Mary S. Butler

In a previous post I mentioned that I did not have a Facebook profile. That is no longer true. I am now a member of the Avenue A | Razorfish network and have reconnected with former colleagues from Forbes.com and cars.com as well. (For any of my friends reading this who are not in my network, I would love to connect with you on Facebook as well!)

In a matter of minutes I had created my profile and added the Flickr thumbnail and Forbes.com stock tracker applications to my page. These applications are a result of Facebook’s decision in late May to offer any company, such as a publisher or software maker, to build services for its members. Although questions have been raised about Facebook’s Terms of Service for the developers of these applications, as a user I found the experience to be a seamless one and the applications encouraged me to spend much more time on the site than I had planned. And, as other commentators have noted, your Facebook page goes beyond social networking and is becoming more like your personalized Google homepage. Although you can’t personalize your Facebook page with a beach theme, you can see which applications your friends have selected for their profile pages, which can be more revealing than their lists of iLikes. Drinks application, anyone?