Facebook Talk

Facebook made some news splash today by agreeing to over 40 tougher policies and safeguards for children using the site. Some of these new measures include “banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users’ ability to search online for subscribers under 18 and building a task force seeking ways to better verify users’ ages and identities.”

Hahahaha. Sorry, that task force line got to me. Like that’s actually going to happen and/or do anything worthwhile.

The deal was signed by Facebook and representatives from 49 states; the lone holdout being Texas. Apparently they’re not big fans of on-line protection of children. But they’ve got their guns, woooo haaaaa! *cue scene of crazy Texan from The Simpsons shooting two pistols in the air.*

I like Facebook’s approach here, but let’s be honest about something. What in the hell took so long? They rolled out the pointless applications feature a year ago and have already translated the site into Polish, but they’re just now getting around to setting making sure Mr. Convicted Catholic Priest isn’t trolling the site? Really? Whatever, I’m not a kid and my siblings aren’t foolish enough to go actually meet somebody they met on Facebook, so this doesn’t affect me much.

Wait, check that. I get plenty of daily e-mails (as you all know by now) from idiots, but I also get the occasional message from a concerned parent or teacher. They all want to make sure they’re children or students aren’t being harassed or seduced by the latest guy to have a sit-down with Chris Hanson. Before, I could do nothing more than send them an e-mail back saying I hoped their kids were safe too. But now, I can at least send them a link to this post. So thanks, Facebook!

I’ve got two or three brilliant Facebook Idiots ready to post, but I figured I should take a minute to talk about Facebook’s new chat feature. Initial impressions? Kinda useful, if not a few years too late and a bit pointless…

I don’t like how it hovers down in the corner of my screen. It’s like one of those annoying widgets that computer makers think people enjoy having around. News flash, we find them fucking annoying. It needs to be moved and it needs to be moved now or people are going to hate it within days.

As for the actual features it provides, I will concede that the instant notifications for messages, wall posts, etc. are pretty handy. I’m not a fan of refreshing sites to see if something is new or updated and thankfully, that’s a thing of the past with Facebook now. Unfortunately, that little notifications feature was supposed to be an add-on to an even bigger feature - the chat!

Seriously, did Facebook think people were going to fall head over heals in love with ANOTHER Instant Messenger program? When Google has trouble getting theirs off the ground (who even uses GTalk now?), then that should tell you the market is severely over-saturated.

At the same time, I guess Facebook is as good a place as any to start a new chat program. All of your friends are theoretically already on it all day, though from looking at my list of available friends I’m doubting that assumption. Call me crazy, but I think the days of people simply turning on their messaging program of choice 24/7 just in case somebody wants to talk to them is over. It’s called cell phones, everybody has one and it’s a hell of a lot quicker and convenient!

Whatever, in the end, it’s just another bell and whistle that improves the site a little over what they had before but really isn’t groundbreaking or earth shattering.

But move it out of the corner and find a new place to put it!

Facebook, chat

Would you believe that Facebook has finally given people the option to ignore any and every future application invitation from specific friends? Let me guess, you just checked your ass to see whether or not monkeys were flying out of it. Don’t worry, the apocalypse hasn’t come just yet.

It only took Facebook, what, 10 months to get on the ball with this? Whatever, I’ll give credit wherever credit is due and right now, I owe about 15 dump trucks worth of credit to Facebook right about now. It’s not the sweeping “Block ALL Application Invites” setting I was hoping for, but this will do for now.

I opened up my RSS reader this morning to find news from TechCrunch that Facebook will soon offer an instant messaging feature that will be integrated into the site.

I can easily understand why Facebook would want to do something like this. Most people post on people’s walls so much that it’s basically like an instant message conversation for them. People spend hours a day on Facebook as it is and they’re hardly conversing with each other while on there, so why not offer a live chat option? It makes sense on the surface.

Yet on the other hand, I think the main people using this will be Facebook’s younger users (ie, high schoolers). In high school, I practically lived on AIM. Once I got to college, not so much. In fact, once Facebook came around, my AIM usage virtually went extinct. Cheap text messages, everybody living together in the same dorm, Facebook wall posts, and a number of other factors helped to kill sitting in front my computer and carrying on conversations with people. I would consider offering an instant messaging system revolutionary by any means at this stage of the tech evolution. It’s not 1998 anymore.

That said, the TechCrunch article mentioned that the instant messaging feature will be integrated into the site though. Kinda like Google’s GTalk, which automatically loads in the sidebar whenever you go to check your e-mail. That’s pretty smart and could easily breath life into instant messaging for older people again. Part of the reason I stopped using AIM was because nobody was ever on anymore. At least, nobody I wanted to talk to! Yet whenever I check to see who is on Facebook at any given time, there’s always at least one or two people I wouldn’t mind chatting with.

If Facebook doesn’t botch this, it could be a pretty cool addition to the site and lead to Facebook snagging a lion’s share of the IM market like they did with the photo market.

It’s been kind of slow in the world of Facebook. A lot has been written about less users signing up in the UK recently (who cares?) and, um, I don’t really know what else. I haven’t been on top of my Facebook news lately and that’s because I don’t use Facebook that much anymore and I don’t even live in the UK. Is Facebook on the downslide? I don’t know, nor do I really care.

But Facebook recently let loose a few snapshots of their new profile layout which will be implemented God knows when. Below are some samples of the design, which as you’ll notice uses tabs to divide up the content.

At first glance, I actually like the changes. It looks clean, which is an approximate 89 trillion percent upgrade over the cluttered profiles that most people have now. I like the expanded About Me section, which clearly allows for more text to be entered without looking jumbled and bloated. In fact, this layout looks like a throwback to the Facebook of old I loved so much!

Then I realized the profile in the picture above has no applications added. Crapfest. No wonder it looked so good! It was smart of Facebook to release photos of a clean profile, such as that one, instead of one with 80 applications added to it like most people have. I have a feeling this new design won’t look so great with so many added…

Facebook, tabbed, tabs, design

I woke up this morning to find the message above on my Facebook page, which is kinda cool in a pointless yet ego stroking way. I’m pretty sure this is new as it wasn’t there last year, but like the new search image icon, it’s just fluff in the grand scheme of things. Still, I enjoy fluff when it’s directed to me

Apparently Facebook has a new icon on their search menu, which is awesome because…well, okay maybe it’s not that awesome. But it’s new and it’s there, so I had to write about it. Heck, maybe it’s been there all along and I’m just now noticing it. That’s a huge possibility, as I’m not the most attentive person in the world.

EDIT: Turns out I was right, as I happened to have a picture of Facebook’s old search box saved onto my computer. Why? Who the hell knows, but it’s there!

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