Facebook is cyber-crack

It was exactly 10 days ago today that a friend, Lisa, invited me to join Facebook. I heard of Facebook but had no idea that it was open to anyone other than university students (Facebook opened their doors to anyone as of Sept. 2006).

It's only been ten days but it's been ten days of a cyber-crack induced haze of Facebook addiction. In that short time, I've gone from a Facebook virgin to Facebook tramp. During this time, I've forsaken my previous devoted amours of LinkedIn and even you, dear blog.

In honour of ten days of Facebook bliss, here are my ten favourite things about Facebook:

1. it's the most fun social networking site - LinkedIn may be more useful but isn't much fun and MySpace may be more popular, but it sucks
2. you can post embarrassing photos of your friends and tag their name to the pic and then all their friends will see the photo and join in the laughs
3. great way to find old friends and actually reconnect for free. You can find friends by searching by their name or joining your past school's inevitably pre-existing Group. Classmates.com, the granddaddy of social networking sites lost their edge by insisting on charging for this same functionality
4. their event feature is like other sites (e-vent and Upcoming) but these sites make you get your contact network to these sites, whereas Facebook easily integrates with your existing network for private events and it also allows public events, or a combo of both
5. as they say, Facebook is a stalker's best friend - Facebook's homepage makes it very easy to see exactly what your friends are up to (and it's way more fun than Twitter!)
6. has same cool Group functionality as Yahoo or Google but as with point #4 you can tap into your existing network rather than try and get them to come to another website
7. lots of sites try to encourage community by having members fill out Profiles but only Facebook seamlessly creates a network out of Profile interests. For instance, I had no idea so many people (320 in fact - some even under 50) shared my love of Golden Girls - now I don't feel so alone!
8. has no annoying audio clips that start to play automatically when you visit a friend's page, like MySpace does
9. let's you block "Friends" without their knowing it, which I have used to tune someone out without any awkward unpleasantness
10. with ten friends you can too play the Friends Game! It's oh so much fun!

Yes, Facebook offers the addictive highs of cocaine and heroin, without the body-ravaging side effects.

Try it now! C'mon all your friends are doing it...

Answering the question which Answer service is best?

I had a couple issues come up in the last few days that I wanted guidance. So I decided to try LinkedIn’s new (launched January 2007) Answers service. I also posed a similar question to Yahoo Answers (launched Dec. 2005).

These Answer services aren't much different than a standard web forum, but the presentation is definitely better and there is a focus on answering a specific question rather than having threaded discussions. (Google also had an answer service staffed by experts charging for answers, but this was shut down last December.)

LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers are fairly similar. You need an account with Yahoo or LinkedIn (if you’re not familiar with the many benefits of joining LinkedIn see my post HyperLinkedIn).

Once you are member, you can pose a finite number of questions. LinkedIn limits you to five a month and Yahoo has a point system that limits how many questions you can pose (basically you have to answer others’ questions to get points to be able to pose your questions – but Yahoo starts you off with a bunch, so you can easily test it out). Both will email you when you get a response (which typically happens in the first couple days and then that's it) and both seem to offer RSS subscription to the topics and questions. Both also allow you to vote on the best answer.

Which one is better?
Both are quite useful and were a big help. Both also have problems that are based more on human nature than any technical glitch. In Yahoo’s case, I found people were posting stupid responses just to get points, and in LinkedIn’s case some were posting inappropriate responses for self-promotion. Wikipedia offers a good look at other criticism of Yahoo Answers.

Overall, I slightly prefer LinkedIn as it gives the opportunity to pose questions only to your network and I think that in helps build community that may lead to new contacts.

As per my previous post, I was thinking wouldn’t it be great if Shakira was on LinkedIn? The questions I have for her.

Shakira on MySpace and I asked her if she’ll be my friend. I had to ask the PussyCat Dolls three times to be my friend before they’d finally have me. Sucks to be turned down by former burlesque dancers, even if they are all gorgeous and can actually sing (seriously, I have their album and it's good!)

Shakira, if you’re listening please join LinkedIn!