Facebook acquires 300 millionth user

It does what it is supposed to do and does it adequately

Literally it does what it was meant to, maybe not smoothly but it's more than adequate for keeping in contact with friends. When you have family and friends around the world it makes a nice message board where everyone can intermingle that you know and network with each other.

Without facebook I would have never found a good friend that I had lost touch with over 20 years ago. It lets me keep in touch with family on the other side of the world from me and even find a couple of new friends.

For all of that it certainly allows me to be more forgiving of the flaws in their site.

@barfridge

Same here, the 'evolving to Twitter' is extremely annoying, and if we didn't have family abroad to keep in contact with, I would have dumped the site ages ago.

The interface problems you talk about are indeed making the user experience a misery at best. Settings and options are never where you would expect them, and purposefully hidden so people wouldn't bother protecting their privacy - just because it is such a pain and very time consuming.

But, it is true though - 'achieving critical mass' has happened and FB is now sort of the Microsoft of social networking. We don't like 'em, but we now 'have' to use them. And, just like Windows, we don't really, but we fool ourselves into thinking we do.

Even if something much better comes along, critical mass is going to make it very difficult to switch over, unless you can convince your contacts to do the same.

300 millionth user?

Do you think they tried to give the 300,000,000th user a prize, but he didn't click on the big red flashing box ("Congratulations, you are the300,000,000th user, Click here to claim your prize!") and therefore didn't get it?

@ JB: Actually, no, it's not Staunches...

Stanch: –verb (used with object) 1. to stop the flow of (a liquid, esp. blood). 2. to stop the flow of blood or other liquid from (a wound, leak, etc.). 3. Archaic. to check, allay, or extinguish. –verb (used without object) 4. to stop flowing, as blood; be stanched.

Staunch: –adjective, -er, -est. 1. firm or steadfast in principle, adherence, loyalty, etc., as a person: a staunch Republican; a staunch friend. 2. characterized by firmness, steadfastness, or loyalty: He delivered a staunch defense of the government. 3. strong; substantial: a staunch little hut in the woods. 4. impervious to water or other liquids; watertight: a staunch vessel.

re: Neil Barnes

"And still none of the quoted participants could manage a grammatical and correctly spelled sentence. Do we really need the pointless witterings of these illiterati?"

The key word in that sentence was "quoted". Would you consider 5 or so people cherrypicked for comic effect to be a reasonable, representative sample of a group consisting of 300,000,000 people?

arsebook

They are about to lose me. I signed up a year ago out of curiosity and because everyone seemed to raise an eyebrow in disbelief when I said I'm not on it. I have most of my real life friends on my facebook friend list as well, but I don't really use FB to send messages, I still call them, meet up or send an e-mail to those not nearby. However, I do have a few randoms on my friend list I never met. Some of them seem to be quite nice, but there doesn't seem to be an interest to meet face to face. I probably won't bother much longer, there is no real value in it and it doesn't make life easier. Unless you would miss the convenience of just leaving a meaningless apology on someone's wall for not showing up at a dinner party as promised. That's actually easier than telling someone on the phone or in person and keep it believable.

On another subject: The comment quality on the Zuckerberg blog is really excellent. Almost as good as on good old El Reg. But we're better party poopers ;)

@Tony Chandler

Of course not - but external evidence suggests that it's a representative sample.

To be fair, I have absolutely no interest in ever joining a 'social networking' site of any description.

and in a couple of weeks ....

... the 300 millionth user will become the 299 millionth dormant account. It's not the number of people who sign up that's important, it's the number who decide it's not a complete and utter waste of their time and intellect. Those who stay active: they count. That's where the revenue will come from.

Well..

It seems facebook as just turned into a site where youngsters can browse for their next fuck and talk to their friends. I call it facefuck. Fitting methinks.

curious

Having looked at the BBC article it made me think "Why doesn't the register look at other countries social networking sites??" With Mixi and the Korean ones being fore runners in how to make money out of their user base. Also being useful and not full of stupid shit (like sheep and ducks ffs >.>)

aha

Anyone know how you actually delete you're account - I could only 'disable' it when I tried to escape the thoroughly shallow and depressing world of facebook.

That reminds me, I never managed to get around to buying my domain: "www.cumonmyfacebook.com". Darn it.

Feel free to purchase on my behalf, I'll sign up.

Moderatrix needed

Sounds like Mr. Zuckerberg needs his own Moderatrix - perhaps it's time for Ms. Bee to find her equivalent of the PFY?

tried it, hated it

Probably the world's most boring website.