Facebook turns 5.

It was quite surprising to realise that Facebook has turned 5. I mean, I didnt suppose that it have been around for 5 years. I thought it was at most 3 years old? And talking about 5 years back, when I just left poly...the top networking site in Singapore would have been Friendster. Everyone were pretty contented with it because you could add friends, send private msgs, post on each others' 'walls' and look at photo albums. Who could have thought that Facebook wave was introduced to add more 'colours' and varieties to the then virtual networking scene.

Even though I still log on to my friendster account, I do them less frequently as most of my friends are members of facebook rather than the former. Hence, it makes more sense for me to log on to FB cos I can get better updated over there.

Besides, I am more attracted by the applications at FB. At this moment, my most active involvement would be Pet Society. Here's a snapshot of the application.

For FB frequenters, i guess no elaboration is required. But for FB newbies, this application simply allows you to create and customise your own pet and to reach higher levels, you need to keep it clean and carry out activities to score points. In essence, this is a pretty good game if you got plenty of time to kill (play at your own risk in office though).

Now that most people got accustomed to FB's layout, can anyone still remember there was some uproar over the revamped appearance just last year in 2008? I might be one of those who are neutral about it, or in fact, glad of the change becos the page looks cleaner. My only negativity was just about the part of getting used to un-learn and re-learn. Some angry members at that time even created hate groups and petitions to condemn the changes and wanted the administrator to revert to the old format. Come to think about it, i actually joined one of them just for sake of joining. I wanted to see if the petition worked. Well, I guess it didnt cos I am still faced with the new layout till now, and i guess people already got use to it and forgotten about it, cos I dun hear or see any more complaints...

Another issue of FB is that at 5 years old(, it is still not generating profits. Read this article from yahoo lately. It is obvious that at such tremendous success, FB ought to make money. But why not? Perhaps costs have been too high and also the information are not fully optimised. I mean, this social network has so much information about its members, and people are linked to one another very closely. In fact, I can reach some of my friends faster in facebook rather than email.
One potential which I think FB should take advantage would be in terms of sellng events, or conferences, or even help employers to recruit people. The challenge would then be on the issue of privacy and authenticity maybe. But whatever it is, FB is something that is already deep into the lives of the new age people, and I am one of those who cant picture the lack of it, should FB fail to survive. Not at this moment yet.