Facebook started as a geek’s hobby, now it’s more popular than Google (from the Guardian)
Facebook is now a bigger company than Google, in terms of its user base (Facebook has yet to disclose a profit). The article above has the headline that it started as a “geek’s hobby” but is now more popular than Google, but why would it be?
Google apparently has failed to catch the social networking market, other than by taking over Orkut which is popular in Brazil. But it still has its search engine, mail and Blogger. It’s biggest problem right now is the lack of reliability, with both searches and attempts to access Blogspots failing on a regular basis (for me, anyway).
Facebook doesn’t have a blogging platform, nor a search engine, nor a mail platform that rivals any of the traditional web mail providers. For a start, you can’t mail someone who is off Facebook and you can’t save drafts. Rather, it does one thing, namely social networking, and does it well.
So, it has a messaging system, but it’s not proper email. You can share pictures, but if you really want to show them off, you are better off putting them on Flickr. You can share videos, but YouTube and Vimeo are where you go if you’re serious. Facebook has basic versions of these facilities to enhance their social networking system, not as a platform for serious photographers or wannabe film-makers.
So, Facebook isn’t Google and isn’t trying to be. There’s still room for other forms of social internet use and people will pay for some of it, as with Flickr and LiveJournal and recent blogging upstart Dreamwidth. One thing I like about them is the removal of the term “friend” from their contacts, as I’m against calling any online contact a friend. Not everyone I let into my life is a friend; it’s something that grows, rather than coming into being at the touch of a button.
A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian by Hannah Pool 
Since I’ve been a kid I’ve been something of a road geek. I was always fascinated by roads and road signs, road numbers, street lights and so on (although the last faded when I was a child), and would read maps for pleasure (among other factual books like encyclopaedias; to this day, I read almost entirely factual material and almost no fiction, and the same applies on the rare occasion when I watch a film of my own initiative). That was one of my many Aspergian traits, and it meant much paper was spent on maps while my sister used it for imaginative drawings. It’s had the positive effect that I can claim excellent geographical knowledge, and know how to get to pretty much any town in England without needing a map (I would, of course, need one to find the actual street if it’s in a strange town). Still, my fascination for roads does not go to the logical conclusion of wanting big roads to be built all over the place, regardless of need or any environmental consequences.
As I start writing this entry, the western extension to the London congestion charge ceases. The charge is being suspended over Christmas and New Year, and will return after that in its original boundaries with a raised fee of £10. As someone who worked until recently as a driver in London, I am glad about this. The scheme always was politically motivated, intended to sting all the rich people living in west London to pay for improved public transport elsewhere. However, it always included a large residential area which is not part of any traditional definition of central London and is not full of rich people by any means, particularly the northern end of Notting Hill.
Last night a set of “scandals” broke in which various senior Lib Dem politicians made statements which were not conducive to the love-in between their party and the Tories which has caused so much upset as they have ditched one of their policies and election promises after another. Among them was Vince Cable (right), who told two women who were posing as constituents, but were actually undercover reporters from the Daily Telegraph, that he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch, who has been trying to acquire the whole of BSkyB which is the main satellite TV operator in the UK.
Last weekend I witnessed an ugly incident on Facebook, which led to a relationship breaking up and the two erstwhile partners both retiring from the site (and Twitter) over accusations that seemed flimsy at the time and now appear to be baseless. What makes it all the uglier is that both women are disabled, one much more than the other and in the middle of a relapse in her condition, possibly near the point where online relationships are the only type open to her.
Work.
Back when I was at boarding school, we all heard the legend of the man who was blown up in the trenches (in World War I) and lost all four limbs and most of his face, as a result of which he became unable to see, hear, speak or eat; he was, as it was described, “a brain alive” although he was supposedly able to tap out messages in Morse Code with his head. I first heard it when my friend and I were sat in the sleep-in staff member’s room, who was making some attempt to console my “homesickness” (or rather, upset at being there) by saying that “it could be worse; I could be like that guy who got blown up in the trenches, etc”. The heavy metal band Metallica did a song based on the story called One, and I remember a boy in my class bringing it into English class and playing it to the middle-aged female teacher (and the rest of us). The song starts off melodic, but as might be expected, it turns into a thrashy noise. The song ends with that suddenly cutting out, at which point the teacher said, “oh thank God that’s over!”.
Yesterday I watched a programme about the extent the British immigration “services” will go to get rid of child and teenage refugees. It told the stories of three cases, a family from Iran in which the father (killed in an accident) was accused of distributing passages from The Satanic Verses, a young man from Afghanistan who says he is 16 (with strong evidence) but who the authorities insist is older, and a refugee from Uganda who was obviously tortured, but who the border agency persists in finding excuses to send home, calling her a liar even as they admit she had been tortured. (You can 
This is a response to the ridiculous comments that have ensued from the recent John Ware documentary — he appeared in Ware’s earlier Panorama in which Ware attacked certain mosques at which offensive sermons were delivered. Abdul-Hakim Murad appeared very briefly in that programme, alleging that mainstream Islamic bookshops were going under because they could not compete with propaganda material being given out for free with Saudi funding.
