Posted on August 10, 2007 - by John

Social Networking: It’s what Facebook is all about.

I joined Facebook about two weeks ago, for the simple reason – everyone else was talking about it on their blogs - perhaps that is the key to the success of these sites, the more height profile bloggers that join the networking site, the more that try it out.

The first thing I noticed, and this is probably just the artistic side of me, is that you cannot add your own colours or theme to the website, although, perhaps, this is because the target audience does not seem to be the teenage community that is Bebo. Having said this, you can however move the panels (squares of information) around your profile as you wish.

The idea of social networking websites (as far as I can tell) seems to be targeted at maintaining and creating contacts, friends, business colleagues, and so on – expanding your network. This is the part that makes the site so popular; you can also display your past career, as well as you accomplishments in an attempt to gain employment or to meet similar contacts. By joining a network you can meet similar minded individuals, you can also create your own group and allow people to join. You can even buy and sell services and goods on the site, I predict that this will be expanded exponentially in the near future, with the success of the site.

The real fun part for me is, however, the applications; there is a multitude of them. These are little programs that can sit on your profile and allow you to display information, for example you can add your flick photos, display your DVD interests, or what books you’re interested. There is even a little map program that allows you to show what countries you have or want to visit.

If you have tried out Bebo – and felt that it was a little too teenage/ young adult (whatever) for you, or thought MySpace was the internets dumping ground for badly designed profiles and lurking spammers, then give facebook a try.