I thought we settled that with me promising to switch to Netscape.

I knew you'd hold it over my head...

My kingdom for some mod points. +1 funny, my friend.

Even older laptops are fine. I've got a 4 year old Dell Inspiron 9600 that has Ubuntu 10.04 installed and it works great. The only issues I have with it are persistent with any OS and caused by the laptop itself.

Also keep in mind that if someone has any of your information loaded into their cellphone contacts, if they were to sync their contacts to Facebook, then Zuckerberg definitely has your information.

Absolutely unprecedented. I'm shocked. Did ANYONE see this coming?

I've always thought that fragmentation of their products (possibly due to the large number of products having been purchased from their creators) is part of what has halted or slowed their popularity. While it's still too early to tell if Google+ is going to be the force they hope it'll be, I can only imagine that bringing all of their socially geared products under one roof will simply add to the surge of people joining up.

Think about all of the people who don't know about Picasa or blogger, now they see this new shiny Google+ with these things integrated? If it were me, I'd probably just be impressed with how well rounded the network is so early (assuming they do it in a while that's impressive). Google has a great brand to geeks and non-geeks alike and I, for one, hope they do well with this.

Oh, but had you not posted, I would have had nothing to reply to, giving you nothing to be too slow to mod funny anyways.

So now that your mind is blown, what are you doing for dinner?

There was a second Matrix movie?! Why didn't I know about this?!?

When's the 3rd due out?

I think the main issue with Facebook, or at least mine personally, is that when I started using Facebook a few years ago, I made myself completely private. I was invisible in searches, friend lists, everything. Unless I added you as a friend, you had no idea that I had a Facebook profile. The only reason I really had a Facebook profile was to keep in touch with close friends who've moved cross country or overseas, so this worked well for me.

Then what happened? Random privacy "update" from Facebook! Now all of my privacy settings are reset to default, and because I don't use the service as often as most, it goes unnoticed for a few days. Then the friend invites start rolling in. Then harassing messages from people I didn't want contact from (another reason I was private). So I set it all back to normal and went about my life.

Oh, but then another privacy "update" from Facebook! This time, not only do all of my settings go back to default, but they've also removed the ability to be invisible in searches and friends lists! Excellent!

Fuck Facebook. Seriously. I get why people like it, I get why people use it, but for people who really do value their privacy (me) and want to use the service, we'll forever be screwed by their ever changing garbage "updates" and changes without prior notice.

This is the main reason I'm excited about Google+. If they can solve those issues then I'll sign up in a heartbeat, convince the people I use Facebook to communicate with to make the switch as well (or at least get a Google+ profile).

I wonder if it takes requests.

I didn't say it wasn't a wizard hat. ;)

Also, t'was a goodie. Very goodie.

Anyone else listening to Billy Joel? I am.

welcome our new social networking overlords!

Honestly though, if this thing succeeds, which is no guarantee, it'll take a while. I imagine that they'll integrate it heavily into Gmail, which will certainly help.

Personally I have absolutely no problem closing out my Facebook account in favor of Google+. I hate Facebook as much as the next guy (privacy concerns being the major sticking point). My Facebook profile has nothing really about me, aside from my name and a picture of my hat (my hat is custom made and very distinguishable).

Now if only I can get friends to use this service instead of Facebook, I'll be able to actually use social networking without cringing every time I log in.

This made me laugh, which then made me explain my laughter to co-workers. You try explaining goatse to random QA reps sitting near you.