Post One week with Web 2.0: Facebook and Mugshot

Facebook

This time last week I finally joined Facebook, just out of curiosity and because I should really know about such sites.

It is a semi-private little world, you have to be a member to see anything, where individuals can create little online profiles of themselves. They can then see other users' profiles and send private messages to each other, or write public messages on each person's 'wall'.

I have had a public homepage in some form or another since 1998. I have email and IRC. So I do not really need any of this personally. If you search Google for Zeth then it will not take much time to find me. However, one nice thing about Facebook is that non-technical students, graduates and so on are on there. The kind of people with no other web presence.

Facebook is also is free at the point of use, unlike the close to useless 'friends reunited', which did not reunite me with anyone, you could read lists of people but do nothing about it.

Those of you who have Facebook logins can click here to see my profile. Those of you who do not have Facebook logins, I would not bother, there is currently nothing there that is not on this blog or my homepage, far less actually.

Facebook has some primitive access controls. I set my profile to be as open as possible, but you can also set it so that a certain amount of the functionality of your profile is only available to your 'friends'. 'Friend' here is in the sense of 'acquaintance'. The extra functionality gained by being a friend is not that exciting, but it is these linkages that makes the magic happen. When an old schoolmate adds you as a 'friend' then you can look it his/her friends to discover more people. When someone from a hobby adds you then you can discover new people and so on.

I joined one week ago, and while I was filling out the joining forms, I accidentally said yes to import my gmail contacts. What this meant was that it looked through all the email addresses in my gmail account looking for existing members of Facebook. It then sent 'friend requests' to everyone that matched.

This turned out to have unintended consequences, if me and some other (so far unknown) person happened to be once emailed together by a mutual friend, e.g. a forwarded email joke or whatever, then it counts them too. This meant that two people that I had not heard of were caught in the crossfire.

I joined a week ago and within 24 hours had '26 friends', this has slowly crept up to 32, including my two accidental new acquaintances.

In general I do not yet see the whole point of it, although I have had some nice little chats with people I do not communicate with outside of Christmas cards. There are many people that I have had deep and meaningful relationships with earlier in my life, but then neither of us got around to keeping it going, a few of these have emerged on Facebook (i.e. 'guiltbook') .

Mugshot

I also joined mugshot, but have not had time to play with it yet or find anyone, this is a similar networking site but it uses completely open-source software, it also has an optional desktop software client (available for Linux and Windows) that I have not installed yet but which aims to give a richer experience.

A nice thing about Mugshot is that it is a much more open platform, it pulls together different sources and supports a few dozen other online services into a nice profile page. So far I have added my blog, my Facebook profile and my rarely used flickr account (I use a private install of Gallery2 instead), so I think in the long run this might be the better bet.

Here is my mugshot profile, non-members can actually see most of what I have added (which is not a lot), which is more useful than the closed off Facebook.

That's it so far, I will set up the desktop client and some point and see if anyone else in the whole world is on mugshot. What networking websites do you use and why?

10 thoughts on “One week with Web 2.0: Facebook and Mugshot”

"The extra functionality gained by being a friend is not that exciting."
Well, maybe not in your case because your profile is open. But generally the
difference is huge, because the default is that non-friends can't see
anything.
I'm not sure why you call the access control "primitive." I found it to be
quite detailed and fine-grained, and you don't explain at all why it is
primitive.
"guiltbook" - haha, that's true, I have a lot of those friends on there too

Hi David!
Well primitive is not a bad thing, I just meant you can make things available
or not, while 'Access Control' might imply other things that would be over
the top.
I would like the ability to show my profile over the public web, but I have
not found a button for that. A determined stalker can make a facebook account
in no time at all, so it is only stopping innocent people from finding it.

Facebook and Control
As an update to the post, my colleague Prev sent me <a class="reference external" href="http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/">this link</a>, which is a
Flash movie explaining some of the privacy questions concerning Facebook. But
it also goes on to attempt to make connections with the US Security Services
and rich and powerful individuals.
There are, of course, not many large IT projects in America without links to
the security services. After all, some of Linux's most advanced security
features were <a class="reference external" href="http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/">invented by the NSA</a> and other governmental users. Many of
these more military-based US organisations are trying to make technology an
advantage, unlike the UK government which sees technology as a cost to be
tendered out to large companies and best forgotten about (until the failure
of the projects come back to bite).
If we accept for a moment that the powerful people in the US are a very small
group of interrelated families and companies, a new monarchy attempting to
centralise power and ownership through national and international treaties
and laws such as patents and so-called 'intellectual property'. We should
also realise that there are worse people out there in the world too, not
least the more traditional barbarian attempts to control people and build
empires, new Hitlers and new Stalins, now using IT also, as well as old
fashioned methods such as torture, blackmail and execution.
Decentralisation allows freedom
There is also the rest of us, normal people trying to take control of our own
technology, who understand that the freedoms that our ancestors fought for
could be undermined if the new technological age is owned and operated by the
few not the many. In short we must quietly resist the re-introduction of
Tudor monarchy through technology. Centralised so-called 'Web 2.0 services'
are problematic of course because we control very little. However, that does
not mean that we should pull out our Ethernet cables and go back to swapping
reels of ticker tape. We need to create and support a decentralised Web 3000,
become active stakeholders rather than 'service users'.
What this means in practice is a very large set of questions indeed. However,
as an analogy, email comes to mind, if everyone used GPG or PGP to sign their
emails then we would not have a spam problem. Spammers who signed their
emails could be traced and arrested, while unsigned email would just be
discarded into an unsigned folder and ignored.
The centre is lost
However, if the large email providers tried to do the same thing through top
down control, could it have the same outcome? No, because that is not how
power works, the spammers would continue while individual freedoms of
ordinary people would be crushed. Indeed no doubt the spammers would have a
prime seat at the table.
One just has to look at the trade in illegal drugs, prostitution, prohibited
weapons and terrorism to see analogies. Sadly, like these other things, spam
pays, and he who pays the piper calls the tune in our multi-national world.
According to British public policy, no one should own handguns, no one should
sell cocaine or heroin, no one should control sex slaves, no one should be a
terrorist.
Even through Tony Blair has had ten years with an all-conquering
parliamentary majority, the closest thing in Western Europe to absolute
power, perhaps the last time in Britain's history any politician will have
such power, has Blair able to stop these things? No, because those who deal
in these things benefit indirectly the rich and those in power. The money
trickles up. Not only that but the presence of armed gangs of drug dealers
indirectly reinforces the need for the centre. A wife only puts up with an
abusive husband as long as she fears the world outside more. Given
independent resources and opportunities, she is off and will never look back.
The only countries without such problems have been tin-pot dictatorships
where the leader has absolute power and has no need of these indirect cash
flows, and many of these dictators take direct control of some of these
levers anyway.
Who will win the next general election? Cameron or Brown, my hunch at the
moment is the former but what difference will it make anyway? Absolutely
nothing. The centre is neutered, controlled by the pipers and lost. We have
to learn to make it on our own.
This is completely now off the topic of Facebook, but hey, this is the
comments section after all! It is free speech here!

I've seen that conspiracy thing before, its pretty stupid. Its a very tenuous
connection to the NSA. Like just some guy who was on two investment boards,
and related to Facebook and the other to NSA.
It is true that people being more open is going to probably help law
enforcement, Facebook was already used to find those Church arsonists. But I
think thats fine.
I'm a college student in the US, so the nice thing about Facebook is that
everyone I know is on Facebook. So its a handy way to look someone up. One
problem is, seems to be more pronounced with folks who started facebooking in
highschool, people often don't put up their even must basic contact
information, even the stuff available already from the Universities contact
search. Due to misplaced paranoia I suppose.
Since everyone I know is on Facebook, its a great way to do things like
organize events. Rather then calling a bunch of folks, you just setup a party
event. And everyone can see who else is coming to the event or was invited.
Facebook relationships are interesting in how important they are... people
joke about them being stupid, but to pubically say (in front of people who
your currently otherwise out of contact) that your going out with someone is
actually pretty significant. And facebook drama ensues. <img src="/static/forum/img/smilies/wink.png">
And gmail importing everyone was certainly a mistake! Facebook isn't like
MySpace where people seem to enjoy adding people they don't know in real
life.

it pretty much sounds like <a href="http://orkut.com" rel="nofollow">orkut.com</a> that is supported by google and ise
probably a lot more popular than any other such networks.. the only problem
is that orkut has too many brazilians <img src="/static/forum/img/smilies/tongue.png"> thou i'm already connected with 100
friends and for me it's more than useful..

sander, in reality we don't get to pick what social networking site we use.
We just have to use whatever our friends use.
MySpace is by far the most popular social networking site, Facebook is number
2 in the US anyways.

yes, probably tru, i'm not quite sure what MySpace really is as i don't use
much of M$ products.. i have no idea how many users you may have there.. i
know that orkut has probably around 60,000,000+ users at the moment and by
the latest stats 18.92% of them are from US.. it's first time i hear anything
about Facebook <img src="/static/forum/img/smilies/smile.png">
but yeah, that must be something US-only probably?

I have a facebook account and I like this social networking site. There are a few things I would change but for the most part it is okay. You seem to trash it but use it at the same time....hmmm. What gives?

I like the social networking site, because that's what everyone is using to locate old buddies. I think it's lakker!

I use <a class="reference external" href="http://accessexists.com">http://accessexists.com</a> at work

David Grant on May 24, 2007 at 04:51 a.m. said:

"The extra functionality gained by being a friend is not that exciting."
Well, maybe not in your case because your profile is open. But generally the
difference is huge, because the default is that non-friends can't see
anything.
I'm not sure why you call the access control "primitive." I found it to be
quite detailed and fine-grained, and you don't explain at all why it is
primitive.
"guiltbook" - haha, that's true, I have a lot of those friends on there too
zeth on May 24, 2007 at 08:14 a.m. said:

Hi David!
Well primitive is not a bad thing, I just meant you can make things available
or not, while 'Access Control' might imply other things that would be over
the top.
I would like the ability to show my profile over the public web, but I have
not found a button for that. A determined stalker can make a facebook account
in no time at all, so it is only stopping innocent people from finding it.
zeth on May 24, 2007 at 01:22 p.m. said:

Facebook and Control
As an update to the post, my colleague Prev sent me <a class="reference external" href="http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/">this link</a>, which is a
Flash movie explaining some of the privacy questions concerning Facebook. But
it also goes on to attempt to make connections with the US Security Services
and rich and powerful individuals.
There are, of course, not many large IT projects in America without links to
the security services. After all, some of Linux's most advanced security
features were <a class="reference external" href="http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/">invented by the NSA</a> and other governmental users. Many of
these more military-based US organisations are trying to make technology an
advantage, unlike the UK government which sees technology as a cost to be
tendered out to large companies and best forgotten about (until the failure
of the projects come back to bite).
If we accept for a moment that the powerful people in the US are a very small
group of interrelated families and companies, a new monarchy attempting to
centralise power and ownership through national and international treaties
and laws such as patents and so-called 'intellectual property'. We should
also realise that there are worse people out there in the world too, not
least the more traditional barbarian attempts to control people and build
empires, new Hitlers and new Stalins, now using IT also, as well as old
fashioned methods such as torture, blackmail and execution.
Decentralisation allows freedom
There is also the rest of us, normal people trying to take control of our own
technology, who understand that the freedoms that our ancestors fought for
could be undermined if the new technological age is owned and operated by the
few not the many. In short we must quietly resist the re-introduction of
Tudor monarchy through technology. Centralised so-called 'Web 2.0 services'
are problematic of course because we control very little. However, that does
not mean that we should pull out our Ethernet cables and go back to swapping
reels of ticker tape. We need to create and support a decentralised Web 3000,
become active stakeholders rather than 'service users'.
What this means in practice is a very large set of questions indeed. However,
as an analogy, email comes to mind, if everyone used GPG or PGP to sign their
emails then we would not have a spam problem. Spammers who signed their
emails could be traced and arrested, while unsigned email would just be
discarded into an unsigned folder and ignored.
The centre is lost
However, if the large email providers tried to do the same thing through top
down control, could it have the same outcome? No, because that is not how
power works, the spammers would continue while individual freedoms of
ordinary people would be crushed. Indeed no doubt the spammers would have a
prime seat at the table.
One just has to look at the trade in illegal drugs, prostitution, prohibited
weapons and terrorism to see analogies. Sadly, like these other things, spam
pays, and he who pays the piper calls the tune in our multi-national world.
According to British public policy, no one should own handguns, no one should
sell cocaine or heroin, no one should control sex slaves, no one should be a
terrorist.
Even through Tony Blair has had ten years with an all-conquering
parliamentary majority, the closest thing in Western Europe to absolute
power, perhaps the last time in Britain's history any politician will have
such power, has Blair able to stop these things? No, because those who deal
in these things benefit indirectly the rich and those in power. The money
trickles up. Not only that but the presence of armed gangs of drug dealers
indirectly reinforces the need for the centre. A wife only puts up with an
abusive husband as long as she fears the world outside more. Given
independent resources and opportunities, she is off and will never look back.
The only countries without such problems have been tin-pot dictatorships
where the leader has absolute power and has no need of these indirect cash
flows, and many of these dictators take direct control of some of these
levers anyway.
Who will win the next general election? Cameron or Brown, my hunch at the
moment is the former but what difference will it make anyway? Absolutely
nothing. The centre is neutered, controlled by the pipers and lost. We have
to learn to make it on our own.
This is completely now off the topic of Facebook, but hey, this is the
comments section after all! It is free speech here!
Ian Monroe on May 24, 2007 at 04:13 p.m. said:

I've seen that conspiracy thing before, its pretty stupid. Its a very tenuous
connection to the NSA. Like just some guy who was on two investment boards,
and related to Facebook and the other to NSA.
It is true that people being more open is going to probably help law
enforcement, Facebook was already used to find those Church arsonists. But I
think thats fine.
I'm a college student in the US, so the nice thing about Facebook is that
everyone I know is on Facebook. So its a handy way to look someone up. One
problem is, seems to be more pronounced with folks who started facebooking in
highschool, people often don't put up their even must basic contact
information, even the stuff available already from the Universities contact
search. Due to misplaced paranoia I suppose.
Since everyone I know is on Facebook, its a great way to do things like
organize events. Rather then calling a bunch of folks, you just setup a party
event. And everyone can see who else is coming to the event or was invited.
Facebook relationships are interesting in how important they are... people
joke about them being stupid, but to pubically say (in front of people who
your currently otherwise out of contact) that your going out with someone is
actually pretty significant. And facebook drama ensues. <img src="/static/forum/img/smilies/wink.png">
And gmail importing everyone was certainly a mistake! Facebook isn't like
MySpace where people seem to enjoy adding people they don't know in real
life.
sander85 on May 24, 2007 at 07:15 p.m. said:

it pretty much sounds like <a href="http://orkut.com" rel="nofollow">orkut.com</a> that is supported by google and ise
probably a lot more popular than any other such networks.. the only problem
is that orkut has too many brazilians <img src="/static/forum/img/smilies/tongue.png"> thou i'm already connected with 100
friends and for me it's more than useful..
Ian Monroe on May 25, 2007 at 01:31 a.m. said:

sander, in reality we don't get to pick what social networking site we use.
We just have to use whatever our friends use.
MySpace is by far the most popular social networking site, Facebook is number
2 in the US anyways.
sander85 on May 25, 2007 at 08:25 a.m. said:

yes, probably tru, i'm not quite sure what MySpace really is as i don't use
much of M$ products.. i have no idea how many users you may have there.. i
know that orkut has probably around 60,000,000+ users at the moment and by
the latest stats 18.92% of them are from US.. it's first time i hear anything
about Facebook <img src="/static/forum/img/smilies/smile.png">
but yeah, that must be something US-only probably?
Jen on August 29, 2009 at 12:01 p.m. said:

I have a facebook account and I like this social networking site. There are a few things I would change but for the most part it is okay. You seem to trash it but use it at the same time....hmmm. What gives?
bridget on June 22, 2010 at 12:39 p.m. said:

I like the social networking site, because that's what everyone is using to locate old buddies. I think it's lakker!
Anna on August 4, 2010 at 11:35 a.m. said:

I use <a class="reference external" href="http://accessexists.com">http://accessexists.com</a> at work

Zeth's homepage

The best of Zeth

One week with Web 2.0: Facebook and Mugshot

10 thoughts on “One week with Web 2.0: Facebook and Mugshot”