Jwill's Log

Facebook’s profiles have less room for style modifications than Myspace’s profiles do. I find this to be a good thing because it keeps a sense of uniformity on the site and keeps the interface clean. I felt a bit iffy about the appearance of Facebook applications. While I do like a few of them (such as Weekly Schedule), I heavily disapprove of most. Some applications ask that you invite a certain number of friends before you get results, and some seem relatively pointless. Most annoying, however, is when users have a large number of applications on their profile, pushing down the wall and increasing the height of the page. The more I have to scroll down your page, the less likely I am to post on your wall.

My main point for this post, however, is about coloring Facebook’s profiles. I was invited to a group called something like “Official Petition for Colored Profiles on Facebook” and I very quickly rejected it. First of all, there’s more than one “official” group for them, and more than one “official” group against them. I don’t know who gave the group creators the right to throw around the word “official”. But, more importantly, I don’t support colored profiles. If Facebook presented the option to throw a hue in on your profile that every user would see, Facebook would lose its uniformity. You would be going from a standard blue to a red to a pink to a lime green. Also, I don’t think it’s good to trust some users’ color choices. Some may use a background color that makes the site unreadable, and if they do, people that use Facebook may see it as disgusting and not want to use it (I don’t use MySpace because I find many of the profiles ugly, and I guarantee you I’m not the only person that thinks that). I think it’s best that Facebook stays the blue it is and keeps the same layout. That’s why I much prefer Facebook over Myspace.

Some people dare to say that Facebook is turning into MySpace. I seriously think this is false. First of all, Facebook is nowhere near as “in-your-face” and obnoxious as MySpace is. MySpace pages have ugly layouts, music that plays as soon as you load the page, and loads of embedded content that all have the nerve to play at the same time. With Facebook, we’re starting to get the embedded content, but the developers have made a smart move by NOT making these things start playing until you actually go and click on them. That way, they’re there and you deal with them only if you want to.

The application system is great, but what really is annoying is the “invite your friends” thing. The good news is that if you go to your Inbox and click “Notifications”, there’s an eventual point where you can uncheck the application from “Show notifications from:” on the right side, and when you uncheck the notification, you can mark it as spam. Right now, I have the “X Me”, “Food Fight”, and “Free Gifts” applications marked as spam, so I will never see those invitations again. I’m pretty sure you can also block the applications so you don’t see them as well.

This is WAY better than MySpace did it, guys; at least we can choose what we want to see. At least I don’t have to deal with people’s disgusting layouts and music over my music and all of that other stuff. For now, anyway, Facebook is doing applications right. And the site is still as cool as it always was, and, dare I say, even better.

Looks like they changed up the privacy settings for Facebook, so now it’s way better. Good job to all parties involved

Is there really any safe haven anymore?

First there was Xanga. Back when I was there, it was okay because a lot of my friends were there. The advertisement choices that Xanga made, mixed with some ugly and processor intensive layouts that were strutted on some pages, led me to eventually disconnect myself from that service. I joined MySpace only because most of my friends are there now. I’ve never gotten a layout because I feel the layout sucks, and I don’t need someone else’s credits in my profile. MySpace layouts that have been made by other people are ridiculously processor intensive and lack proper CSS knowledge. Bulletins posted on MySpace are also the most propagandistic and stupid things I’ve ever seen. Ever. But I’m not leaving the site as of now because there’s too much to lose from leaving. Then there’s Facebook.
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Here’s a message I got while trying to log in this morning. Granted, big websites do maintenance every so often, and I should excuse it. But to see a site like this have maintenance almost every day on one section or another is ridiculous. So I guess they’re doing maintenance on the log-in feature? Wow…Also, look at the message I’m given. It tells me NOT to e-mail Tom (one of the people that runs MySpace) and just to wait it out. That’s the type of message that would make me want to leave, if I haven’t gotten 1001 reasons already.