FACEBOOK.COM

What is facebook? Answer: one of the most famous social networking sites IN THE WORLD (pffff).
I have also signed in and I'm active. Not under my nickname, "trotos", but, rather, under my real life name (hehe it will not be revealed, although all my friends and maybe more people know my real-life personality). This revealing of identity is not common when browsing the net, registering to sites, or talking to chat groups. Everyone wants to move in the vastness of the internet under the safety of anonymity, to speak up one's mind or even to be what he ever wanted to be, without "the real life" to criticize him or make fun out of him (in person anyway).
For once this "revelation" goes with some happy surprises.
For me one of this welcomed surprises, came from an ex-neighbour, with whom we were good friends almost 20 years ago, back in the days of innocence and soccer-playing in the alleys (yes those mythical places existed once). She was just looking around faces in the "search for people" option and my lovable face, popped up, like a politician's fart, waking up memories of the past. "Where have I seen this toad!!!" she would probably thought, but she didn't hesitate, she just grub the keyboard and send me a message, despite my toadish appearance. "this person wants to add you as a friend", appeared in my screen, and I was amazed that a woman would like to add me as her friend. But, as I was reading her name and watching her photo it occurred to me that I know her from somewhere, so I confirmed the add friend invitation. In a few days we were talking over the phone about the good OLD days.
Some thing happened recently when I received another invitation from a colleague of mine from the academic era,
the traitor now lives in a different town, so it is not soooo easy for me to give him a visit, but I will work things out. Although till now I haven't wrote anything of importance to him, cause I I'm bored to death (and that is unacceptable).
But beware, and be advised, facebook once probably was a fresh air to the social networking community, but I think that lately it stinks of money (maybe this one sounds a little bit harsh, but If you read the various reports on how much the facebook worths, and how managers from various big companies whining about the money companies are loosing cause the employs are preoccupied with the facebook. and rumor has it that from sometime in the future it will ask for a subscription -that one could be a hoax-. Also a lot of people, and companies residue in the facebook hopping to attract more clients.
The article "The Facebook economy" is describing in more details the road to success for facebook.com but also ways to get money out of it. I believe this one is worth reading.

For example, download iLike, an app that lets you sample and purchase music, and the developer gets a 5 percent kickback if you end up buying songs from iTunes or Amazon.com (Charts, Fortune 500).

Last but no least, facebook, is not as safe as we think it is (previous post for details). And most of the so called applications for me look like the evolution of the chain-mails and the spam-mails, so please take no offense if I immediately ignore or delete any invitation-message that applies to the previous categories. Also, there is the case of exploiting our personal data for economic interests without asking us first, personal data as sex, likes, occupation, education and so on are delivered to companies so that will feed us with more personalized advertisement. A lot of articles exist over the net about the mining of personal data and a few of them are:

Do internet companies protect personal data well enough?
Facebook Sharing Too Much Personal Data With Application Developers
MySpace and Facebook Plan to Use Personal Data for "Targeted Advertising"
Facebook questioned over data protection

BUT, I will continue to use it since I find it useful and sometimes even funny and relaxing, but I do not know for how long. Also I'm thinking of removing every application, except maybe a few, and use it as a tool to communicate with people, usually with the ones that are hard to find.

P.S.: Is my English terrible, or it's just me?

Update 06-02-08: As a friend wrote at the comment session, my English IS terrible, but it's OK for facebook. And I expect it to be OK for any social networking site, for any instant messaging application.
Yep, it's a fact my English is terrible, so are my Greek...so, no harm done. But, I also forgot to finish a sentence...

Update 07-02-08: This articles will again be revised, since everytime I read it I find it incomplete and horrible.

Update 08-02-08: This should be the final