Twilight Zone, Serendipity and what’s that other word…

To bring the eight pound laptop or not…<sigh>…I probably will since I am hoping to hear from some agents. Anyway…

On Facebook, I just found two more people from high school. And they remember me. I always figure people won’t remember me or that they won’t want to get in touch. Not that I was awful or anything…just a minor complex, I suppose. I did find another cousin on there today too. It’s been a big day on Facebook. I’ve taken all my photos and personal info off (or at least the stuff I actually put on there). I think it makes it hard for people to know if they have the real ‘me’ though.

I wonder how big Facebook is growing. I mean, per day. Those would be interesting figures. I mean, I haven’t been on there for that long and people I looked up a few weeks ago are now on. I have a friend who is being pressured to join up and another who actually had some friends create a fan club for him where his friends post pictures and stories about him, trying to get him to sign up. I assume someone must be showing him the club. So far, he is holding out. I guess he just isn’t that cool. Or our peer pressure just isn’t measuring up.

Cool, cool, cool. My hubby just came home from a class and his prof showed him graphs on Facebook’s growth. Apparently there are 8.9 or 89 million (he can’t recall which) people blogging. That is 18 million more than a couple of months ago. Anyway, that is a bit freaky, since I was blogging about Facebook and its growth and he comes home and talks about that first thing. [Insert twilight zone music here.]

More on Facebook

So, pretty much everyone is on Facebook. Apparently even Jack Layton is on Facebook. (NDP leader up here in Canada.)

Interesting tidbit though. I was listening to DNTO (Definitely Not the Opera) on CBC this morning and they were yakking about Facebook. Interesting thing is that Facebook (aka Crackbook and Fbook) holds the status of being the worst for its privacy policy on the worldwide web. Not exactly something that you strive to achieve. How exactly they came up with that ‘fact’ I am unsure.

If you do a search on the Internet, you find lots of rants and accusations against Facebook. And that makes me wonder, is it simply because Facebook has gotten incredibly popular and is growing exponentially every day? Or is it for real? When I signed up, I was very hesitant. There are very few ads on the site and there are lots of places to put in piles of personal information. Some of it is theoretically only accessible to your ‘friends’, but still. People can print your photos that you put up there (again only your ‘friends’). But, still. There is a part of me that doesn’t trust the whole thing. How are they making their money? Everything is for sale on the Internet these days and nothing is truly for free.

And Facebook prompts you all the time to scan through your email for friends. Basically, you let Facebook into your email account–you give them the password (for a one-time shot)–and they index your address book and pester all your contacts to join Facebook.

So what is the truth about Facebook? Maybe I’ll go see if Jack will be my friend. Maybe he has some answers.
Facebook Update:

This is weird. I went looking for Jack Layton on Facebook and who the heck knows? There are a bunch of global groups that you can pop into that are about Jack Layton, but I don’t know if any of them are really Jack’s. Do you know what I mean? Like is he on there himself? Or is he just pretending to be hip and cool? I looked on his website and the youth area doesn’t scream out, ‘hey I’m on Facebook, look me up’. So what is the deal? I don’t know. I thought it would be cool to be ‘friends’ with Jack Layton. I thought maybe he’d do a little blog thing on his wall and so I could get to know a bit more about him and his political platform. So, I guess I am a little disappointed. Maybe I missed something. I’m still new to this Facebook thing and all its little nuances.