Grant McWilliams

I was updating a CentOS OS and I noticed that one of the mirrors it chose was mirror.facebook.net so out of curiousity I put that into my browser and this came up. Does Facebook have extra bandwidth and storage they don't know what to do with?

n case you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks you'll know that Google released it's Google+ service. Normally I wouldn't take Google too seriously when dealing with social networking because they've been completely unsuccessful in the past (Orkut, Waves, Buzz) and in the latter case the results were disasterous. However, Google+ is a force to be reckoned with. I've been using Google+ along with Facebook for the last week or two to get an idea of how good/bad it is. Here's a few thoughts first.

• Looks kind of like Facebook mixed with a 1984 Apple Mac
• The people who are on it currently are techies mostly so there's very little of this -
• It's very easy to find and add friends
• It's got it's tenticles in everything (something FB has just started by allowing you to like things on third party sites)
• You can search your posts
• I don't see any Notes functionality
• There's no game apps (but there's hints of that coming in code)You can add posts from igoogle or gmail
• You can drag and drop media on your post box
• You can import entire on disk photo albums in one shot
• The handling of photos is on a completely different level
• There's group video chats
• There's outside feeds for your wall
• You have complete control over who sees what

I think if you know google products you'll see a lot of integrated code here. Google reader, picassa, google chat, gmail, google search etc...

Apps

Facebook largely unseated MySpace because of it's numerous apps and games. We'll see how fast Google adds this ability.

Notes

The notes will be really easy if they integrate blogger but for me they'd still need to have the same level of access control.

Wall

Wall posts, would be easy but I'm not sure they'll do it because it would be difficult to integrate it into their access control system. Currently when you post you get to see which circles (or all) can view the post. If someone else posts on your wall how do you decide this? They'd have to give up some of the access control functionality if they allowed wlal posts unless all wall posts were moderated by the wall owner. For instance someone wants to post on my wall, I'd look at the post and decide which circles get to view it before any could. That would be possible.

Messages

Direct messages should probably be handled in chat/mail. It's all starting to blur anyway. In Facebook a message has persistance whereas chat messages disapear as soon as you close the window. Facebook has already started to merge these two things into one although very clumsily. I think I'd rather Google use chat to handle user messages than email since it saves it in your email anyway and has direct delivery if both parties are online.

Design

Design wise I think FB is a bit tighter and more space effecient. I also think that having contrast between sidebars, comments etc.. is a nice thing which Facebook does. Google+ was designed by the same guy who did the Macintosh interface from the 80s and although reviewers have raved about it I think the designer isn't aware that at some point computers started coming with colored monitors standard. Maybe he designed it on an 80s Mac. Here's hoping that Google tightens it up a bit in the future.

Readwriteweb did an article on Facebook wanting to be your one login. Their point was that people use it for posting their photos, instant messaging, "email" and just about everything else. The problem was the article's title was Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login and of course Google indexes this with the words Facebook and Login together. Now when people type in "Facebook login" into Google they got the article referenced above instead of the Facebook login page. This would not be a problem for anyone with more than a half a working brain because they'd immediately notice that the Readwriteweb site looks nothing like Facebook and would then conclude that they were not in fact at the Facebook login page but a completely different page (hence the strange non-Facebook URL)! Unfortunately not everyone on Facebook has half a working brain (thanks Myspace for falling out of favor, now they invaded Facebook) so the comment thread that ensued was quite hilarious.

Here are a few comments to the article. Notice that these freaks of nature really think they've landed on the Facebook login page but can't figure out how to log in.

I did NOT hand pick these, I'm just going down the line one after the other!!!

• ok cool now can I get to facebook
• The new facebook sucks> NOW LET ME IN.
• when can we log in?
• I WANT THE OLD FAFEBOOK BACK THIS SHIT IS WACK!!!!!
• just want to get on facebook
• please give me back the old facebook login this is crazy.................
• I just want to sign in............
• I just want to log in to Facebook - what with the red color and all? LOLLLOLOL!!!!!111
• wtf is this bullshttttttttttt all about. can i get n plzzzzzzzzz
• What is going on? You are totally confusing me. Knock-knock. Anybody there? Let me in. Katherine
• IAM NEW AT FACEBOOK NOW WITH CHANGES IAM LOSSSSSSSSST!
• All I want to do is log in, this sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
• This is such a mess I can't do a thing on my facebook .The changes you have made are ridiculous,I can't even login!!!!!I am very upset!!!

Keep in mind that these fine people are not on the FACEBOOK site at all but are on the Readwriteweb site reading an article about Facebook. There's more...

• Can we log into face book? This is crazy I want to get all my info off and be done with this. I recently moved from MN to SC Myrtle Beach and facebook was a great way to keep in touch with family and friends but this is getting to be to difficult.
• i need the old facebook this new one is very bad bbbbbbbbbbuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
• What have they done now. It's not simple enough for me to figure out.
• Seams like all of the comets i read agree with me you people messed up royal i was enjoying facebook now i am thinking of getting rid of it all

• Quit this crap and let me sign in!

• this sucksssss how do i get on my screen?
• Looking good
• bring me back old facebook
  this is sheet

It isn't until about the 80th post that a few people start realizing that this isn't Facebook. Here's the original URL if you want a laugh.

Facebook wants to be your one true login