I noticed that my intended use of the Friends List had changed this year. Now, on the surface, the List is exactly as it says it is; a list of friends made on Facebook. But you may or may not know about the extra functionality of creating groups of friends, that also extend to Chat (function of hiding from these groups of people).

In other words, the core purpose is to list out your friends, or more accurately, your personal connections (you will see why later).

But this isn’t the point. I want to focus on who makes up your Friends List, not how many.

Now, Facebook has default groups of friends by network. If you think about it, you make friends at high school (one network), at university (another network), and at each workplace you work at (yet more networks). It is fair to say, that the social nature of each environment is different. Hence (if you have one), the criteria of whether someone is your ‘friend’ or not differs between networks.

Using my criteria as an example, someone who graduated with me from high school (i.e. same Year 12 group) will have more chance of being my ‘friend’, than someone who I met once at uni. My previous criteria was that only people I associated with regularly were ‘friends’.

Obviously, the more social experiences one has, the more friends there should be. But from the example above, be aware of who you friend and what you share with them. I have found that there are people who you would want to ‘friend’ due to the value of a personal connection with them. But be aware, there are some statements that shouldn’t be made public, because there are people who do not deserve to know/care.

We can also extend this thinking to family members on your Friend List. There has been lots of debate about whether one should friend their parents/relatives. A general rule is if the relative lives overseas or is of similar age, then it is acceptable for them to be added. But for those that are older, some caution must be taken.

The lesson to take away from this, is to be careful who you ‘friend’ on Facebook. Unless you want to become a news story.

Facebook now has hundreds of millions of users around the world. It has been described as a ‘meta-layer’  (BOL podcast, within the last 2 weeks) of the internet. This is easily seen in Facebook Connect and Instant Personalisation functions. These extend your Facebook account identity to third-party websites, and personalise the content of said website according to what you have in your profile.

These functions are also common functions of social networks which include the Wall (public messages), groups/pages, events pages, photo/video sharing etc…

Now, don’t get me wrong. Facebook is fantastic at keeping in touch with people you haven’t spoken/seen in a long time. As people’s contact details change their Facebook presence is constant, regardless of whether they have updated it with their new address or not (in most cases). It makes easy to arrange events at a moment’s notice, share media, tell your friend that they’re cool, and so on. That’s why I like Facebook, now here’s why I don’t.

Facebook has moved into a position where it wants to be a central repository for your identity and content. Because all your information (including page, group data etc) is on the site and organised (in most cases) by you, this potentially makes it easy for them to share this information to advertisers and third-parties. Subsequently, marketers can segment down to your interests what you like, and serve up super-relevant ads. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) said at the recent D8 conference that the world will move towards applications designed around people and the nature of what people do, not software.

What is also noticeable, and mentioned by Zuckerberg, is that new Facebook features are almost always protested, because an engineer has found a new way to present information. Take a look at News/Live Feed. It was met with intense criticism initially, but now it is standard and quite useful.

Now here is what I prefer to do. I’m not a fan of signing up for services that duplicate functionality I already have. I share my photos on Flickr. I try to use email as much as possible (minimise Facebook messaging/wall posting). But note, this doesn’t mean I’ll stop using Facebook. (Actually, maybe this will)

Statistics

Birthday messages
Facebook messages – 65
Face to face greets – 4
Text messages – 4
Tweets – 1

Frequency of Facebook messages vs. Time (i.e. when was the message posted)

(Time in 24 hour format i.e. 0 is 12am, 22 is 10pm)

Comparison of AEST and UTC:

Number of people who attempted to use my ‘initials’ signature – 11
Number of people who used it incorrectly – 3
Facebook email lag* – 11

Amount spent on scratchies – $10
Amount lost – $10

Cash received as gifts – $364.2

*Every time I get a wall post, an email is sent to me. This is the number of emails it did not send me.

Observations

Some observations about the graph I’d like to point out. (Yes! I get to nerd out now.)

I would have expected a normal distribution (bell-shaped curve) which meant that the majority of responses were in the middle of the day. But as the graph shows, it is quite evenly distributed.

The unusual concentration at 12am-2am is the result of people who (I think):

• wanted to be the first to wish me Happy Birthday (at 12am)
• were studying late (all-nighter)
• (in one case) was overseas (from the raw data, one message was from a person in the UK, hence the local time would have been 5pm)(London is UTC+1)

My other prediction is that the ‘spike’ at 6pm is due to people coming home after a day at uni.

Now, about the initials. For those who don’t know, I write the same thing for each person’s birthday. I sign with my initials, BH. This statistic shows that the trend of signing with initials was popular with some of you. Also, three of you managed to use my initials instead of your own! Well done.

Next, Facebook email lag. This is an interesting one. It shows that Facebook’s email servers can’t keep up with the posts of my wall, hence, I wasn’t sent emails about wall posts for 11 people.

Messages

OK. That’s enough of the stats, now the personal messages. You know who you are.

To those who are overseas, I miss you too.

To those who signed with initials, Thank you. BH

I do miss French, as well as the free hugs.

Merci beaucoup.

Cale, FAIL! (Now that rhymes!)

To everyone else, Thank you, keep in touch, and see you soon.

And so my first week of university concluded yesterday (Friday). It is always a little hard to get back into a weekly routine after three months of well-deserved vacation. And also, the first lectures in every subject are about the same introductory information. The first week is also a great time to join an interest club/society, meet new people, and to explore the campus.

Macquarie Uni is right next to the shopping centre, which makes it easy for me to walk right over and have cheap lunch. Also good for killing time between lectures.

And to sweeten it all, I have Mondays off. Which makes it very convenient to cram study in catch up sleep.

I hope 2010 goes well for all of you.

Initially Foursquare has responded to the site with this blog post. The main point it tries to convey is that your data is only broadcast within your group of Foursquare friends, unless you choose otherwise. Many users choose to broadcast their locations on Facebook and Twitter, which is the feature that Please Rob Me is trying to exploit as the weak point of one’s privacy.

I’d like to point out a few things about the use of these social networks that emphasise users’ control of their own data.

First, it’s pretty obvious that you are responsible for what you put on the internet, and that when information is public, it is effectively out of your control. You have the choice of revealing your home or not, obviously. Thus this is where Please Rob Me fails. If people don’t share their home information, then telling people where you are is not a problem.

Second, and to build the case against Please Rob Me, you can control what your network of friends can see. Facebook allows you to control what information is seen by who. Foursquare gives you the option of broadcasting your location to Facebook friends and/or Twitter followers. It is up to the user to decide how comfortable they are with sharing their location. It surprises me how much people are sharing about themselves unknowingly.

On a side note, someone asked me whether I trusted everyone in my Facebook friend list. Well the answer is yes. The reason is, that I don’t add ‘randoms’ and I know exactly who is on my friend list. I have a policy when it comes to adding friends on my list, and I do trust them with my location information.

This forces the user to be aware about the information they share, and be smart about it. For example, I know exactly how many people have access to my home address. Please Rob Me essentially is a wake up call to those who share liberally.

But let’s look at the other side of this argument: the benefits of location social networks.

The obvious benefit is that you are able to see whether your friends are near you, so you can meet up and do cool stuff together. Foursquare’s points system encourages you to explore your city, and meet up with friends too.

Another reason who location social networks are useful, is to let someone know where you are. I have used Latitude for this purpose before.

So to sum up, the user is in control of their information, it is up to them to decide how comfortable they are sharing different types of information, and also to be aware of who the information is reaching.

2009 has been a fantastic year. I’ve finished Year 12, that’s something. Next year begins the next step of many steps into this wide world of ours.

I’m not a fan of talking about the past. Although I do it often, looking back on it, it has been a very foolish act. Instead, now I will talk about the future more often.

I guess this is what many people do at this time, in the form of New Year’s Resolutions. (Mine will come tomorrow)

But for now, I’m here to tell you what I’ll be doing differently next year. It’s not a big thing, but it has a big impact.

Tell the truth.

Yes, it’s that simple. This past year, I’ve realised that in order to please others, the truth had to be manipulated in some way.

From now on, it’s the raw truth, whether you like it or not. It is undesirable to see a web of lies and cover-ups cloud one’s thoughts and judgement. It is undesirable for one to believe that everything is okay. Nothing is perfect, it shouldn’t be. After all, if the world was perfect, there would be nothing to make us think.

Obviously someone or something will be upset or disturbed by truth in any case. This is not a concern, because when such truth is divulged, it teaches one to deal with the consequence of the truth and to move on.

It is not right for someone to influence or dictate the direction of one’s thoughts or life. Everyone is unique and this is what preserves the diversity in society.

Thank you for reading my blog in 2009, and a Happy New Year to you all.

Last night was Barker’s speech night, and my last speech night.

Speech night has become known for the exhaustive prize list, Year 12 antics during the prize giving, and of course the Headmaster’s (herein referred to as K) speech.

What we have come to love about K’s speech is the length (purported to have been 40 minutes one year, but this year’s was 21 minutes long), the content (has ranged from famous men, to Canadian mountains), and the relevance to Barker ways (interpretations can vary). The evening and the day after speech night the intertubes are abuzz about the choice of subject, the relevancy and overall, whether the speech was good or not!

(For the record, this year’s speech was 21 minutes long which focused on three influential men: Galileo Galilei, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin and their perseverance to reach their goals. The relevance (as interpreted by some people) was questionable.)

Next on the list, Year 12 antics. This year’s Year 12 has been very supportive of each other, as was evident in the various call outs during the prize giving. Most memorable was Willo’s standing ovation, for his magnificent achievements. There were a few others, including the frenzied call out for Jono Chung’s prizes and Jono Mui’s additional handshake.

Now I’ll talk about why I’ve called this an Illusionary Speech Night (for Year 12s).

Firstly, the prize winners are selected on the performance in the school assessments which count for 50% of the final HSC mark. While these people are to be congratulated, and for some will represent what they achieved in the written Board of Studies exams, not everyone who wins on speech night will ‘win’ in their HSC results. To ‘win’ is to win in the relative sense, which means it is different for each person.

The real ‘prize’ will be one’s individual HSC results, which, at time of writing, will be released in one week. Only then will one know whether they have won or not.

Looking down the track, the real ‘prize’ will be the contribution one makes to this changing world. The real ‘prize’ will be the consequences, good or bad, of the path that one takes. The real ‘prize’ will be the satisfaction that you will have gained from making a difference, whether officially recognised or not.

It was good seeing you all again.

1. Everyone is saying, “Make sure you thank your teachers for all the hard work they have done for you.” Well, the best way to thank them is to gain the best possible result in the HSC exams. They’ll be happy that their hard work has paid off, and you will be happy that you have a great result.

2. It’s almost a week since that wonderful last day of school. There are probably many thank you messages that you didn’t write on people’s shirts that morning. May I suggest that you hand-write letters to these people. I know I am…

All the best for HSC 2009.

So yesterday was the last day of school. The day began with a meet at Wahroonga Park, then a train ride to Waitara and finally a scooter ride from the station to school.

First off, I’d like to say that it was fantastic photographing you all. There are some great pictures of the most important day this year. It felt great documenting this wonderful day.

Second, I’m rather happy that this year’s celebrations didn’t produce any police cases, lawsuits and major injuries. Thinking about it, it was probably the best type of Year 12 celebration. At least we didn’t vandalise or damage school property or steal a car or something like that.  All we did was disrupt traffic for a very short time, and that’s the best possible outcome.

It’s not often that we get an opportunity to do something like this. So as every old saying goes, “Make the most of it.”

And we did.

Being at Barker for 10 years (since the beginning) is no mean feat. There have been so many fantastic experiences over the years. There have been so many friendships made, changed, and broken. There were the good times, and the bad times. And we’ve all been through it all. Together as one. As the Class of 2009.

Many of us have planned to do so much in these last few weeks. However in reality, only a fraction of these things have been done. For me, it is physically and mentally impossible to do what I had planned in the space of a week. There are so many people to thank, so many people to recognise and yes, so many people to hug.

Tomorrow will be filled with many emotions. I know that some of us, myself included, will get a bit teary. I think it’s normal though. School has made up a majority of our lives, in the grand scheme of things. It has dictated and directed many minutes of the days. It will be interesting to see how life progresses without this.

I still have so much more to say, but now I must rest.