Facebook is well known for their hidden Easter eggs around the site. For those of you not aware of what I mean by Easter eggs, they are little things that developers leave behind in the process of building out a product. For the Facebook site there are currently two random photos that have been found. One that many people have been pinging me about for the past month is the photo of a guy who has a baby bib on which says “Little Celtics Fan”.
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Over the past few days I have been exchanging emails with Bobbi Miller-Moro, wife of independent filmmaker Luis Moro. Earlier this week Moro’s account was shut down after pushing the limits of his Facebook account through excessive friending or messaging. Bobbi claimed that it wasn’t due to spamming but instead suggested that Morro was “censored by Facebook for giving information out, or supplying information in detail about how people can help to pass the bill to allow travel between the United States and Cuba by deleting his account without warning.”
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Based on the classic Moscow Mule drink, Smirnoff has created the “All Facebook” Moscow Mule. The drink is a combination of vodka, blueberries, sugar, and ginger ale. I haven’t had a chance to try the drink but definitely let me know if you do!

Over the weekend I noticed a number of new e-cards from the hilarious site, someecards. I figured that this would be a great opportunity to post some of the entertaining e-cards that were uploaded recently to the site. Some of them are pretty entertaining.

This past weekend I was browsing through the Facebook applications directory and came across the “Send Ben & Jerry’s” application. My initial response was that this is yet another gift giving application. I then noticed that close to 4,000 people had used the application the previous day and almost 200,000 people had installed the application. This is an impressive number for a general Facebook application.

The reality is that non-generic versions of standard Facebook applications can actually succeed. Apparently popular brands can produce simple applications that grow virally. I would have thought that gift giving applications have already been dominated but it appears as though some applications are still figuring out ways to launch and succeed. What extra features does the Ben & Jerry’s application provide that traditional gift giving applications doesn’t already have?

Truthfully, not much. The one addition is the ability to unlock other gifts based on the volume of ice cream that you send to your friends. I decided not to barrage my friends with a bunch of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream goodness but it looks like a lot of other people are. If you want to send ice cream to your friends as well, check out the Send Ben & Jerry’s application.

There has been a significant amount of buzz over the past few days about the concept of a “Facebook Fast.” I have heard about people fasting from social networking for Lent and other spiritual holidays and it doesn’t seem like too bad of an idea. I obviously spend way too much time communicating on Facebook and now have an inbox that is overloaded with messages. Occasionally you can find yourself sucked into a game and suddenly waste an hour or too coming up with the most word in a game of Noggin.

As someone who’s job it is to be online practically all the time, I’m thinking that not just a Facebook fast but a computer fast would be a good idea. While social networking can help you expand your personal network, too much of it can become counter-productive. Just for fun, I’ve come up with the top 10 list of reasons you’ve had too much Facebook:

1. Adding friends has suddenly become a game for you and you are constantly competing with your friends and family members to have the most contacts on Facebook.
2. You always have an instance of Facebook running in one of your browser windows in the background. Bonus points if you have more than 5 instances because you are playing a game and browsing through your ex-girlfriend’s profile at the same time.
3. If printed on paper, your application requests could easily wrap around the earth one time.
4. Facebook messaging has become one of your primary tools for communication. If you have so many messages in your inbox that you can’t read them all then you definitely need a break.
5. You are involved in more than 5 poke wars.
6. You’ve added so many games that you don’t even know which ones are your favorites anymore.
7. You are actively engaged in 10 or more Scrabulous games.
8. Petting your friends’ (fluff)Friends has become a source of flirting for you.
9. You find out through your newsfeed that you weren’t invited to an event and decide to hold a grudge against your friends for not inviting you.
10. Your name is Bill Gates and you are forced to quit because you have way too many friend requests to handle.

Have any other Facebook addiction symptoms? Is it time for you to take a break from Facebook?

Every artist needs a medium, be it paint, music or rock, all great works need something to work with. This is no different in the digital age. The LA Times is reporting an interesting story about a Facebook application called Graffiti (I am pretty sure you have heard of it).

Graffiti recently held a online competition through Facebook that allowed artist to use its application to create works of art. Not all the art was static either. Some participants decided to use Graffiti’s ‘replay’ function that allowed them to save their work as it was being created so anyone could watch the creative process.

The competition yielded around 150 finalist with work that ranges from the truly beautiful to the amazingly thought provoking. I am simply amazed by the level of talent that this competition was able to attract. The creators of Graffiti should be proud of the repsonse they were able to generate and the artist should be equally as proud.

The competition focused on creating pieces that illustrated the importance of conservation and protecting nature. It is an interesting contrast to see something completely digital (the art) represent the protection of the purely natural.

I would love to see more artistic competitions and projects begin to emerge on Facebook. If any of you know of any other artistic competitions; be it poetry, music or whatever, let me know. This is by far my favorite entry, it practically screams digital green. What’s your favorite?

There’s a funny comic over at XKCD today:

There is a good deal of buzz on the net today about ’secret-crush’ and how it is really a viral program that installs the much loved ZANGO! Our own Jonathan Kleiman wrote about it before the rest of the web even cared. By the way , great piece Jonathan.

Does this really come as a shock to anyone out there that adware and spyware are finding their way into Facebook applications. The real shock to me is always that there isn’t more of them out there.

I am always amazed about the copious amounts of data people put about themselves on the web. I myself have more information about myeslf out there than I really care to think about.

I have always had a love hate relationship with spy and adware. I, like the rest of the world, hate it. At the same time however I always find it interesting to see how many of my fellow citizens hap-hazardly install applications and agree to pop up windows with out reading what they are agreeing to.

I just want to take another moment to thank Jonathan for breaking this story long before the rest of the web got wind of it, keep up the great work!

Searching, as I do, for a non-useless application, I was thrilled to find GoAnimate! To put it simply, the app lets you create your own animation which can be a real blast. The app has some serious programming behind it and provides a ton of fun if you have time to play around.

You get to pick from a bunch of pre-made images, settings, items, speech bubbles, music, animations and special effects, and you can customize them however you want. You then animate your frames and make some funny stuff go down. The app has a political bend, with tons of politically charged characters to choose from like “Barack O.” and “Hilary C.” but you can also upload your own images or borrow uploaded images from others in the community.

After you’re finished with your animations, you can share them with the community. Honestly, his application might be the absolute coolest thing I’ve seen on Facebook so far.

I’m not nearly creative enough… but if you make something funny let us see in a comment!

- Jonathan Kleiman