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Your Facebook Wall Looks Like A Damn Flea Market!

Facebook is known for its clean, easy to use graphical user interface. Than why on earth are you turning your wall into a damn flea market!

Have you ever been to a flea market? I’m sure you have! I’m sure you’ve seen the booths side by side with mountains of merchandise tightly squeezed onto a small 10′x4′ table. It’s awful! Not only does it make it difficult to see the items, it hurts my eyes and gives me a headache that can only be cured with a dozen of them famous mini-donuts!

I see too many people on Facebook cluttering their walls with 20-30 different applications that bring no or little value. It’s a mess and it gives me a headache. How many glitter names do you really need on your profile?

I firmly believe that Facebook is an excellent tool to help people market, network, and grow. It is a professional platform that can literally help shape a new social circle for yourself. So, please for the sake of my eyes and all the other 30 million users — stop cluttering your profile pages with useless junk!

Thank you, that is all. :)

Learn How Musicians Use Facebook For Fun and Profit!

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This is my first podcast, so it’s a little scratchy. I apologize in advance for the quality of audio, as I forgot to change the settings to record via the internal sound card and not from my external speakers. Either way it was a great first podcast!

My guest was Denis Gauthier, singer/songwriter for TheBetween and blogger at DeniGauthier.com

If you’re a musician you definitely want to hear this podcast about how you can make money without doing “gigs”, and also how you can utilize a social networking site like Facebook to grow your fan base and sell your music and swag!

What My Grandmother Taught Me About Facebook

There are two times during the year I can expect or should I say predict with absolute certainty that my grandmother will be calling me – spring and fall! Why?

Because, you see… my grandmother owns a DVD player and every spring it needs to have its time set 1 hour forward (Daylight Savings Time) and in the fall it needs to be set back 1-hour.  Although she has the instructions and had me write out a step-by-step process on how to do it, she would prefer I come over and do it for her.

How does this have anything to do with Facebook? Simple. Technology is advancing faster than people can keep up. This many bits, that many bytes…rss this and feedburner that! It’s technology over load!

Again… you are probably wondering what on earth does this have to do with Facebook. Well, I learned a valuable lesson from my grandmother and the countless times setting her DVD player’s clock.  There is an absolute need for someone to teach someone how to do things.

Facebook, although it is simple to navigate and fairly simple in its layout it is still confusing to the not-so-savvy internet user, say….like….my grandma or my uncle (although my uncle rick did finally get on the Facebook bandwagon! woohoo!).

I have decided to create a new blog which will be launched next week on September 25th – it will be full of Facebook tutorial videos! If you’re anything like myself, I hate reading — give me visuals baby!

The videos will start off from the very basics, such as “how to set-up a facebook account”… to not so basic as importing an RSS feed into my notes or installing new applications. My goal is to help everyone of every level learn about Facebook and use it to grow, network, and share.

If you are interested in being the first to know of the new blog’s web address and get some cool free stuff in the process simply add me as a friend by clicking the “about” link on top o this blog and I’ll keep you informed!

You’re going to love it!

Learn How To Unblock Facebook @ Work/School

So your boss or school banned you from Facebook huh? Grrr, damn the man!  How dare they censor you from the web’s coolest new way to connect with others! Don’t worry I’ll save you! Read on….

Today, I’m going to talk about how using a proxy can help you surf the web anonymously and thus get through your work or school’s firewall and start enjoying Facebook once and for all ( give your a boss a sweet kick in the a$$).
What exactly is a proxy? The easiest way to explain it without getting technical is to tell you that using a  proxy  to browse the web will put an anonymous filter between you and the website you want to visit. Thus allowing you to bypass your school or work’s firewalls and filters and being able to access Facebook, You Tube, Myspace…etc.
Here is a list of web-based proxy website you can use. The process is simple. Just enter www.facebook.com ( or any other blocked website you are not allowed to surf to) and click the enter or search button and it will bring you there, as if by magic!

Unblock Facebook
http://www.fax-gateway.info/unblock-facebook/

FacebookProxy.net
http://www.facebookproxy.net/

Facebook  Proxy Sites ( a list of major proxy sites)
http://www.facebookproxysites.com/

Facebook Proxy
http://www.faceoxy.com/

Facebook Proxy Online
http://www.facebookproxyonline.com/

How To Access Facebook At School or Work

Here is one way (I’ll be posting more in the next few days under a new category called “how-to”) to gain access to the facebook website and ultimately your account at school or at work.

Many businesses and school use a firewall to block you from accessing websites. Most commonly they tend to filter out social networking and e-mail related websites, but this little tip may help you get pass their firewall (one point for you, zero for your loser boss or school administration. ha. ha.).

In todays how-to you’ll need to be able to download stuff on the computer you are at, if you do not have access to do that, than unfortunately this method will not work and you’ll have to wait for me to write up a different way (no worries…I’ll post something tomorrow hehe).

Ok, you ready? This is the easy way. ( it doesn’t work all the time, but it may depending on the type of firewall is set-up)

First, download Firefox by clicking here

If your not familiar with Firefox, it is a free browser that has loads of cool features not found in Internet Explorer — I have been using it for many years now and will never go back to Internet Explorer.

Firefox is rarely affected by the changes your work or school administration make, as most only affect Internet Explorer. More importantly Firefox has a built in proxy connection setting which allows you to enter in information you can get from a anonymous web surfing service which would allow you to get to any website you want even if it is blocked by a firewall.

So, try simply using Firefox, if that didn’t work than stay tuned as your situation may require a more complex solution. Don’t worry, I’ll save you!

Facebook App – Where’s My Money Punk?

I like applications that have real world value. You won’t see me reviewing anything I feel doesn’t add value to the Facebook platform and to its users.

I hate applications like food fights or my stripper name. Sure, they have a shit load of installs, but people install them and uninstall them just as fast. What use are they but to simply clutter your beautiful Facebook wall!

Today, I found a cool application from Paypal. If your not familiar with Paypal than click here, otherwise keep reading.

The Paypal application for Facebook allows you to “request money from your Facebook friends, even if they don’t have a PayPal account. It’s the safer, easier way to collect money with a little help from PayPal.”

Maybe Amanda borrowed some cash for them sweet shoes she saw at the mall or maybe your buddy Eric ran up his tab a little too high the other night at the bar to impress that cute girl.

Whatever the reason, now you can use Paypal through Facebook to request money from your friends. It’s absolutely awesome! I love it!!!!

You can install the application by clicking the link below:
http://apps.facebook.com/paypalapps/

When Visitor Stats Turn Into Friends!

Sometimes I feel isolated when writing for this blog. I mean, here I am in my basement typing away hoping that people who come to this blog can use the information in order to help them understand what Facebook is all about.

Today was an awesome day! I got a friend request from someone who I did not know — I approved the request than asked the question “how do we know each other?”. To my amazement it was one of my visitors, who has been using this website for about a month, to learn more about Facebook. Tres cool!

If there is something you’d like to learn how to do on Facebook, please let me know via a comment — and I’ll do my best to write up a how-to or film a tutorial video. It’s a great feeling knowing what I do is helping others network, connect, and grow.

Feel free to add me as a Facebook Friend

Retro Facebook (TheFacebook) Screenshot circa 2004

In yesterday’s post I mention how Mark, the CEO of Facebook is being sued for allegedly stealing source code from ConnectU.com. There has been some discussion in the blogosphere that this just isn’t possible — after all look how clean, fresh, and easy to use Facebook is compared to ConnectU.com.

I beg to differ, Facebook didn’t always look the way it does today. Here is a screenshot from 2004 when Facebook was actually called “TheFacebook.com”.

So, did Mark steal the code to launch his own social networking website? Who knows. You can check out all the past screenshots of thefacebook.com by going to here.

TheFacebook.com Circa 2004

Facebook.com Today

Would The Real Facebook *cough ConnectU.com cough* Please Stand Up!

I believe all great ideas are not new or original, they are merely stolen from someone or somewhere and reworked, reshaped, and made better and usually take over the market. Its called evolution baby!

Think about that for a moment… Apple stole the GUI (graphical user interface) idea from Xerox….Microsoft stole the idea from Apple but profited from licensing and distribution agreements which made Microsoft what it is today. Sure, there were improvement along the way — but originally Xerox had created the idea… the others merely stole it, reworked it, and made it their own.

I know the article is old (July 2007) but Facebook is being sued by ConnectU.com saying that Mark stole source code and staled the release of ConnectU.com to work on his own project Facebook (originally called thefacebook.com) — launching it before ConnectU.com — thus having first movers advantage. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook, denies ever stealing any source code, but it does seem all too fishy. He says he didn’t know it was for a social networking website, he thought it was for a personal website (c’mon Mark… you can do better than that, geesh)

I recently set-up an account at ConnectU.com — the outside looks pretty aweful (nothing a little graphic design geek couldn’t fix in seconds) but once inside you can see some similarities — the clean, easy to navigate feel is prevelant throughout.

Let this be a lesson for all — you might have a great idea and good intention, but if you don’t act on that idea, someone else will and it just might leave you hanging with only 70k members rather than 30 million and a $1 billion dollar buyout offer from Yahoo!.

On a side note, I like ConnectU.com’s layout and design inside its site — it should perhaps take its code and rework it for another domain, perhaps start a social networking site in a niche — like multiply.com is doing (they cater to the 30-somethings crowd).

Facebook Has Google Sweating Like A Prize Fighter

So, let me get this straight. There are millions of websites and billion of actual web pages and we’re all competing for the top 20 positions in Google? This is ridiculous!

When I look back at some websites I know and enjoy today, I did not find them through Google, Yahoo!, MSN…etc. I found them from the referral of a friend or family member. I also seem to discover new and interesting websites through the network of blogs I read daily/weekly.

Let me do a quick inventory…

1. I was introduced to YouTube.com by my 1o year old niece. (lol. numa numa dance)

2. Facebook was introduced to me by my ex-girlfriend’s friend.

3. I discovered Digg.com and Reddit.com from a friend’s blog.

4. BitTorrent was introduced to me by my brother.

Do you see a pattern? Grab a paper and pen! List some of the major websites you currently visit. How many of them were from a referral from someone you knew? Maybe a co-worker, friend, relative had referred you? Interesting? I think so!

How does this all tie into Facebook? According to Facebook’s blog, Facebook receives 600 million searches a month, which puts them into the top 20 search engines online in terms of number of searches.

Search Engines as we know them will drastically change in the next 5 years. When the web was young Yahoo!’s directory style was ideal. Than as websites increased in numbers Google pagerank democratic logarithm-thing-a-mer-bob took its place and gave us all what we wanted – relevant information. But lately, I personally hate Google — I rarely go 3 pages deep into it and rarely find what I want.

I have a hunch, a gut feeling of sorts, that search engines of the future (5 years from now) will resemble more like Facebook in the sense that the results shown to you when you search will be tailored to your likes and dislikes, but also to the likes and dislikes of those you hold close in your circle of influence. Think about it. People tend to hang around those who they have something in common with. Now imagine — a search engine (or socialengine as I’ll call it) that will know what you and your friends have in common and fetch relevant content to match it. Oh la la, tres sexy! Rawr!

Update: Here is an interesting article about what I just talked about check it here