However recently the craze about Facebook seems to have somewhat died, with teenagers spending less time on it and checking it less frequently. But what should be made know to people is just how amazing Facebook is for day to day communication, games and music. Here I will outline some of the newer, cleverest features and how to get the most from Facebook.
Firstly is Facebook's music application - they recently included Spotify integration, making listening and sharing music incredibly easy, or just for stalking a friend's embarrassing music tastes. Despite Spotify's annoying 5 plays per song limit, and adverts about one of their employee's love for 'Broadway Show tunes' (among other things), overridden only by paying large amounts of money to Spotify for their music, it really is a handy and convenient way to listen to music for free - you get your money's worth. Users were able to share playlists, see what other friends were listening to and listen to the music with their friends at the same time as them.
Secondly Instagram, the latest addition to the Facebook family, was bought by them in April for $1 billion and since then has become increasingly popular as iPhone and Android users use the app to upload and tag photos, creating a sort of photo blog ('phlog', if you will) with all photos sent to your Facebook profile to keep it all together. Photo updates from a user's friends would be displayed in a news feed similar to Facebook's. The idea of #hashtags was borrowed from Twitter to enable people to find photos from its selection of users belonging to a particular category, and users could also add a number of effects and editing tools to their photos.
Thirdly is Facebook's App Centre, compiling a vast selection of Games (such as Farmville or Words with Friends), Music (Spotify, Soundhound etc.), News (The Independent, Metro etc.) and many other categories. Facebook's Gift Cards provide credits which can be used in such games, but can only really appeal to people with literally nothing better to do than send endless game requests to their non-interested friends, watching their money from game credits spiral endlessly into the waiting wallets of Mark Zuckerburg & Co. Its Club Penguin, but for adults.
Fourthly I am brought to Facebook's upcoming feature of 'graph search', a smart search tool allowing users to search naturally and in general human sentences. Upon request, it can find items such as "Friends who like cycling who live in my hometown" or "Pictures of my friends taken before 2003", making finding friends who have something in common with you even easier. On writing this, Facebook Graph Search is only in Beta, and a waiting list must be joined to try it out, but soon enough it will be hitting your profile, just like Timeline did.
Before I finish, something on Timeline; on its release, it annoyed and shocked many with its entirely different layout. Eventually, however, I think people realised that it wasn't that bad at all, adopting it wholeheartedly. The idea of a cover photo was clever and looks awesome, and Timeline made it easy to track back to events in the past and revisit your Facebook footprint. Music tastes, friends and recent activity could be found immediately from your Timeline, and Life Events could be added to show commitments or achievements. Although we all miss our Facebook Walls, Timeline is a solid replacement for them, and is something we grow to love.
Finally, the best thing about Facebook is that it allows growing businesses, (for example: barneysgardenhelp.webs.com) blogs, (barneystechblog.blogspot.com) and YouTubers (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWnQRwIuphYt) to promote their businesses, blogs, music and videos to all of their friends, plus the other 200 other people they don't actually know. For many, Facebook is vital for advertising freely their hobbies and interests; that is, unless you want to pay Facebook £4.96 to get it to the top of your friends' News Feeds. You can't count on all your friends staying on Facebook, but you can be assured that they'll always to find news ways of sucking the money from your pockets.
Firstly is Facebook's music application - they recently included Spotify integration, making listening and sharing music incredibly easy, or just for stalking a friend's embarrassing music tastes. Despite Spotify's annoying 5 plays per song limit, and adverts about one of their employee's love for 'Broadway Show tunes' (among other things), overridden only by paying large amounts of money to Spotify for their music, it really is a handy and convenient way to listen to music for free - you get your money's worth. Users were able to share playlists, see what other friends were listening to and listen to the music with their friends at the same time as them.
Secondly Instagram, the latest addition to the Facebook family, was bought by them in April for $1 billion and since then has become increasingly popular as iPhone and Android users use the app to upload and tag photos, creating a sort of photo blog ('phlog', if you will) with all photos sent to your Facebook profile to keep it all together. Photo updates from a user's friends would be displayed in a news feed similar to Facebook's. The idea of #hashtags was borrowed from Twitter to enable people to find photos from its selection of users belonging to a particular category, and users could also add a number of effects and editing tools to their photos.
Thirdly is Facebook's App Centre, compiling a vast selection of Games (such as Farmville or Words with Friends), Music (Spotify, Soundhound etc.), News (The Independent, Metro etc.) and many other categories. Facebook's Gift Cards provide credits which can be used in such games, but can only really appeal to people with literally nothing better to do than send endless game requests to their non-interested friends, watching their money from game credits spiral endlessly into the waiting wallets of Mark Zuckerburg & Co. Its Club Penguin, but for adults.
Fourthly I am brought to Facebook's upcoming feature of 'graph search', a smart search tool allowing users to search naturally and in general human sentences. Upon request, it can find items such as "Friends who like cycling who live in my hometown" or "Pictures of my friends taken before 2003", making finding friends who have something in common with you even easier. On writing this, Facebook Graph Search is only in Beta, and a waiting list must be joined to try it out, but soon enough it will be hitting your profile, just like Timeline did.
Before I finish, something on Timeline; on its release, it annoyed and shocked many with its entirely different layout. Eventually, however, I think people realised that it wasn't that bad at all, adopting it wholeheartedly. The idea of a cover photo was clever and looks awesome, and Timeline made it easy to track back to events in the past and revisit your Facebook footprint. Music tastes, friends and recent activity could be found immediately from your Timeline, and Life Events could be added to show commitments or achievements. Although we all miss our Facebook Walls, Timeline is a solid replacement for them, and is something we grow to love.
Finally, the best thing about Facebook is that it allows growing businesses, (for example: barneysgardenhelp.webs.com) blogs, (barneystechblog.blogspot.com) and YouTubers (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWnQRwIuphYt) to promote their businesses, blogs, music and videos to all of their friends, plus the other 200 other people they don't actually know. For many, Facebook is vital for advertising freely their hobbies and interests; that is, unless you want to pay Facebook £4.96 to get it to the top of your friends' News Feeds. You can't count on all your friends staying on Facebook, but you can be assured that they'll always to find news ways of sucking the money from your pockets.
