Ok, I was invited to Facebook so I joined.
At first sight it looks alot like stuff we have seen before, 6degress, Orkut, Linkedin. I used Linkedin for work and it works great for this professional use. Facebook seems very focused on the social network aspect. As I tonight attempt to fill in some more details it struck me.
Man, this tool is magnificent, the people behind Facebook are getting awesome data on people's relationships, preferences, demographics and everything. I work in a marketing department and these people would kill for these data. The best thing is that people are entering everything themselves. I once built a community website, a sort of Geocities aimed at Denmark, it was not a success but I learned a lot, perl being one of the things, but I also learned that it is important to just provide the frames and then let the users do the rest, Facebook has certainly done this to the max.
So in my opinion Facebook is actually nothing but an advanced questionnaire and people spend a lot of time filling it in. It is not really a 'can we take 5 minutes of your time?' no, no, no - take several days, I will call in sick to get all my friends invited, I do not care, just let me locate some of my old buddies from high-school.
This brings me to my own conspiracy theory, that Google actually is the NSA. Having people give you all your mail, appointments, documents and everything is so much easier than the Echelon, Echelon, Echelon project.
So I wonder what agency owns the data 'honey pot' Facebook?
NSA are busy with their phone project, which will make wiretapping more easy, eh Google I mean. Sorry, this is my first conspiracy theory so I keep messing things up and journaling about it will probably put me on some special list - no wait, nobody reads use.perl anyway or do they?? nah, I am not sufficiently paranoid to make up conspiracy theories...
