Tag Archives: Facebook

Computing & Internet

Facebook’s New Layout

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Facebook has got a new layout for close to a month already and almost everyone that I asked tells me that the old layout is better. I personally think that the new layout is better. It’s fresh, light and has less clutter, hence browsing through my homepage and those of my friends is easier. Am I the only one who thinks so?

What amazes me is that there are people who are using the Facebook hack so that they could continue to use the old Facebook layout. Don’t ask me about this Facebook hack because I don’t want to encourage others to use the old layout. LOL There’s even a Facebook member who started a group to petition to Facebook to bring back the old layout.

Oh, come on. I think that the only problem with these people is that they refuse to change even though change is the only constant in life. What about you? If you are also a Facebook member, who isn’t nowadays?, do you like the new layout or do you prefer the old one? If it is the old layout, are you doing anything proactively so that you could continue to use it?

Computing & Internet

Who Are These “Friends”?

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A friend was surprised to see that the number of friends I have on Facebook has increased drastically recently. I have to tell her that I do not even know 3/4 of the people in my list!

I started out on Facebook with the hope of only adding people I really know in real life as friends but I feel really bad if they request for inclusion especially if they found me from “people you may know”.

And then there are friends with multiple profiles who want to raise their game characters or gain points, so much so that I no longer remember whose profile belongs to which *real* person.

I do not see the point of adding a person in our buddy list when we don’t know him or her but I guess most people join social network sites with a mission. They “network” trying to “sell” or blast people in their network with an “idea”.

Well, even though I have twenty blogs, I only added my personal blog to my Facebook profile. That is for the convenience of friends who are genuinely interested to know what’s happening in my life.

Computing & Internet

Scrabulous Removed From Facebook

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I just got the news a couple of hours ago that Hasbro, the rights holder of the game, Scrabble, in the United States, has sought to have Scrabulous removed from Facebook. The international rights holder of Scrabble is Mattel.

Although I am not a big time Facebooker, I know that Scrabulous is one of the more popular word games there and most of my friends are addicted to it. It’s kind of sad that the app has to be removed like that and the creators, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla may possibly face court action.

So I guess my friends and other Scrabulous game players will have to get addicted to some other games; go back to their Mob Wars and Super Pokin’. And of course, I am sure somebody will start a petition to bring back Scrabulous to Facebook. Will it work? I guess it will if Mattel and Hasbro somehow make a profit from that!

Computing & Internet

Facebook Files Suit Against German Social Portal StudiVZ

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Facebook is taking German social network portal StudiVZ to the courts for being a copycat and is seeking an undisclosed amount of money as damages. It is funny that Facebook itself had been embroiled in a lawsuit with ConnectU which accused Facebook for stealing its idea.

So the gist is that Facebook stole the idea from ConnectU but StudiVZ stole the same idea from Facebook. Get it? Of course, no party has admitted to it. Even if they did, would they admit? No, right?

StudiVZ meanwhile has stated that Facebook is only jealous that they are unable to penetrate the German market while StudiVZ has ten million German members. That’s quite a number there.

I enclosed a screenshot each of Facebook and StudiVZ so that you can compare them and see if StudiVZ has copied Facebook and if Facebook has a case against StudiVZ. What do you think? You be the judge!

Computing & Internet

How Much Is Facebook Worth?

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So the courts have ruled that Facebook is not worth US$15billion but “only” US$3.75 billion. Would any investor be willing to fork out this amount of money to take over the company, or buy some stocks? I think that prices for virtual commodities are always overrated. If you are an investor, you should seriously think about its inflated value.

In the case of Facebook, I know that companies seeking to buy shares look at its advertisement potential. When it comes to membership based websites, you need to show the number of members you have, traffic levels and the amount of time unique visitors are spending at the website.

However, investors are not users and they are not at the user-level. They do not know that even membership count is inflated. My friend and his friends have multiple accounts per person and when you advertise to a hundred members, you are actually doing so to about seventy members.

So Facebook is actually the same as other social website during the dot com boom. I really do not see anything special about Facebook that I have not used before in one social networking site or another.