Metafluence

Facebook effin’ pwns!

Ok, so I’m into MySpace the way dogs are into sniffin’ crotches. At the same time, I’ve also been a long time critic of the MySpace design, code, and usability. In fact, I think as a website, MySpace is really quite bad. The reason I love MySpace is because 1) it has so many people and 2) those people are very actively engaged with the site. When the whole purpose of social networking is interaction, those two points are pretty strong sellers.

Even though I crack out on MySpace, I am by no means a MySpace loyalist. I’ve played on a number of other social networking sites such as Friendster, iMeem, Hi5, Rouge Connect, and more. But I didn’t feel like I got the feeling of connection with other people the way I did with MySpace (perhaps in the not too distant future I’ll write a comparative post for these sites).

On the other hand, I’ve heard people say many great things about Facebook. I had tried to create an account before, but because I was not a student and they didn’t have my company on their list, I couldn’t join. Well, today I received an email from Facebook that they have now opened it up to the general public, and I was more than happy to give it a looksy.

Let me tell you something, that Facebook is one sexy site! It is dripping with standards compliant DHTML and AJAX goodness! The forms are really well done and the interface is screaming great usability. Because I’m so used to MySpace I did have to poke around a bit, but I never felt lost or confused. In fact, I felt like I was getting an easy reeducation about how social networking sites should function. Allow me to touch on a few items that I really liked.

Facebook Pros

• Tasteful, clean design!!!!!!!!!! It’s not just the design snob in me that is feeling like it just got an extra helping of dessert, but I think it makes the user experience more satisfying and clear.
• When I first logged in, the initial set-up form was slick. Clicking on a step nicely highlighted the background. Each step you completed, resulted in collapsing that form to clearly indicate it’s completeness. Choosing a region brought up a nice AJAX list for easy auto-completion and maintained data integrity.
• People can have photos on their profile that were uploaded by friends.
• Photos have captions of the people in them. Mousing over the name renders a box on the photo to identify who the people are.
• The previous and next buttons are located in a stationary location, which makes it easy to click through someone’s photos without moving your mouse.
• A person’s profile shows a history of what they’ve done recently to help you know what’s new about them to check out.
• Facebook incorporates multiple methods for verifying identity, which means the people on Facebook are who they say they are.
• Unlimited photos that are organized in galleries and tagged.

I could go on and on about what I like about Facebook, but the bottom line is that the people behind it clearly have a deep understanding of modern web development’s best practices. Now, I don’t think MySpace is in any trouble just yet because Facebook also has some significant drawbacks that it nees to address if they hope to claim more market share.

Facebook Cons

• No profile customization. This is particularly bad because people love stylizing their MySpace layouts. People love those tacky glitter graphics and vacation countdowns. In fact, you’ll have a hard time finding a MySpace layout that doesn’t have a restyled layout.
• Network segmentation. I like that Facebook is trying to keep the 50 year-old pervs from hitting on the high schoolers, but I don’t like that I can’t befriend my fellow Oregon alumni because my college email was turned off after I graduated. For those who haven’t used Facebook, they only let you browse through people based on the networks you belong to, kinda like Friendster. So, if you can’t receive a confirmation email at an address from your alma matter, then you can’t join that network to find your friends. Limiting person to person connection=bad in social networking, unless it’s the individual’s choice.
• Because they have been limited to high schoolers and college students for the majority of their existence, it’s hard to find people on Facebook that are older than 23.

While I think those cons are some pretty significant hurdles for Facebook’s ability to rival MySpace, I’m still going to participate on it because it is such a joy to interact with. I mean I am so impressed with the site that I want to hug the development team. Nice work folks!