Yesterday Facebook celebrated its fifth birthday. They sure do grow up fast those social networking sites.
A brief glance at the numbers tells us Facebook has more than 150 million active users, the average person has 120 friends, more than 850 million photos are uploaded every month and over 140 new applications are added every day. It's come a long way in a short time.
At The Feed we believe birthdays are a good time to reflect on how things are going, and Facebook should be no different. We canvassed the opinion of friends, colleagues and a few unsuspecting commuters, to ask this: Five years on, what do you love - or loathe - about Facebook?
Here are the occasionally controversial, in-yer-face honest, sometimes funny, but always illuminating results of our voxpop.
"I hate seeing how much fun ex-girlfriends are having."
Anonymous
"Well, I like it cos I'm a nosey so and so..."
Marcus
"It's good because it has allowed me to re-establish old contacts. On the flipside it's another way for me to inadvertently upset people. Regular Facebook users expect responses and I just don't pay that much attention."
Jack
"I thought it was great initially, I was catching up with people I'd been out of contact with for ages. But then the people I had successfully managed to avoid for years started getting in touch. Bah humbug!"
Liza
"It was better before my Dad was on it."
Anonymous
"Good because it reminds me to get in contact with people I don't see very often and gives me the odd insight into what they are up to. And they're all in one place."
Al
"I don't use it because ex-girlfriends will track me down (why do you think I live on the other side of the world...)"
JB
"Strange that there's now so much shared information between extended groups. Interesting also that a new generation are emerging who have never known any different."
Lucie
"I think it's the best example to date of an effective social media platform. The privacy controversy is all quite frightening for the future."
John
"There's a reason I don't keep in touch with you anymore, and now Facebook is making it socially awkward to ignore you."
Mike T
"Love being able to see everyone's photos from around the world and seeing what people are up to on their status."
Claire
"I don't trust them but I'm a geek who has night terrors about internet privacy. From a technical point of view, Facebook rock. They've built an extremely capable and massive website."
Nilesh
"Good for finding people you lost touch with. Bad because I don't want to aggregate communications with friends, but people insist on contacting me there."
Andy
"I cannot bear people writing on walls what should be private messages. We do not need to know! Although to be fair that is a function of my grumpiness, not Facebook itself." Benjamin
So there you have it. They've had their say, now it's your turn. Get commenting.
Image courtesy of Andrew Eick.
