Swifty, Writing

Just a random picture of Masami Nagasawa

I've recently hopped onto the Facebook bandwagon after receiving numerous invitations from various people on my MSN list, including Brian the Cinematographer and Edrei. And also Mandy Moore (yes, THAT Mandy Moore) telling me via a Myspace bulletin that she's starting an account there too. How can I refuse Mandy Moore?

In truth, I was getting pretty bored with Myspace, which seemed to feel increasingly impersonal and much too flooded with silly spam messages as I got more people on my friends list. Like Friendster, it felt kinda pointless to have that many Myspace friends when most of them didn't really seem to care that much about my existence, I'm just another one of those faceless customers. In Friendster's case, it feels a little annoying when some long-lost schoolmate added you, but didn't really bother to message you or anything. :(

For social networking sites... I sure don't get a lot of social networking from them.

Thus I joined Facebook, added numerous people from Murdoch University, KDU College and Catholic High School, and a few others I knew through the net. I liked it so far, especially the news feed, where I get to know what my other friends are doing. It's a stalker's paradise.

One other thing I like a lot about Facebook is that I can import my blog's RSS feed onto the site so that everyone on my Friends' list can be notified every single time this blog's updated (it is as if I've 'posted a note' on Facebook). Would love to see a similar integration on Friendster or Myspace, unfortunately, these two sites already have their own blogging services. Sigh.

Facebook had recently launched Facebook Platform, which allows users to use many different 3rd-party applications within Facebook. (more information about this can be read on this Techcrunch entry. On the other hand, Mashable had also listed more than 30 of their favourite applications.

The applications are at http://apps.f8.facebook.com/apps, all these will probably be moved to the main Facebook domain in the future. The applications are pretty nifty, and I'm likely to use the Flixter one and Twitter one since I'm a member of both.

Unfortunately, two applications I seriously want to see but aren't there are ones from Flickr and Youtube, since these are the main places I upload my photos and videos (thus I don't really use the photo or video uploading services on other social networking sites, be it Myspace, Facebook or Friendster). It'll be quite a bummer if I can never get them on Facebook Platform... *sigh* There's still hope, since there will be more apps being added.

So, anyone of you guys using Facebook now? Even better, anyone using the apps from Facebook Platform? Any thoughts?

By the way, my Facebook page is here. Feel free to add me. But if you DARE spam me, I'll be... very VERY displeased. (and seriously, a woman scorned is less malicious than a Swifty scorned)

p.s. I've finally received a letter of notification yesterday that my short film, GIRL DISCONNECTED, has finally reached Melbourne for the Portable Film Festival. Guess the local postal services can still be pretty reliable despite my experiences with one of its employees. Haha.