Facebook Yay Or Nay

"Social networking sites like Myspace, Friendster, Facebook have literally exploded in popularity in just a few short years" - Mike Fitzpatrick

While the above sentence may have been true a few years back, Facebook is probably the only most-used social networking website today. Myspace, as many might have heard, has already lost its "space", and Friendster is so yesterday. Will Facebook users ever lose their interest in Facebook? Afterall we were once users of Myspace or Friendster, or other networking websites, and have since migrated over.

Just last lesson, we were showed the video on "25 things I hate about Facebook" by Julian Smith. Among them are "poking", "pillow fight requests" and "gifts", which I honestly do not understand their purpose. Like Smith said, "great, it's a lollipop, now what am i supposed to do with it?" I find no meaning in sending virtual gifts at all.

While I do appreciate that Facebook allows me to connect with my friends as mentioned in my previous post, I find that privacy is becoming more of an issue. At least for me. Every activity you do, even if it were just a comment on someone else's status or photo, is updated on your wall. And it isn't just "Caitlin wrote on ____'s wall". Even the littliest details are given. Like what you've written. And the worse thing is you don't even know who is viewing your profile. What if he/she is someone you feel uncomfortable with viewing your own profile but because of friendship issues you let that individual remain your "friend" on Facebook?

I'm not sure if anyone is facing the same problem. Many a time when I've decided to do a Facebook spring cleaning I don't carry it out eventually. For fear of removing mere acquaintances that are friends of friends, and it may seem bad to delete them off, and you should be friendly... and the list carries on.

Of course, I can cease all activities and just use Facebook as a platform to check out how my friends are doing, but then what would be the fun? I prefer the old version. Sure, activities were updated, but they weren't too detailed. At least there was a certain amount of privacy.

Or maybe it's time to create another social networking account - Path.

Also known as the anti-Facebook, Path allows users to add only a maximum of 50 friends. This is based on the scientifically-proven fact that an individual can only have at most 50 friends. "The idea here is that you always control who you're sharing with and you can tell the story of your life to your closest friends and family." (Los Angeles Times)

I quite like this idea.