Another face in the book

I think I understand now why kids get hooked on MySpace. As soon as they build up a decent network of friends (and I hope these are "real" friends, not some 55-year-old freaks pretending to be 12) there is a sense of addiction to find out what's happening within the circle of friends: who met who, who did what, who wrote on which wall, what music they hear or book they read (if in fact kids still read books).

I just got on Facebook, which looks like the half-adult version of MySpace. Although it also contains silly applications such as Skiers vs Snowboarders, the iLike Challenge or Punk-O-Matic, it seems the average age is slightly higher. Lots of high school students, but surprisingly many people that actually have once used floppy disks. Do you remember when you used your last 3.5" plastic shell? Somewhere in the attic I still have a box with 8" diskettes. 128K each. My toaster has more memory today. Gosh, time flies.

Anyway, Facebook is actually not half-bad. With a little searching, I found folks that I know and worked with all over the world. It's a little challenging if the person has an everyday name like Peter Jones. There are hundreds with that name and if there is no picture attached, and the network doesn't leave any clues, finding the right person is next to impossible. But working through the network of who-knows-who is pretty powerful, particularly because the so-called Facebook Newsfeed alerts you about everything going on among the people within the network. Great way of bridging the six degrees of separation. BTW, Kevin Bacon is on, but the profile says he is a Virgina Tech Alum '05. Must be that 55-year old freak mentioned above, who would like to be Kevin and attract young university students. Creep.

If you got a profile on Facebook and actually know me personally, ping me. Contact collectors don't even have to try. They should stay at LinkedIn and boast of their network containing thousands of contacts. That dont impress me much...