually removed from the service, DON'T introduce it to the public! Another very annoying aspect of the new layout is the fact that now if I want to leave a group, I must visit each group individually and remove myself from the member list, rather than simply clicking 'remove' next to each title in a complete list of all the groups to which I belong, as it once was in the old layout.

On the other hand, I'm a fair and balanced person, and have also noticed some good that came out of this change. For one, I don't need to wait an eternity for ten dozens of applications to load so that I can see a person's profile only to have the page cause the computer to freeze. So the boxes tab in profiles has done a lot to ease our suffering. Not to mention the fact that the privacy page has become a lot more user friendly and quite simple to use unlike the complicated hellhole that it once was.

Therefore, after weighing in all the pros and cons of the monstrosity that is the new facebook layout, I've decided that I'm against the new layout and demand the old one back.

Ridiculous Apps

Is it just me or are some of the applications on facebook just completely ridiculous? What up with quizzes like: "Are you a penis or A Vagina?" or applications like: vandalize your friend's profiles? I think they're getting a little out hand! A lot of profiles are so cramped up with all this crap that it takes ages for it to load, and the computer usually freezes in the end anyway! Sometimes I can't even find the wall in the middle of all that junk.

Another thing I hate is the fact that I have to bombard and be bombarded with dozens of invitations to these idiotic applications every day. People's all time favorite seems to be the 'Texas Hold Em Poker' which I had to block because I was getting near 10 invitations a day for that app alone! STOP forcing me to invite 1, 5, 10, or even 20 friends! It's annoying!

They should also get the Online Friends page back because that stupid bar at the bottom of the screen is hardly ever functional and the chat is really unreliable - it always disconnects.

In fact, the only good thing they did was remove that mandatory 'is' at the beginning of the 'Status'...finally!

The Ultimate Rejection

It's that event that everyone fears. When you admire the huge number of friends you've collected on your facebook account over the past months, or years, only to realize that it has decreased by one. Isn't being deleted from someone's facebook friend list the worst thing that can happen to you? One starts to ask questions like: what did I do to him/her? what's his/her problem? what went wrong? All those nights spend wondering what happened, what changed...the sleepless nights, the hurt, the pain! What a horrible stigma in one's record!

But seriously, who really gives a shit? I can't believe people actually join groups like: "deletees unite!" or "join if you've been deleted from a friends list" Is it really necessary to add insult to injury by advertising your rejection to everyone on facebook? Suck it up, and get over it.

I also found it laughable that people's treatment towards the deleters (in the cases in which they knew each other) actually changed for the worst. The deletees are so bitter about the whole thing that they snap at the deleter or mock them and insult them behind their backs. What's with that?!

The last time I was deleted I got upset that it had happened, but I didn't care (then deleted someone from my own list to feel better, haha!) But really, some people take it a little too far. That's all I'm saying.

How safe?

A lot of people prefer FB to MySpace because they say it's safer. But how safe is it, really? I mean, with every application you add, you give someone you don't even know access to all your information. There's no actual full-proof way to determine what people can actually see on your profile, and third parties are far from trustworthy.
As much as I hate to admit it, I frequently find friend requests from people who are most certainly peadophiles and child molesters, not to mention all the other freaks. However, I admit that the MySpace community is much more layed back when it comes to that sort of thing; with all sorts of pornographic images available for anyone who visits a profile, yet it still seems naive to think that FB is all that safe.
What I also don't understand is how people, especially girls, can post pictures of themselves in places like the beach and whatnot. Any pervert can download them off the internet and do God knows what with them.
That being said, I'm not deactivating my facebook any time soon; not until I find a valid reason to do so.

The facebook addiction

It was about a year ago when I first heard about facebook. I had little or no knowledge of what it actually. To me, it was, at the time, unexplored territory. As soon as I got home that day, I immediately visited FB and created my account.
Within a week I was spending 5 to 6 hours a day on it, uploading photos, commenting on other people's photos, browsing groups...the whole nine yards. By the end of my first month, I was spending a minimum of 10 hours a day "facebooking", which, needless to say, took a toll on both my academics and my social life.
This continued for quite a while, until my finals crept slowly from the distance. Now however, I spend not more than 2 hours a day on the site. What changed? Am I slowly getting bored? Is facebook outgrown like online games? I don't know. But the more important question on my mind is: Why is it so hard to stay away from it once you start? In other words: what keeps people coming back to it?