Mafia Wars is a pretty popular game on Facebook, in case you haven't come across it before. It doesn't really matter if you've heard of the game or not, honestly. And I don't think anyone on the internet needs to be told about Facebook at this point. I took up a Mafia Wars habit a while ago and usually play for a couple minutes whenever I log in or post a status. It is kind of funny because it does nothing to make my life better. I don't even like the game, it is just a mindless activity I can engage in while another few minutes of the day goes by. Yet still I continue to play.

At first I ignored all the games when they originally started popping up on Facebook. I have a few video games I love for the playstation but honestly I couldn't see how any game that could be played on Facebook would be fun or decent. I usually hate casual games and am not even the type of person who plays flash games online or anything like that. Still, every day my Facebook wall would get flooded with game updates my friends were playing, invitations to play with them, facebook likes and everything else. Eventually I gave in and tried Mafia Wars for a while.

There probably isn't a direction manual anywhere for this game because if you need one you are in a coma. Seriously, this game is incredibly basic. That's partially why it becomes habitual so instantaneously. After you spend a week or so playing the game, checking it out so to speak, you are already at the point where you start playing without thinking about it. It really is that mindless. I would open the game and start to click around and be done without ever making a concious decision to do it. I say "click around," because that's really all the game consists of. It is time based, so you earn a certain number of points every hour or so depending on what your character owns in the game as far as businesses, assets and other income goes. You can then spend those points to get gear to complete missions or buy more assets. It is reminiscent of the Sims except without any cool animations and with a Godfather theme. Then I'll post a Mafia Wars related Facebook status in the hopes that someone will help me in the game.

Having been a victim of one of these terrible games, I feel it is my civic duty to advise everyone out there to stay away. They can be an even big distraction and time waster than Facebook itself and that is saying something. When I start playing and then realize, twenty minutes later, what I am doing, I feel disgusted with myself. I mean, it honestly makes me hate my own person. Now, when I feel like I want to play Mafia Games, I read a book or a blog for a few minutes instead. It is much better and you don't have to feel guilty about wasting time on such a silly game.

If you’re online reading this I am sure you have heard of Facebook and chances are you have an account there, too. Facebook is one of the biggest websites online and one of the primary destinations for a large portion of internet traffic as a whole. Most of us use it at least once in a while whether we love it, hate it, or just don’t care.

It is funny how people have evolved in their usage of Facebook since it first came around. People make friends and romantic partners through Facebook by looking at local people they’ve never met and checking out there pictures, facebook status for the day and “poking” or sending messages. It can be a great way to meet people socially and professionally.

Although Facebook has grown to be more than just a social network platform (people play casual games, buy and sell items in the marketplace, and more) most users would agree that the core of Facebook is all about the status updates. You build a friend base and then tell them what you want to share. It can be so simple but many of us have ways to get pretty creative with our updates. Some people put a lot of effort into being able to post a funny facebook status or some weird obscure fact that is unusual.

Advertising on Facebook has gotten massive. Although the ads are very tame and neat compared to many other web company's sites, they are always there and with the massive, world wide user base there is a lot of money to be made. Almost every major company or corporation has an official facebook page, and it is such a part of daily life that many companies even promote their facebook pages on TV commercials and through advertising on other places around the web. The profile data advertisers gain access to is valuable information for them. It has often been called a marketers dream because consumers on facebook display their age, gender, hobbies, workplace, movies and music they like, and much more.

If you are new to facebook then you will likely get lost in it for hours as so many other people have with the games and social interaction available there. However, remember to be careful as well because it can be dangerous to make too much information public. Facebook has caught some criticism for its privacy settings, which sometimes have been made too confusing and cryptic for people to navigate.

Facebook has gotten a lot of criticism over the last couple years for sporadic and confusing updates made to its privacy settings area. They received even more attention when they updated theirs terms and conditions to include a passage claiming legal ownership of all the photos, Facebook status updates and other content user generated content. Lately the controversy has calmed somewhat because Facebook fixed some of these matters, but privacy still continues to be an issue for Facebook users.

The essential purpose of Facebook demands some level of sacrafice of the user's personal privacy, one that is often made without second thought. The whole point is social interaction which naturally means the website is designed in such a way as to be public. It is called a social network because people and groups are all interconnected. A diagram would look something like millions of spider webs all smashed together, where each web is one person and their friends list.

The point here is that, basically, if you are going to use the service at all you are giving up some degree of privacy. Unfortunately, we have to be careful about this because there are dangerous people in the world and some of them have computers. Since Facebook has yet to implement a feature to warn you about creepy, undesirable users, you will have to figure it out yourself. Obviously the only thing to do is block the majority of people, because any one of them may be a sociopath. You can really only trust people you have already met, and yet here you are signing up for a service which in all rights should help you meet new people and network with other like minded individuals. Therein lies the problem with privacy on facebook.

It is quite difficult, and in some sense a bit pointless in the first place, to even limit your interactions to exclude anyone you are not friends with. If settings aren't carefully configured, likes to update your friends pages when they comment on your status, usually including your own status at the top. That means all their friends can see the update too. Additionally, many people do not properly protect their pictures and you can literally browse through someone's live via their profile. If you don't believe it, go facebook surfing. Click a friend's profile, surf to one of their friends who you don't know, and keep going like that as deep as you can. You could surf pages of people all over the world in minutes by doing this. It is really amazing how comprehensive and international the Facebook userbase has grown to be. You may have to hit the back button here and there as some people do protect their settings, but it is amazing how many don't.

The best way to maintain your sense of privacy on Facebook, and the rest of the internet, is to simply not post anything that you don't want the world to see. Assume that nothing on the web is truly private, and 99% of the time you will be correct. The best way to keep strangers and weirdo's from getting your information is to just not put any of it out there in the first place.