Virtual worlds and social networking sites have something very much in common with each other. Both, in their most basic form, exist to allow people to connect with each other. In the case of places like Second Life, new friendships are formed along with old ones, perhaps. Though in Second Life it truly can be a “second” life since you can be whoever or whatever you want there.
Social sites like MySpace and Facebook, however, tend to be based on in who you really are (at least in theory). The idea behind these sites is to let you catch up with friends or people you know from diverse locations and share stories, thoughts, ideas, videos, pictures, whatever.
Facebook even has a lot of great games that you can play with friends from all over the world, not to mention TONS of other social applications.
Facebook, which I use, is not without its issues however. But one great thing about Facebook is that they appear to, at times, listen to their user base. Lately, there have been two great examples of this.
First, Facebook changed their Terms of Service without informing their users that they were doing so. These changes were pretty drastic. To sum up: They own everything you put on your page on Facebook and everything you link to and all your pictures and videos and everything. Forever. Even if you stop using Facebook.
Now, setting aside how ridiculous a lot of this is (so, if I link to a New York Times article, Facebook now owns it? Wow, won’t the Times be surprised) that is a pretty serious change. I mean, there isn’t even the ability to opt-out.
This created an incredible amount of outrage.
The result is that Facebook first tried to clarify their policy saying that they didn’t really mean what they said. Shortly after that, however, Facebook switched right back to their old TOS. A solid example of a company making a massive mistake and then fixing it.
Well, they have done it again, but in this case it is usability. After changing their look less than a year ago, they have done it again. Now it is harder than ever to do the primary function of Facebook – keep up with friends. In what some postulate is an attempt to compete with ultra-simple Twitter, Facebook simplified things. But they went way, way too far.
The result is that the user base is very, very upset. Now, what everyone really wants from Facebook, has been set-aside. So why stick with them, right?
Facebook is listening and has announced that they are going to make some changes based on this feedback and make it easier to follow friends again.
Facebook still has a lot of issues. A huge problem brewing is their privacy policy, in which basically once we install a third-party application, we have no privacy at all. No, I don’t know why that game of scrabble needs access to my whole profile. But I know I don’t like it.
Social networking is still relatively new. Every company has had stumbles. Some never recover (looking at you Friendster). However, I have to give credit to Facebook. While they are far from perfect, at least they are listening. Sometimes.
