Well, I have posted a lot about Facebook timeline and security checks. For some cooling period, here are some facts which might let your jaw fall.

• There are more than 800 million active users.
• 50% and more of active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
• Average user has 130 friends.
• On average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day.
• More than 70 languages are available on the site.
• Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.
• More than 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices.
• More than 475 mobile operators globally work to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products.
• 1 in every 13 people on Earth is on Facebook.
  How? You can do the math.
• 71.2 % of all USA internet users are on Facebook.
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
• Mark Zuckerburg (CEO of Facebook) calls himself a “Harvard Graduate”; though infact he didn’t graduate (apparently his reply is that “there isn’t a setting for dropout”).
• It is the second biggest website by traffic behind Google.
• Texas Hold’em Poker is the most popular Facebook page with over 41 million fans.

Connect with the Fourdy @ Facebook.

Though it seems awkward to blog about deactivating after blogging about how to activate it; but many have asked me ‘how-to-get-rid-of-timeline‘. A pretty research made me get the code.

To Quote a facebook developer when asked about this:

Once you click “Get Timeline,” you will have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it.

If you choose, you can publish your timeline right away. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your timeline will replace your profile.

Eventually everyone on Facebook will be rolled over to timeline.

And Fourdy says : Not Everyone

For all the Firefox users:

1. Open Mozilla Firefox.
2. Click on Tools Menu and the on Add-ons OR Press Ctrl+Shift+A
   
3. Look for the Search bar at the right top corner and type ‘User Agent Switcher’
   
4. Once you get the add-on click on install.
   
5. After the Add-on is installed, restart firefox.
6. Then go to “Tools > User Agent > Internet Explorer > 7 (Seven)”
   OR
   You will see a User Agent Icon beside the Navigation bar/ Address bar. From there Choose > Internet Explorer > 7 (Seven)
   
7. Go to Facebook.com, your old profile is waiting for you!

If you wish to get the timeline again. Again go to the User Agent Menu and Click on Default User Agent. Simple.

For Chrome Users: Stay Tuned! We will soon come back to you.

Also on Fourdy Wlog:

• See the Unseen profile look of Facebook – Transformation over the years.
• 21 Ways to get more Fans on Facebook
• Android and it’s Best Sellers.
• New Year 2012 (NY12)

But have you seen them all?

Once upon a time…

the facebook started in 2005 as ‘thefacebook’ with ONE user!

With a better wall page and the info page…

in 2006 ‘thefacebook’ became the ‘facebook’ crossing 12 Million users.

With more tabs Zuckerberg Inc provided facebook 2007 to its 50m users…

with 2008 facebook brought Publisher (Status) and Wall filters which attracted 50m more and taking the scale to 100millions…

In 2009… touching 350 Millions was a simple update…

Row head and tag visibility in 2010 crossed 500m…

the ultimate.. when facebook went down the line with timeline… in 2011 with 800m users and still counting!

In TEN simple steps you can just set your account safe. Just as an old adage goes – ‘Prevention is better than cure’…

Step 1: Click on the down arrow on the top-right of your screen and click on ACCOUNT SETTINGS.

Step 2: Set a username for your profile. It is a unique username which is applicable to only to one Facebook account. This helps you to log in with out your email id.

Step 3: Get your primary email-id to something which you can remember easily. Don’t keep on creating fb accounts and increasing the population of Facebook.

Step 4: Keep a password with a ‘text-number’ combination, which makes it more secure. And change your password frequently. (depends on how frequently you log in)

Step 5: Download a copy of your Facebook data: here you can save your memories, pictures and notes and data on Facebook for reference and online surfing of your data.

Step 6: Click on Security

Step 7: Enable Secure Browsing. This keeps your account safe and away from spywares and malwares and data leakage.

Step 8: Log-in Notifications should be activated:  This will give you the immediate text/email/update when ever you(or someone else) logs in to your profile from a new/unique device.

Step 9: This list includes the network location from where you generally log in. This list gives the places from where you have logged on recently. You can give names to the places (like Home, for you PC/Laptop OR Office when you log in from that IP address). You won’t get Log-in notification when you log in from this device as this has been saved as a recognized one.

Step 10: Gives you the details of the approximate place where you are surfing from.

Keep checking out this space for updates on Facebook security. Wish you have a happy time Facebook-ing!

This conference is held in California, San Francisco, annually. It brings together the right people at the right place where the developers bring forward the various objectives and suggestions which can be incorporated in the following year.

The first time it was held in the year 2007. And since then each year it is held at San Fransisco, but with a slight hitch in 2009, it was totally omitted.

The ‘Like’ button was added in one of these f8’s, in 2010. In 2011 it has been scheduled on 22^nd September 2011.

With more than a dozen changes in the recent past, facebook guarantees to bring in more for its ‘citizens’. Including the Subscriber’s thing, a twiter-like button, which allows non friends to view the public posts is one new things which is now visible and brings the celebs to be more active on fb.

Present Day… f8 2011: Overview

• Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of fb, is expected to announce the a new digital sharing features, in partnership with the likes of Spotify, Mog and Deezer. Now the users would be able to share the music they are listening with their friends. Which is going to be the biggest threat to ‘i-Tunes’.
• The next expected is: updating twitter account directly from FB profile.
• Also expected is the overpower of the games applications, mainly by Zynga.

Well hoping for some awesome updates to your facebook, lets see what this f8 2011 squeezes to. Stay tuned to Fourdy Wlog to get the synopsis of it.

We have got a solution to your redress. Now you can revert back to the Old Facebook Chat: (Follow the link below relevant to your browser)

Mozilla Firefox

Google Chrome

Opera

Once the above addon has been installed successfully on your browser, the change in the chat box shall reflect after launching the browser again. To switch between old-style and the new-style facebook chat, use the Options menu in the friend list.

Caution:

• This extension can access your data on facebook.com
• The addon can be a great processor hog! It keeps the CPU usage at 50% efficiency whenever FB page is logged on.

However according to Google, Google+ project is their attempt to make online sharing even better. They aren’t trying to replace what’s currently available; they just want to introduce a new way to connect online with the people related to you.

The biggest thrust Google has for pulling people towards using Google+ is integration. It will build Google+ social networking features and tools into almost all of its existing online services so at some point of time it would seem silly to jump out to some other site (Facebook) to do your social networking.

BUT before we jump on to any conclusion we have to accept the fact that none of Google’s product has been able to generate the fire in social media be it Google Buzz or Wave which were largely ignored or Orkut which almost faded out with the coming of Facebook. Also the fact that Google+’s key feature — the idea to organize your friends into ‘circles‘ and share certain content only with certain circles — isn’t really unique or new: Facebook already offers ‘lists‘ that lets you select which content is seen by which friends.

So people what do you think? Would Google+ kill Facebook?

Later, just before it finally recovered:

This was the longest downtime that I have ever experienced with facebook, it was down in India for over 30 minutes.

There are quite a few things that come to my mind in this distressed situation:

• Is the downtime due to server overload or outrage?
• Has facebook neared it’s capacity with 500 million user?
• Are they making another revamp (for good)
• Has Google bought facebook?
• Wonder how this might have affected teenagers’ suicide rate.
• As Facebook is down, would Twitter be able to handle the extra load (do not worry about MySpace, no one goes there)
• Next day headlines could be, valuation of Facebook falls from 33,000,000,000 USD to 33,000,000 USD

What do you people have to say about it? Let’s see if facebook can “face” it

The swift growth of Facebook and loosing grounds of Orkut recently made me think what is there in the Facebook that Google is lacking to offer in Orkut? And why Orkut failed? And after a lot of search on the internet and personal judgments, I concluded: there are so many reasons out there that really made Google to see decline in this space. I think the reason why people use Facebook (at least, the reason I do) is that it’s fun. I do have access to both an Orkut and Facebook account and find myself using Facebook the majority of the time. I actually prefer Facebook when comparing Orkut versus Facebook from a usability perspective.

Facebook has become very popular in North America over the last few years whereas Orkut is extremely popular in India. Facebook has an origin at the Harvard University and was launched in February, 2004 (just a month after Orkut was launched). Orkut is run by Google and was named after Orkut Buyukkoten (Its creator).

The picture below of the Alexa traffic graph shows how Orkut and Facebook are going in opposite direction. If the circumstances continue to be identical, I bet the day is close when Orkut may close its doors and is scared out of its wit.

DESIGN

Facebook is a great deal professional looking networking website where as Orkut looks to some extent unfinished and the themes make it cartoonish. In Facebook everything is closely integrated in the home page from messaging, to friends update, invites, status update, news feed, links, suggestions, highlights, requests, chat, events and Etc where as in Orkut everything is limply coupled which made it less likable compared to Facebook. There is an issue that – ‘Facebook has a little entry barrier for new folks…’, rather I would like to comment that FB has a simple and professional user interface to which an intelligent user can easily understand at first glance. Though I found ease of accessibility, simplicity in the design and quick access through all the pages within the profile earlier at Orkut, but recently when Orkut introduced its new feature of ‘Themes Library’, I personally started disliking the site on the issues of speed and appearance. Users could change their interface from a wide range of colorful theme library and this lead to slower downloading of the whole system.

APPLICATIONS

With over more than 10,000 application in numbers, Facebook Apps are much better than Orkut. Despite the fact that Orkut was head of Facebook in the beginning it failed to provide new features and updated apps that Facebook provided in the longer run. I’m not astonished to find Orkut ripping several features and ideas from its competitor product in utter despondency. Another annoying thing what most of the user don’t like and Google did not refrain by displaying it is- ‘Bad Bad Server, no donut for you!’ dialogue. It seriously irritates anyone.

STATUS UPDATES

Facebook, much similar to Orkut has a micro-blogging feature of “status updates” which allows users to inform their friends of their current whereabouts, actions, or thoughts. Nevertheless, Facebook proves to be far improved than the latter here again for it allows the people in the network to post their comments and express their likeness towards the post by clicking on ‘like it’ option. Above all, ‘What’s on your mind?’ preference at Facebook let the user share photos, videos and links through attachments within their networks itself.

SECURITY

The security feature is more powerful in Facebook compared to Orkut, On FB one is able to view the profile of others only when the latter is among your connections. Within Orkut you can view people’s profiles details, communities joined, photos, friends, etc regardless if they are a ‘friend’ or not. Open scraps and profiles hence owes to less security.

CHAT

Just as Orkut allow its users to integrate Gtalk within their interface, as of 23^rd April, 2008, Facebook Chat was released for the entire FB user base enabling chat with friends on a one-to-one basis. Though both Facebook and Orkut has the feature of chat within their site, well again Facebook is better at this aspect too on the point that it has the facility where one can be invisible to an individual or a group of people.

ACCOUNT NAME

One of the most important reasons why I love Facebook and give full points to it is the directness and the reality that they expect from the user when asking for the ‘Account Name’ or the profile name as one may say. Worst part about Orkut as I mentioned before is that it seems to be more like a cartoonish thing to me. At times it is really difficult or an impossible task to decipher the actual owner of the account from the disgusting and irrelevant profile names they have (above all the profile picture is uploaded of a celebrity and the list of communities and friends are endless and indescribably weird).

COMMUNITY & GROUPS

Groups and communities found on Orkut are most of the time repetitive and have untold figures of duplicates (that too existing together with the same community name). Facebook on the other hand maintains a feature of unique groups and communities. From my personal experience I add that at Orkut people are more concentrated at number and quantity but Facebook strives for the quality. All the more in Orkut beyond 80% of the communities are a waste and are filled with craps of ideas and classified advertisements from individuals as the forum topics within the community with no relation with each other from anywhere. Orkut has now become a mere place of advertisement, unhealthy entertainment and exponential spamming.

Some of the applications and elements to which I give a share for actually making FACEBOOK a fun and the ultimate leader in the internet social networking race are as follow:

MINI FEED

Facebook’s Mini Feed Feature (notifications) is useful in viewing a quick snapshot on the latest happenings within the network.

MYORKUT

The application named as ‘myOrkut’ connects the Orkut profile of the user to Facebook Profile, so that one can see his/ her Orkut friends and read scraps right from Facebook without actually logging into their Orkut account.

GIFTS

This is a virtual gift feature that Facebook added to its website in February 2007. With the help of this application friends could send gifts to each other along with a small text message. Gifts given to a user appear on the recipient’s wall with the message of the giver, unless the giver decided to give the gift privately.

MARKETPLACE

With the launch of the application named as ‘marketplace’ in May 2007, Facebook allowed its users to post free classified ads.

EVENTS

‘Facebook events’ is an application that helps the user inform the people in the network know about the upcoming events in their group and to organize social gatherings. Events can be open, closed, or secret depending upon the event creator.

VIDEO

Facebook video is an application built by the Facebook developers for sharing videos on Facebook, Users can add their videos with the service by uploading video, adding video through Facebook Mobile, and using a webcam recording feature.

URL CHANGE

The most recent and the last change on the Facebook website was ‘URL Change’. Facebook introduced this feature in June 2009 that allowed users to choose a Facebook username to make user location easier. The user is able to direct others to their page through a simple link such as www.Facebook,com/username rather than an otherwise complex URL. This feature spread very quickly on Facebook, with more than 55,000 users registering URL change within 24 hours after the launch.

CAUSE OF REAL DECLINE OF ORKUT

What I feel to be the main reason for the downfall of the ORKUT in India was its sudden gain of popularity among youth. Yes, it’s shocking to accept, I know. Since Orkut had once become the talk of the teens and young, the site started flooding with new members. Having a registered account on Orkut became a must. Above and beyond Orkut started facing very peculiar problems of fake profiles, flooding, spamming & even track of criminal activities going over the interface. Owing to the deactivation of the jail system and high number of profile counts, the unnecessary profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily. Such profiles were normally created to troll, to spam, to flood or just for fun. It was not hard to find users owning more than one profile, with some stating they own hundreds..!!

Another signpost to the collapse of the networking site, Orkut, was Floodtudo (a freeware program made in Delphi in August 2005, by a Brazilian developer). A big spam wave struck Orkut soon when this program which was specifically meant for flooding Orkut was massively used by thousands of spammers all over. There are several more causes for Orkut losing against many other networking sites like Facebook; but aforementioned are some of the points that I feel to be the root cause.

According to me Orkut had earlier proved to be dominating and better than all other networking sites in every aspects for it be in ease of accessibility, GUI friendliness, up to-date apps and softwares, strong security & Etc. But Microsoft’s cunning plan to suppress Google’s such domination over internet by heavily funding Facebook at the right time helped Facebook to get good data centers, and boost its overall performance (finally resulting in the victory of Facebook in the tariff race among the social networking site)

I think that Google really needs to work hard on Orkut to regain the part of market share it actually deserves. It would not be very tough for Google to do so because it already have the user base, all it needs to do is to pull the uses back to Orkut. Also, if the fall of orkut continues it is destined to have the same face as Yahoo! 360 degree which have already called it’s service a close on 13 July, 2009. Wishing that Orkut does not follow it’s lead because after all I have an account at Orkut

Best of luck, Orkut (I think it needs a lot of those)!