Is Facebook becoming the place to go to even when it is not a rainy day? Aaron Wong wrote Facebook: The Leaky Faucet of Time in response to Mashable’s article Facebook Is the Web’s Ultimate Timesink. He put to the fact that the Mashable article said that according to Nielsen Ratings that Facebook users are spending an average of 7 plus hours online – per month.

Why is this happening? Well, there are several things:

• Social Game Applications
• Discussion forums
• Facebook can be used by a lot of mobile phones
• Easy access to news
• Unobtrusive advertising

I have to admit I use Facebook more than 7 hours a month… and probably more than 7 hours a week. Why? Well, most of it has to do with all of what I listed above. I am a social gamer and have a separate site called Game App Geek where so far, my boyfriend and I rate and review game apps from several places, including Facebook. Another, I connect with people over business and make new connections. Some of these connections are even from Twitter. I am a fan of several news places. Because I have a busy live stream, sometimes it is easier for me to catch the news in Facebook. I can also bookmark these places.

From Aaron’s article, he asks:

Is 7 hours per month too much? How much is too much time spent on Facebook? It seems that the trend is for increased time spent. Can Facebook replace television as family entertainment?

My response to Aaron’s article was that I did not think 7 hours a month was too much. I do however recommend that anyone who almost lives in front of the computer to make sure they have an exercise schedule in between all the internet surfing. Just typing and moving a mouse does not get calories burning.

As for family entertainment, the computer is not a place for the family to have quality time, not even Facebook, unless the household had a network. It is probably better to break out the Wii. At least with that, 4 family members can play at the same time.

What are your thoughts? Are People Spending Too Much Time On Facebook?

A lot of website owners are making fan pages for their websites. For me, because I have several sites, I just have one here on Blondish.net to myself in general. However, I found after I put the fan page widget on my site, people were emailing me or sending direct messages to ask how I did it. So, here is a tutorial on how to place a Facebook fan box widget on your site.

1. Look for the link “Edit Page” link under your fan page image in the top left corner. This will take you to the administrative page for your site.

2. To the right of the general options, there are a few sections. One is called “Promote Your Page”. Click on the link that says “Promote with a Fan Box.”

This will lead you to a page that you can select the page you want to promote and Facebook will generate a code.

3. Select the code best suited for your blog. For those with WordPress, choose the button “Other.” Copy the code.

4. In WordPress, you can place the code into a widget. (This is located in the sidebar of the WordPress admin under the section “Appearance.”)

5. You can adjust the code to show how many or how few avatars on your fan box. You can also adjust the size. To adjust the number of people to show, look in the code for : connections=”10″

Ten is the default number. You can change this to any number, but do remember that you may have to adjust the size of the fan box.

Sound easy?

Lately there have been a a lot of scam “fan” pages popping up that I have noticed, especially this holiday season. Of course, I have seen a few this past year, but in the past week alone, I have received quite a few invites to pages promising to give me a free item. Most of them have one several things in common:

- Offer to give a product for free for joining
- Ask that you invite all of your friends on Facebook
- Complete a Survey

Some of the offers include shirts or even laptops. As I have mentioned before – free is suppose to be without expecting anything in return in the first place. They are clearly scams to generate money from surveys. What you can do is not encourage behavior by not joining or filling out the surveys. You can also report the pages to Facebook for spam advertising. It is a waste of time for you as you will never receive what was promised, especially if you might take up an offer on the surveys that might be difficult to get out of without purchasing anything.

Have you seen these types of scams or others? What others have you seen?

As said by Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg in his article An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, the social network community will undergo more changes. Here is what is mainly mentioned:

Remove regional networks and give more flexibility to user privacy settings (what content the use will allow others to see whether family, friends, friends of friends, or everyone.)

From what I have read through the responses, the general consensus of people want other features like:
Dislike Button
To allow or not to backgrounds or layout customization
To allow backgrounds or layout customization
Change news feed back to previous version that was changed mid 2009

Me, I just want Facebook to work and stop freezing up when I am using an application. Privacy settings, well everyone is privy to my information and I have nothing to hide other than my Social Security Number and Driver’s License. I do not mind the feeds being the way they are now, and I do not have an opinion for or against having a dislike button. Layouts? – NO! Already with my strong dislike of MySpace, if Facebook got into this, I am not sure how even people on dial-up will be able to access the site. It is bulky enough.

But, that is my opinion… what is yours? What should Facebook really consider changing?

Recently Facebook rolled out their new feeds, yep, feeds as in more than 1. One is the Live Feed which is somewhat like the old stream except you are informed of your friends following others and what they became a friend of. The other is the News Feed that publishes popular posts, at least for your viewing pleasure.

Other Changes:
1. Also, the Status update fix, which apparently does not work and supposedly allows you to restore your Facebook page to its older settings and look. Instead you are telling Facebook on only display status updates that include anything BUT photos, links, videos, and applications.
2. More than 250 friends and Facebook basically chooses who THEY think you might want to listen to.

Of course I noticed some problems since this change, applications are a bit slower than usual, I have difficulty clicking on friend requests to accept and even accepting gifts to some applications. I noticed a lot more time outs on connection as well, AND the fact that I have been receiving a ridiculous amount of Facebook virus/ spam. Facebook addressed the issue of noticing the viruses going about the internet in their fan page.

I have been noticing a lot of invites from people to join the group on Facebook called CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!! with over 1.5 million people that joined as well as another called PLEASE GIVE US OUR OLD NEWS FEED BACK! that has over 600 thousand members.

Not sure if Facebook would even consider this obvious message that the changes are not welcomed. How about you – if you use Facebook, do you like the new changes?

Not bragging, but I have well over 1500 followers in Facebook. I have been noticing a huge trend in applications that encourage people to tag their friends. In fact, some of these applications I am not a member of, nor even approved like Hotties for Sale, Zodiac Friend Photos, and more. Recently, one of my followers tagged me, along with 150 people. This drew a concern when I noticed well over 70 emails in my inbox asking the person to either remove them from being tagged or complained because of the email. I do not have the power to disallow this option. If I have approved other people as members, I do not have the option to allow people to tag me in photos. What does this do?

Well, since people can make applications on their own, if these ‘friendly’ taggings could be utilized by spammers. Since a person still can only have 5000 followers max on Facebook, that could mean a lot of unwanted email filled with complaints.

What can be done?

Look at the application and if it requires tagging friends, tag a small amount of people. Tagging hundreds of people may cause a lot of problems, especially if the application is not even of interest to some of your followers. In fact, you could possibly be reported for spamming. A lot of the game applications on Facebook only allow 20 to 30 invitations at a time, so try to aim for a smaller group than that.

If a person is persistent with tagging you, consider removing them from your friends. It might be fun for them, but really it is almost like those emails that people forget to put their long email list in the BCC line. If it gets out of line, either contact the application creator or report the application to Facebook and ask if they can limit the tagging for the application.

Have you had this happen to you on Facebook? What do you suggest?

I am as much a Facebook addict as I am a Twitter addict, and it did not take TechCrunch in their article Facebook Tweaks Design, Drops Rounded Corners to tell me the notices about Facebooks design tweaks.

Already with every application and module a person adds to their profile, along with all the followers (I currently have over 1600 followers/ friends at Facebook), load time can get a bit bulky. Sometimes I even get the Facebook timeout connection too. Kind of reminds me of the Twitter Fail Whale. Yay, and I say congrats to the person who though rounded corners in Facebook would really be an asset, but really – keep it simple.

With the ridiculous and non-relevant advertisements, plus the applications, it is insane. Just in case those of you were not aware, there was an application to be able to change your Facebook background, but you had to download a toolbar. There are others than ask you to add a person, invite your friends to the group, and go to some chatroom to get the link to add your background. That is insane. It should be simple and not involve anything but adding the application itself. I decided to avoid that application like the plague because I really do not want another toolbar on my computer and I am really afraid of what the load time would be even though I have cable internet.

Although I would love to pretty up my Facebook, I am content with what it looks like. Getting fancy with a product like Facebook will degrade it and make it look like MySpace, the immature reject of Facebook.

What kind of design tweaks do you think Facebook should consider trying? What should be added? What should be removed?

I have to agree with TechCrunch’s article Right Before Facebook Bought It, FriendFeed’s Real-Time Stream Saw A Flood Of Usage, that I had no clue why it was bought. Kind of reminds me how no one knows why Yahoo! is shutting down Geocities. In fact, I recall Robert Scoble asking who would leave Friendfeed after Facebook had just bought the site. According to the Friendfeed blog – FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request, things will go on as usual until future plans are decided… or at least that was the gist of it that I got from reading.

So, will yet another social network service go mainstream? Who knows, but I guess until Facebook actually does something with Friendfeed, then until any plans are revealed, we can only hope that Friendfeed does not become integrated into Facebook like so many services that have been bought up by Yahoo and Google.

I wonder if the Sherman Anti-trust Act might have to be enforced with these Internet companies? Or perhaps I am thinking too much into it. I already use both services, but I wonder if Friendfeed will eventually be phased out, forcing using to just use Facebook?

What do you think? Do you use Friendfeed? What do you use it for? Do you see the site either becoming more mainstream or being phased out?