Conversationalize

With Facebook’s announcement on June this year that they are allowing its users to get vanity URLs for their accounts instead of that birth numbers, they also added that it will be permanent and will never be altered.

The policy back then was strict not until July 23, 2009, Thursday, when Facebook included on its site an option on its account setting giving its users the second chance to change their usernames. The option can only be used once, so it’s just a second chance for all who’ve tried the vanity URLs but failed to get the right name.

There are a lot of factors affected Facebook’s decision to soften the policy regarding vanity URLs including those who have mistakenly misspelled their names during registration. Also, there are reports saying that users jokingly provide names on their accounts therefore getting some negative feedbacks on job prospects and other important stuff.

With this new policy, everybody gets to enjoy Facebook’s services while getting the right name for your account.

It is not unknown to you that social networks are very popular. Particularly in the youth, social networks are now venues for expression. It is an area for showing the world what you are doing and what you care about. The only problems with these websites though are its misuse as people create multiple accounts which has the tendency to send spam.

But do not get me wrong. Facebook is a great website. I use it everyday myself. However, I get dozens of notifications on it all the time from people who are suggesting friends who I do not know or those group invitations to different games. There are also lots of notifications in relation to quizzes and games. Given the amount, it is obvious that I do not care about all these. I may care about some but not all.

But then Facebook comes up with this awesome idea. According to the Facebook blog, Facebook can now be integrated with your mobile phone with the new “Subscribe via SMS” option. You can now connect with the people that matters to you and literally follow their every move on the website. It does not matter whether or not you care about what they are doing right?

But the good side of this new Facebook upgrade is that you can choose who to subscribe to. You will not be facing spam on your phone and that is a good thing. There is also the option to unsubscribe. So if your friend gets overboard in updating his status, you can simply remove the subscription.

The downside, however, is that when other notifications are sent to your phone. I am still yet to try this feature so what I am presenting here is merely a theory. But if only the most important updates are sent. Then this new feature may be a good thing for us all.