zimbabwe

* The header design is lifted from Facebook, except for the login, which was made artificially bigger and uglier.

* They use an externally hosted video to make me want to join. Hell, they use a video to make me want to join period.

* Using an image just so you can use an ugly serifed font?

* I don't know what bonus points are and I don't care, and I don't care that you're giving me a special offer. Giving me "points" suggests that I'll have to pay money.

* They're bribing me with gizmos to make me active? Desperate.

* Lots of bullshit without telling me why I care.

When something comes out that's really a Facebook killer, versus a Loopt or a Vyoom, you will know it's coming out because it's incredibly simple, doesn't bullshit on its front page, and it explains itself simply and powerfully. Compare this front page to Twitter's front page, which isn't as supersimple as Facebook's but which is fairly bullshit-free. Once you start fucking up your homepage, it's an indicator that you're not good enough to let your product speak for itself.

I think that in particular is what I'd want to emulate: He was weird because he did a lot of stuff that he liked that nobody else really understood. I don't know if it was courage on his part or if he just didn't care, but I hope that I'm one day able to do the same.

The man took something that was considered to be geeky and odd - dancing - practiced it feverishly and from a young age, and almost singlehandedly made his own brand of dance mainstream, sexy, and cool. To the end he worked hard at trying to keep himself at the peak of his abilities.

If he's a hacker, he was the ultimate hacker - despite being a bizarro geek in nearly every way up to and including the gradual draining of his skin pigmentation, he did what he loved, became famous for it, was the best at his line of work, and was a sex icon for two decades. If that's not hacking I don't know what is.

To his death, he still had those moves. Just because he became the center of a freakish media circus doesn't mean he'd lost all talent. In fact, he's one of the few celebrities who never seemed to like his celebrity. He didn't get coked up or destroy things. The controversies surrounding him are all ones he wished would go away. He remained famous first and foremost for his incredible talent.

We have identified this bug and closed the loophole. We don’t have any evidence to suggest that it was ever exploited for malicious purposes.

Yeah, it's not like Facebook already solved the problem. It's fun thinking of them as utter incompetents who don't spend years executing very subtle redesigns without alienating their hundred million users, because they haven't been radically changing the site since it first launched.

Just for fun, last week I had some friends over and we streamed that iPhone keynote where Steve Jobs first announces what the iPhone is capable of. The iPod controls, the iTunes syncing with Address Book support, the full web browsing of Safari, the multitouch, the photo support, the visual voicemail. Merging calls with a touch. It was pretty engrossing, even for friends who weren't huge techies, to see that keynote and remember that back then the Razr was considered a cutting-edge phone.

The original iPhone wasn't perfect, but it was leagues beyond anything else both in design concept and in actual performance. There are still no phones that come close to the iPod part of the software, and perhaps one or two phones can match any other part of the iPhone's functionality. It evolved, and it had to evolve because it was flawed, but that original design was mindblowing when I was a kid (a lot of people cut class to go to the library and look at the initial reports) and it still has that effect if you look at the original unveiling. The new stuff makes the original attempt look amateur, but the original attempt was pretty bitching as well.

The goal of Facebook is to let people make a profile of themselves online and keep in touch with friends. That's a widespread, two-pronged goal. Way back before the last two redesigns, Facebook focused a lot on the profile part of the equation. That's when they had the two-column approach with no theming whatsoever. Then they added apps and profiles became overspammed, and they made the slow switch over to the feed system. In the last few months, they've been adding public profile features, without sacrificing their original intent whatsoever. That's impressive. It means that my family can maintain its closed Facebook connections, but my public-minded friends can go public and not have to worry about managing other web sites. Furthermore, the options are granular, meaning you can make parts of you public and keep other parts private. I refuse to friend family members, but I can give them public photo links so they can still be involved in my goings-on. It's a terrific solution.

I have to wonder if all of the "Facebook=Twitter" critics use Facebook at all, because it's the most deluded thing I've heard. People are fucking mental if they think Facebook's trying to supplant Twitter. It's taking some pages out of their book, absolutely, but if you can mimic a site without removing any functionality then you're doing something good. Now, my Facebook feed isn't a bunch of 140-character updates. People post links and photos and videos and they all show up. Any post can spark a conversation. Whereas on Twitter I post something into a void, on Facebook friends comment on my status updates. Conversations begin. Furthermore, because Facebook treats a user's wall like a continuous stream, if I post something to a friend's wall, all our friends see it. I've actually had friends meet up and become friends through talking on a post on my wall, which is one of those things where you can't help but think "Wow, this is really cool".

Facebook won't beat Twitter where Twitter reigns supreme. But they'll add Twitter-like features and make their users happier, and less likely to switch over to using other services.

I don't see Facebook's going public as a bad thing, as long as it's not a mandatory change. Their feed system certainly works publicly: It's much more involved than Twitter, and it supports a lot of things people would use other sites for. I use it instead of Flickr for public photos. I'm thinking of switching my Vimeo videos over so I can close my Vimeo account and run most of my online activities from one place. I like writing private friend-based notes, but if I didn't then Facebook notes would make for an attractively minimal solution.

Facebook's been gradually simplifying itself. I don't see how it's dumbing down when they've been adding features rather than taking them away. The new live feed is incredible, for instance.