Les Bonnes Choses

Facebook has completed yet another round of improvements to their popular social networking website. Whereas before your homepage would be filled with a random assortment of updates about your friends, you now have the choice between a small random subset (news feed) and a larger random subset (live feed). I have yet to figure out what sort of things qualify for one or the other. I have, however, figured out that facebook seems to select pairs of friends who are themselves friends, and for a short period suggests that you might be friends with everyone they both know. In practice, this means that my each of my married friends have their in-laws foisted upon me for a couple days at a time.

Another proactive measure that facebook has taken concerns making sure that you keep in touch with friends with whom you have had the least amount of contact. Under the heading suggestions on your home page come directives to write on so-and-so's wall. This can be somewhat amusing, as I know of at least one occassion where facebook suggested that a friend of mine reconnect with her husband by writing on his wall (he was in the room with her at the time). Aside from the absurdity, this feature is bound to change eventually, because it also comes off as rather fascist. However, at least it doesn't judge your friends like another suggestion that I recently noticed: "[so-and-so] has only 11 friends. Suggest other friends for him (emphasis added)." I can only imagine what the programmers decided to name the function that searches its member database for people that haven't reached its popularity threshold. findLosers() or something like that, perhaps. Good thing there's something like Facebook to help these sad hermits make friends!