I learned about Facebook around 2006 when someone mentioned in the the Off Topic forum of GoPets. Back then Facebook was a private social networking site that only allowed individuals from US companies, universities and organizations to join and connect with each other. I wasn’t able to sign-up immediately because I wasn’t in the US so I opted to be included in their mailing list so i would know when it would be open to other countries. I think I got the invitation back in 2007 and when I joined it wasn’t really populated with people and there weren’t much games apart from WarBook. The applications that used to generate a lot of interest were the ones that “generated” some sort of compensation for posts, clicks and surveys; like the apps launched by dNeero, AceBucks and ClixSense. I think it was ClixSense if I remember it correctly. I couldn’t find anyone I know there because not many people have joined it yet. The only time I got a real friend there was when I started blogging and learned that one of my blogger friends had a Facebook account which she also used for gaining traffic to her blogs through social networking and online marketing.
Fast-forward to 2009 and Facebook has really evolved from a small and relatively silent community into a large and thriving community. Dynamic applications started to sprout and many developers started creating games that attracted even more people to join. I admit that even I got addicted to the games in Facebook last year, especially with Pet Society, Mafia Wars, Farm Town, Restaurant City, Country Life and other tycoon games. After some time the novelty of the games faded after a lot of copycat games came out. It got boring when developers started using the same “formula” for all their games and simply tweaked the theme and graphics to create a “new” game. I used to be very active in adding people just for the sake of advancing on the games I played.
Lately, I’ve only used Facebook to keep in touch with friends and relatives. I’ve lost interest in the gaming aspect of FB because I realized I was neglecting a lot of my websites for something that isn’t beneficial to me at all. I’m glad to say that I have weaned myself from Facebook and only use it every now and then to communicate with friends and relatives.