Facebook 3.0 for iPhone

Ok, let’s be honest: I love me some Facebook. Hard. Who fuckin doesn’t? It’s an instant way for me to create and stay in touch with all of my circles of friends. In my immediate circle I have family. (At this point, my sisters, my niece, most of my extended family, and my frakkin’ MOM has an account.) In the circles beyond that, I have my close friends, other “friends”, “acquaintances”, “fans”, “strangers and spam”. Facebook provides me methods of communicating with any number of these circles at any time. And in the most personal or impersonal ways possible.

If you do NOT have an account, you have decided to take a social stance against being awesome. Seriously, the arguments as to why you DON’T have a Facebook account are weak at best. 

“Why would I want people from my high school stalking me?”, say you. Well, for one, at this point Facebook is just a solid networking tool to stay in contact with close friends and family. The privacy features are outstanding and allow you to completely tailor who sees you, who can contact you, and who can find you. If you don’t want to be seen, you won’t.

“Meh, it’s just another MySpace and I barely used that.”, arguest thou. Ok, valid point. MySpace came and went quicker than my first time makin’ the whoopies. Here’s my counter argument as to why Facebook will stick around: email. MySpace failed in it’s implementation and at this point is WAY too late in the game in providing it’s hundreds of millions of users with an easy way of communicating with each other. Facebook on the other hand founded itself on the need for communication. It’s less about “hey, look at my glitter .gifs on my neato page” and more about “hey, let’s communicate in the simplest, most evasive form possible”. People want to be able to just surface communicate these days – ‘pokes’, “likes”, and 140 character mass communications. Facebook utilizes all these methods. Furthermore, I see the email system in Facebook changing very soon. Right now, it’s basic and quick. Soon, it will devour.

“I hate the internet. It takes up too much of my time.”, you scream. My response to this is simple: You suck ballz. You better get used to the fact that our lives are dominated by technology and it’s only going to get worse and more integrated. My advice is to see the trends and jump on board. You will most DEFINITELY get left behind.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “Ethan, why the hell are you writing a ridiculous post about Facebook and it’s glory? Why the hell are you sucking the monster-python of corporate America?”. Tonight I downloaded the new Facebook Application on my iPhone (I heard you guffaw at my blatent techno-plug and fanboyism, but I can deal with it). It’s hard to make my jaw drop with technology these days, but mine did tonight after installing and playing with the new app.

I didn’t expect much more than a simple bug-fix update from Facebook. The old app sucked, wasn’t very great, and lacked a lot of features. But when I saw that they redesigned the application from the ground up, my mind was slightly blown and it wasn’t before long that I realized my jaw was slightly agape at the new features and ease of use. The UI has been VASTLY improved, the notifications are speedy and accessible, the ability to jump to view/create events is splendid, but it’s the ability to customize the freaking homepage that is the feature that made me shart. I can now add frequently viewed friends or family, features, or applications to my homepage icon list and access them instantly upon starting the application. Mind. Blown.

Bottom line: Get the new application. Check the App Store to see if they have the new download/upgrade available for you. If it’s not showing up, just re-install the app and all will be good. If you don’t have an iPhone, then I recommend you grab a colt .49 and aim it into your mouth. I’m not saying that out of fanboyism, but because I honestly have hate for people without one. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to put my phone and it’s Facebook greatness back on it’s pedestal where I can get on bended knee and worship the shit out of it while poking my circles of friends.

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