I recently read Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook written by Dan Yoder, and as with all articles I read it thoroughly before passing judgement, though it did feel paranoid and biased even with the little disclaimer at the beginning.  So after taking some time to absorb his opinion I realised mine hadn’t changed, I didn’t disagree with all the points but did feel it certainly wasn’t a balanced view.

In this post I am not going to analyse each of the ten reasons individually or too closely, this will just be my opinion as a user, consumer and social being.  Just in case you haven’t read Dan’s full article (link above) I have listed the ten reasons here for easy reference.

1. The Facebook application itself sucks
2. Facebook doesn’t (really) support the Open Web
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted
5. Even your private data is shared with applications
6. Facebook is a bully
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy
9. Facebook’s CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior
10. Facebook’s Terms Of Service are completely one-sided

Firstly, I am going to cover the repetition of reasons five, seven, eight, nine and ten.  Basically these five reasons are at the centre of the ‘paranoia’ I spoke of earlier; they state between them that Facebook is changing its terms of service so that it can share your data, making it publically available while at the hands of some unscrupulous overlord (when you say it like that you can see why I use the word ‘paranoid’!).  My issue with this perception is that Facebook is a business that offers a service for free, obviously they need to monitise this and as user data is a growing market I think they would be foolish not to focus on its potential.

So let’s take the supermarket Tesco for example, they have been collating shopper buying habits now with their ‘Clubcard’ points system for some years and I suspect they aren’t just collecting this data for the fun of it; surely it stands to reason that if they know what you are buying  they can target you more effectively and increase their profits.  My point is that either Tesco get our data and hit us or another company collects the same data and sells it to someone else, one way or another they will find the information they want.  In addition, if this data is being used for the hard sell of products then doesn’t the user simply need to become more aware and less gullible.  In addition to this, who is to say that collection of user data is a bad thing, companies selling you things you need so you don’t need to shop around may not sound that bad to some shoppers, or am I missing something?

We should also bear-in-mind that Facebook is a huge brand, like Microsoft if it steps out of line or tries to monopolise the market it is big enough to be noticed by all the authorities that matter, and they are not stupid.

Can Facebook be trusted technically and does it really support the open web?  These two views seem to me to be biased as I am pretty sure there are many other big brand names whose websites are like Swiss Cheese technically, and i don’t think it is alone in its fear of the open web, just look at the newspaper industry, the fear of not making enough money will always win unfortunately.

For balance, I do think the interface could be more intuative and stable, and if account deletion is as difficult as Dan states then this is a negative.  However, I do have a number of friends who have decided to leave Facebook for different reasons than Dan states but they didn’t seem to have any problems leaving at all!

In conclusion, Facebook has been a revolution for people in all walks of life.  It has helped millions communicate with family and friends from all around the globe, it has broken down barriers and given those who can’t get out a window into a social world; if it wasn’t Facebook offering this service and sharing the data it would be some other organisation and many already are.  Even in the last few days Facebook has announced a new simpler way of checking the privacy settings on all accounts, that certainly sounds like a company trying to do the right thing to me!

Since my iphone arrived way back in August I have had plenty of time to download and test a wide range of apps available.  So I thought it was high time I recommended a couple more excellent free options that you just wouldn’t want to be without.

MMS Photo Messaging

One of the main problems with the iphone has been the lack of built in MMS capability which the majority of other mobile phones have as standard.  Well just maybe that problem has been resolved for FREE, MMS Photo Messaging (by Ed Lea) is a great little app that allows your iphone to receive pictures directly without the need to visit that annoying 02 website. 

The way it works is simple, a four digit code is within the standard notification SMS that you receive when a picture has been sent, take this code along with your phone number and add it to the MMS application, once this has been added the app will happily download the images directly into your inbox at no charge.  Beware however, that sending messages is still a little expensive and you will need to purchase credit for this unless your contract already allows MMS.

There seems to be only one small problem with this app, every few weeks 02 change the four digit key that is required to download your pictures, so you have to remember to update this in the app which is more of an annoyance that a major issue.  Even with this small draw back I still think this has helped overcome my concerns regarding the iphone’s lack of MMS capability and I would recommend that you give it a go.

Social networking

As MMS Photo Messaging makes the iphone do a job it should have done all along, the next two add something extra that I personally can’t live without, I’m talking about Twitterrific and Facebook.  Twitterrific by The Iconfactory and Facebook are exactly what you would expect, great conduits into the social networking world.  Between them they offer everything you should need to keep up-to-date with friends and let your followers know what you are doing. 

As with most free apps there are a few draw back.  Twitterrific doesn’t seem to have the functionality to search for people or the abilility to clear the list for ease of navigation, but this is more than likely available through the premium edition if you are willing to pay £5.99.  Facebook on the other hand doesn’t have any obvious major flaws, although being able to have multiple accounts saved would be a nice addition.

There are many more apps that are worth a look, here is a short list of others I am using:-

• Remote – Allows you to control your Apple Mac itunes via a WI-FI connection
• Ustream – Watch live video broadcasts on you phone
• Seadragon Mobile – Microsoft’s high resolution gallery

I will post again soon with a detailed overview of the 3G iphone, and maybe some more apps that you should pick up.

Sharing content across the web is not easy, particularly when you start to look into the many and varied ways in which you can broadcast yourself.  However, RSS is a really simple way to feed your content to others, and here are a couple of simple options that wont take over your life.

FeedBurner.com allows users to subscribe to your content in many different ways, and gives them more freedom in how they receive your content.  From simple subscription using a desktop reader to receiving your content to their email inbox FeedBurner.com helps keep the whole process simple, all you need to do is register and submit your RSS feed.  As well as written content FeedBurner.com can take the audio from your RSS feed and automatically create a podcast subscription page with added  iTunes functionality.  In a nut-shell FeedBurner.com helps you build new relationships with you users.

If you are already using Twitter as a social networking tool then using it to promote your website or blog should be the natural next step.  Twitterfeed.com tweets your new blog posts or articles via your RSS feed, all you need is an active twitter account, and an RSS feed twitterfeed.com will do the rest.  I am currently trialing this system through my own blog and am yet to see any real increase in my own traffic, but as with any web content aggregator it will take time to build momentum. 

Now this may not seem like the most obvious place to feed RSS to, but facebook can be a really clever way to drive traffic back to your blog.  Particularly as your friends are more likely to take a look at your posts and in turn are then potentially more likely to recommend your content to others that aren’t in your network.  There seem to be a few of these facebook apps and each of them has its own issues, however blog RSS reader seems to be the best way of posting your feeds to your facebook profile.

If you are going to try any of these methods, or even if you have already tried these or others I would be interested to hear your feedback.  Equally, as I keep twittering I will update with any interesting results that I find.