A first attempt at deactivation

Another sunny, relaxing Sunday with no uni or work to go to. I’ve just woken up to my usual routine of eating breakfast and browsing through my Facebook yet, what is unusual is that I don’t seem like my normal self to pay my full attention towards my friend’s updates so I log off and I set off with my day with cleaning my room and TRYING to revise for my retakes. I started to feel nervous and wished that I began revision earlier I started thinking of all the times I sat there doing nothing or just watch tv or just stalked people on facebook and thought to myself how I’m wasting my life away on technology that would not benefit my life in the long run I suddenly get an urge to just do something about it and ran towards my laptop where my homepage is set to facebook, already logged in, went to my setting and circled my mouse over the deactivation button, thought once, thought twice, clicked on the third. When asked to give a reason I was given the option of deleting it once and for all or to deactivate it for a short while….I didn’t kid myself I knew I would be back so I clicked on the temporary button and closed the window. Felt so good and proud of myself that I have finally found the strength to delete my account (well for a short while anyway) and I began to revise again …yet as the day went like an addict I was curious of what I was missing out on ..I decided that I wasn’t going to give in that easy and went on my friend’s facebook account..yet it just wasn’t the same I wanted to know what was going on with MY friends ….so I thought to myself il deactivate it just to see what’s new however, this was not the case I found myself activating and deactivating over the next 2days until i finally gave in to my addiction and activated it completely….it seems that my fight with facebook is not ending but at least this was only my first attempt to fully deactivate it but I know that one day I will leave it and get over it!

Twitter Trend!

Another Facebook account has been closed and another has signed up on to Twitter. It seems that the Facebook epidemic is soon drawing to an end as last week another one of my friends has got rid of her Facebook and signed up to Twitter.

The reason behind it this time is that Twitter is exactly like Facebook except minus the profile with the revelation of personal details and less of disasters with the privacy setting that seems to change every other week.

This approach seems to be favoured by celebrities as well as more have signed up to Twitter than Facebook with Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore being most popular amongst them.

Yesterday, I found a blog on The Washington Post claiming that Twitter is increasing in its popularity that its even beating the most searched about person Britney Spears and even slightly ahead of president Obama.

According to Google Trends, Twitter seems to be most popular in America and the UK however, it still hasn’t completely beaten Facebook as according to Google trend Facebook as a keyword 81 times more popular than “Twitter”.

It seems that Twitter is growing faster more than ever with its most popular features being minus the hassle of Facebook and the fear of your account being hacked into by strangers. The future seems to be clear for network sites as from the growing popularity of Twitter it seems that it will be centred around status updates and photo uploads.

Does this mean then the obsession with social networking sites is all to do with knowing what people are doing at every moment? If so then it would be fair to classify audiences of social networking sites as nosey and curious rather than to be truly interested in people’s backgrounds.

ARGHH!!

My obsession with Facebook is starting to lessen day by day as Zuckerberg’s mistakes are starting to catch up and affecting the site. He spends most of his time trying to “improve” the image of the site and neglecting its privacy settings.

Last Saturday someone hacked into my account and pretended to be me and sent messages to people I don’t even know, to add on to my anger I also found out that the person added people that I’m not particularly fond of. So you can probably imagine my fury when I log on to find my inbox full from random people responding to dodgy messages that I have apparently sent.

After finding this disaster not only did I have to change my password like three times to avoid it happening again but I also had to sign up to Yahoo mail, which I’m already experiencing trouble with the SLOW speed, to get a new address so I can switch from my hotmail as it is likely for the person to also have my email password. Yet after all this hassle I still couldn’t bring myself to deleting my account.

Why the hell doesn’t Zuckerberg concentrate on making sure hackers don’t get through to accounts rather than trying to gain new users with his unwanted Facebook facelifts. If he keeps going at this rate I reckon he’ll be losing his users quicker than he can say let’s get another facelift.

MySpace credit card

MySpace has been known for many things whether it is a place for promoting your music or a place just to socialise but the latest MySpace trend has been unexpected, a MySpace credit card. According to the New York daily news, MySpace has teamed up with Citi to bring a co-branded credit card.

The MySpace Citi forward website claims that the card rewards consumers for doing the right thing such as recycling as well as a credit card.

Social networking appears to have invaded our lives in many ways and now adding a reminder to our credit cards. Although it is a good way in raising environmental awareness and making more responsible choices however, for social networking to be surrounding our lives from all aspects it can get annoying.

It seems like wherever we turn social networking appears to be in our vision. What else is MySpace going to take part in?

Facebook Face Lift

According to USA Today, Facebook is set to reveal a redesigned homepage that includes branded pages from partners.

 Apparently the company has signed up 12 partner pages those of which include president Barack Obama and the rock band U2. These pages will resemble users of public profile will be able to sign up as fans as friends and send messages.

All that may be well but didn’t Facebook recently claimed that users have the right to vote on any changes to the social site ? Yet nothing of this sort has been revealed amongst consumers to discuss the new design.

Even though the changes may be for the good but didn’t Zuckerberg think that people may have had enough of adjustments every day, I personally just got use to the newer version of Facebook and I still prefer the old one more. Some people may just want to use the site without feeling the need of having to learn how to use new features that are applied every day.

With the recent events that Facebook has experienced it may be a good idea to lay low for a while rather than trying to make adjustments to please consumers as it may turn for the worst.

End of social networking revolution?

For those of us who have Facebook profiles it might be sensible to avoid uploading valuable data. According to Monday’s Telegraph it seems that in one week Facebook has been hit by five security breaches as cybercriminals are attacking our pages and stealing personal information.

Applications that are running on the site do not need to be approved by the site and are available for users to download therefore, cyber thieves are taking this opportunity of Facebook’s trust and are creating fake applications to trick users in downloading the applications and as a result are able to obtain user’s personal data.

Social networking sites have become part of our daily routine however, they are being targeted everyday as an attempt to steal people’s identities but are these attempts enough to stop our obsession with Facebook and MySpace?

Maybe the fact that this is not the only troubling event that has hit Facebook may concern us as users were also affected by the Koobface worm in which a link pops up from a supposedly Facebook friend however, once the link is clicked on a virus is erupted.

It seems over the past few weeks trouble has been surrounding Facebook and causing havoc for Zuckerberg as user trust is declining due to recent catastrophes with one day unwanted policy changes and the next invasion of viruses and spans.
Could these incidents cause Facebook to close down and for the social networking revolution to end? I sure hope not otherwise what other excuse have I got for not revising.

Facebook’s Trust

It seems Facebook is trying to regain its users trust after the controversy it experienced last week over its guidelines claiming that it retains its consumers personal information and photos even if they terminated their accounts. In Friday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times  Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook does not keep users data and that they “never intended to give a wrong impression”.

However, Facebook seems to have up taken a democratic way of dealing with its users as account holders now have the trust and ability to play a part in any changes that occur to the website’s rules and vote in favour or against the policies.

Although, it is likely that this eligibility to govern the site has been put forward to cover up the recent dispute over the user’s privacy yet it is a clever step that Zuckerberg has taken to regain trust and not lose his consumers.

At least we now can rest knowing that we have the privilege of our voice being heard when it comes to issues concerning our personal data yet it can be questioned how far can we be sure that the social networking site doesn’t really keep our information and photographs.

The vow to take into account users opinion can easily be broken by simply claiming that it does not retain data but however, it simply doing the opposite. For now though we’re going to have to put our trust into Zuckerberg and his upcoming policies that we apparently have a say in.

Would you put yourself on the line for Facebook?

An amusing story was published in yesterday’s Metro. The article that goes by the name of Teen steals laptop ‘to check Facebook’ explains how a laptop was snatched from a customer sitting in Starbucks by a 19 year old boy who desperately wanted to check his Facebook on the machine.

However, after being caught and arrested a search of his name was made on Facebook and as it turns out he didn’t have a registered account and the theft was purely just that, a robbery.

What I found amusing was that someone would actually use the excuse of Facebook to snatch a laptop. Yet this article made me think would anyone be that addicted to actually go to extreme measures and risk themselves being arrested just so they could check their Facebook? Otherwise why would it be used as an excuse for taking the laptop unless it is believable.

What is it about social sites that are making us so addicted to actually lead us to losing our ways and doing the impossible in order to check whether we’ve had a few notifications or to know whose updated their profile? I for one certainly become curious if I haven’t checked my Facebook all day but yet, I can’t explain what it is that makes me so anxious to log on and see the latest updates but I do know that I wouldn’t go snatching people’s computers to check posts.

Facebook ban

An intriguing article caught my eye the other day published by The Telegraph online. The article that goes by the title of Soldiers banned from MySpace and Facebook explains troops are no longer allowed to use social networking sites as it is apparently seen to be a “public disclosure of information.”

This evoked angry responses from the troops as they use the likes of Facebook and MySpace to maintain contact with their family and friends back home. Some have also taken offence as they feel that they are being treated like children even though they are prepared to fight for their country.

To me I think the least that the Ministry of Defense can do is give trust to the troops who are sticking their necks out for their country, leaving their loved ones with no definite certainty of whether they will ever see them again. Yet, they are still not even given any credit that they are trustworthy enough to keep information undisclosed and to use Facebook for purposes of keeping in touch with their families and friends back home.

The article goes on to say that they have to ask permission in order to communicate via the media as if they are children asking for approval on what to say to their relatives back home as they are distrusted. It seems that more focus is concentrated on the likes of Facebook and how it is used by the soldiers rather than keeping the numbers of military casualties low during war.

So what happens next? Today is the ban of Facebook for the troops what will become of tomorrow? Could it be the possibility of the banning of any form of communication for the soldiers as a precaution to keep information private? For individuals that are risking their lives fighting terrorism it is certainly being made more difficult for them by taking away any hope and chance of feeling a sense of warmth that they have when contacting their families through Facebook.