Facebook has been a true phenomenon - no doubt. When you look at the Facebook stats page it puts into context how much people want to share, how people are seeing the web as part of their real world community.

Facebook has in my mind had one great success, namely because of its ease of use, it has brought social networking to a greater section of the population. Social networking is not just for the students as this graph from Hitwise shows

It shows that the use is spread across the generations with the main block being between 25-44 years of age.  I think the startling figure is that there are almost as many 45-54 year olds as 18-24, I think that would surprise some people. However I know from watching my mother who is coming up 79 that she has gone through the I am afraid of the web, and of course ‘the web is a waste of time’ charge and is now using the web on a daily basis. When she returned from a cruise she used social networking as the way to keep in touch with new friends!

I still think there could be great growth in the older age bracket as friendship and staying in touch is part of their daily lives.

Facebook continues to grow and has now overtaken MySpace as the number 1 social networking site for US users. Now 70 million users visit both Myspace and Facebook on a monthly basis. For such a large site then a 97% growth rate is still impressive for Facebook.

The table also shows the annual growth of Twitter which continues to be impressive

Facebook launched their vanity URL’s at the end of last week and it is reported that

200,000 names were ‘grabbed’ in the first 3 minutes

500,000 names were ‘grabbed’ in the first 15 minutes

1,000,000 names were ‘grabbed’ in the first hour!

3,000,000 names were ‘grabbed’ in the first 12 hours

Wow, the first thing that springs to mind is congratulations to Facebook in coping with that amount of traffic!

The second is as great as the vanity url’s are, I am not sure how useful it will be to me in my everyday life. I have rarely wanted to give verbally the address, only using it as a link from another website. But maybe that is because my name is relatively unusual and I am easy to find on Facebook! However it will help in terms of Google search which may well be as big a benefit to Facebook as to me.

The vanity URL shows how Facebook is attempting to make Facebook your home page, your way into the web. I must say that at the moment that is not working for me and I am more interested in seeing how Google Wave maybe provides the solution that I am looking for…what do you think?

An annoying part of using Facebook has been the address of your Facebook page - but don’t worry from tonight (PST) Facebook is offering vanity URL’s

“starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/.”

Now I can imagine there will be quite a landrush for certain names, so if you want yours…then you will need to be quick!

Nielsen produced a report on social networking which has some interesting facts on Facebook, but also shows that we should nto underestimate MySpace

• In the U.S.  total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 %YOY
• In minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site when ranked by total minutes for the month.
• 
• With 120.8 million video streams, Myspace.com was the No. 1 social networking destination when ranked by streams and total minutes spent viewing video. Myspace visitors spent 384 million minutes viewing video on the site, with an average of 38.8 minutes per viewer. In comparison, Facebook visitors spent only 113.5 million minutes viewing video in April, with an average of 11.2 minutes per video viewer.
• In April 2009, visitors aged 25 to 34 and 35 to 49 were the highest indexing age groups on Facebook, being 27 percent and 23 percent more likely to visit the site than the average user, respectively.
• The highest indexing demographics on Myspace.com was people aged 18 to 24 and 12 to 17.

Facebook is clearly the social networking site for adults, however it is important to see that MySpace still has incredible strength especially for the younger generations.

Facebook was one of my favourite social media tools but over the last six months I have used it less and less - and turned more towards Twitter. Today I suddenly started to get messages from friends saying that had received a dodgy email from me. I can tell you - I felt sick to the stomach as I realised that my account had become compromised. So what did I do?

1) I ran full scans on my computer looking for any malware etc

2) Changed my facebook password

3) Posted an apology to my friends.

I have no idea what had caused it, as I had not downloaded any applications or even checked messages that recently. It does show though the security risks of online activity. But then offline activity has its risks as well doesn’t it?

What is key are strong passwords, interestingly Facebook was probably my weakest password - or at least shortest. Now I am going through and strengthening them all….

Over at O’Reilly Radar there are some interesting trends for Facebook. The full presentation of Facebook trends is here, but here some interesting facts that I have pulled out.

• 193+ million users broken down 51% Female and 45% Male
• Largest age group of active users in the USA - 18-25
• Largest growing category in the USA  - 55-59 ( with 60-65 not far behind)
• Top countries in Asia for Facebook usage - Indonesia and Hong Kong.
• Only Africa books the trend with more male than female users.
• North America and Europe account for over 70% of Facebook usage

Over the last 6 months I have found that my facebook usage has dropped and my twitter usage increased, but it is important to remember that people who are new to the social networking or social media tools often feel comfortable with Facebook. It is easy to use, easy to understand and you can immediately see the advantage.

All of the changes Facebook has made recently haven’t been enough for me to want to close my account out, but this new one might just be the final straw.

Face.com is launching Photo Finder in Facebook, which will find and tag pictures of you and your friends with face recognition.

Photo Finder (Face.com)

We’re about helping people find photos, and as a first service we’re releasing a Facebook app called Photo Finder, which scans public photos in your social network and suggests tags for untagged faces. It’s a great way to find photos of yourself (or your friends) that you never knew existed, and stay up to date with your friends latest pics. [source ]

There are, of course, some privacy concerns around this application, and while they’ve been addressed by Face.com, I’m personally still not completely at ease.

The images themselves are not tagged in Facebook, they’re tagged only in the Photo Finder application. This means that unless others have the application installed, they can’t see the tags. That seems all well and good, but I can’t imagine people not wanting to see the tags and find the “lost” images of themselves, making the fact that only those with the application seeing your tags kind of moot.

I’m a bit surprised at my reaction to Photo Finder - I tend to have few concerns around privacy, and don’t publish anything on the internet that I don’t want to be found or seen. There’s just something bordering on creepy about this, but I also can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

Sarah Perez over at Read Write Web has a great overview of the service , complete with screenshots and explinations of how it all works. Go take a peek and see what you think. Am I making too much of a fuss over this?

Oh Facebook. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Recently, an eighteen-year-old young male was accused of posing as a girl on Facebook (named either Emily or Kayla) and convincing at least 31 male classmates into sending him naked photos or videos of themselves and then blackmailing some of them for sex acts.

Eighteen year old Anthony Stancl, of New Berlin WI, was charged in early February with five counts of child enticement, two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of third-degree sexual assault, possession of child pornography, repeated sexual assault of the same child, and making a bomb threat.

The incidents allegedly happened from spring 2007 through November, 2007.  Thirty-one victims were identified and more than half said the girl they thought they were talking to tried to get them to meet with a "male friend" to let him perform sex acts on him, or he on them. If the boys didn’t cooperate, they were convinced that "she" would send the videos and photos to their friends and post them on public sites on the web, according to a report by the Associated Press.

This is just one of the reasons that seventeen social networking sites in Europe, including Facebook, signed a pact on Tuesday, aimed at protecting the privacy of underage users and curtailing "cyber-bullying".

There’s been so many incidents of pure cyber-bulling - from the teen who committed suicide in the US after a woman posed as a teenage boy harassed her, which is at one end of the spectrum, to threatening text messages sent by people I’ve personally met on Twitter, but who won’t tell me who they are, and an incident of pure aggressive abuse aimed at several in the Vancouver social media scene one evening, both of which are far from anything at the level of suicide or sexual assault, but can still have an impact.

The European Commission (the 27-nation EU’s executive arm) said the agreement will cut the risks of children harassing peers online and curb "grooming" — the practice of adults befriending children online with the intention of committing sexual abuse, according to a report from Reuters.

The British Home Office took similar steps to improve online safety last April, while 49 State Attorneys General in the United Sates have signed similar separate agreements with Myspace and Facebook.

Here’s hoping that these agreements and the steps that the individual sites themselves are taking will have a positive impact on cases like the one in Wisconsin.