Fb

I've been spending quite some time on facebook these days, and have discovered/learnt numerous things. The very first thing - which is the most obvious as well - is that it's so much better than orkut, which I used as my primary social networking site till now. The interface is so much better, easy to understand and use, and easy on the eyes as well. All the people who matter to me - well, almost all - have moved on to fb (or twitter, but more on that later).

But, for all its awesomeness, fb does have its own share of issues. The most important of them is the issue of privacy. As anyone who's been on this site for a while will testify, the privacy settings are pretty cryptic. And in saying that I'm actually being generous! Setting proper safety settings on fb is as tough as its important (take your sweet pick!); and I could find my cuppa, with help from this post, after devoting a considerable amount of time to the stuff.

The most important safety feature on fb is that of lists. Basically, what it means is that you can 'tag' your friends as per your wish, and allow only specific people - a list of them - to be able to view any particular content. Say, for example, you want to post a pic of you flipping the bird to your boss, but you don't want your office people to see it. What you'll do is that you'll put all your office people in a list - effectively tagging them - and then prevent those people from seeing that pic on your wall, by hiding the pic from them, as you upload it. Yes, it is that simple!

You can also enable only a group of people to post on your wall, only for them to see other people's posts, or even hide the whole wall from some people, the combinations are endless! Ideally, one should limit those friends who can access one's info on fb; but that's strictly my own opinion.

One way orkut is better than fb - in my opinion, of course - is that on orkut you can access someone's private album even if you have the direct URL address to it. This isn't so in fb, and that's a dangerous thing. Still, the pros far outweigh the cons, and so, for now, fb it is!