Everything Digital

discoveries of a technogeek wannabe

Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

Revamped Friendster Still Looks Boring

December 5th, 2009

Jojo Agot

So this is what Pinoy bloggers have all been talking about, the grand, exciting, most awaited (?) come back of Friendster to Asian market. For weeks I’ve been religiously following the rumors that the first social networking site that I used to love (and later hated) is about to launch something exciting to win back its users that have happily migrated to Facebook. I was skeptical of course. I was thinking that whatever changes Friendster will make, it will be too late for them to catch up with the times.

Today I opened my Friendster account to to see if reality lived up to the hype that preceded the launch and frankly, I’m bored with with I saw. Let me tell me you why:

1. Home page is still cluttered. A short comment on your friend’s profile takes up a lot of space.

2. Home page side bar took up almost half of the space, with the boring, poorly designed Haboo ads taking the other half of the page.

3. Beige and green color combination looks terrible. I know we need to think green and act green and live green but the Friendster green just doesn’t look nice at all.

4. In profile page, pictures are enlarged. My old pictures that used to look fine now have missing heads. One picture emphasized the mouth and it looks terrible considering I don’t have the sexiest mouth in the cyberworld.

5. The largest piece of monstrosity is the treasure chest that now sits at the center of my page.

6. My profile shoutout now have large fonts, taking up considerable space. And speaking of space (which is generally considered a real estate in web development), Friendster is leaving lots of open spaces around, making the site look bare and boring.

7. Did I already mention that the logo looks very elementary? I tried searching Google for the new logo and guess what, as of this writing, nobody seemed interested to post it anywhere yet. I did find one that says: Laos na ang Friendster… (Literally, Friendster’s glory days are over).

I know the upgrades aren’t done yet. There will be more to come next year but until then, I’d still be the guy who’s disappointed that it took Friendster years to listen to the needs of its target market.

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Posted in Social Media

Tags: asian, facebook, friendster, revamped, Social Media, social networking

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Facebook Is Changing, Again

December 2nd, 2009

Jojo Agot

Brace yourselves. In the next few weeks, Facebook will launch a massive upgrade in their system. This time, they will remove all the existing regional networks to give you more control on your privacy settings. Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg posted an open letter on Facebook today explaining why these changes have to be done.

According to him, Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around networks or communities like school, country of region. However, due to the sheer number of users in these networks, they reached the conclusion that it is no longer the best way to control the privacy of users.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone. We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload.

Sounds like a good plan to me, except that this is really nothing new to social networks. If you remember, this has always been a staple feature in Friendster and Multiply for years. I’m even surprised Facebook is the last one to jump into this user controlled privacy settings. What does this make them, late bloomers?

The question now is whether this is a positive sign for the future of Facebook or not. I think people like Facebook for what it is, not for what it’s going to be. I remember the last time they did “some upgrades” barely a month ago. People were so confused with status update and newsfeed that for weeks I could still see complaints in my home page.

How about you, you think you’re ready for Facebook evolution yet?

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