Whether you like it or not, Facebook is a revolution
I admit it. I’m not the most sociable of people. Ask any of my three imaginary friends.
Until yesterday, I had scoffed at the people who rattle on about Facebook, considering them to be the sort of folk for whom reality was a difficult concept.
Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and any of the umpteen social networking sites on the internet held no attraction.
I know people who have 14,000 so-called friends on these sites. Surely that devalues the very concept of friendship?
I tend to subscribe to the dictum that a friend in need is a friend in debt.
How many of these 14,000 people would stand by you in times of crisis? How many would share their last Gregg’s Steak Bake?
I signed up to Friends Reunited seven years ago, looking for one person, found them, and then quickly signed off again.
Who wants to hear from the guy who made your life hell when you were 10? Actually, one or two of the people who I hated at school had achieved very little in life, I found out.
One was still living in Wath and still drinking in the Miners’ Arms; another had lost his ears in an acid attack by a cuckolded husband. Yay!
This week I signed up to Facebook and I’ll explain why.
I spent the weekend at Glastonbury and took loads of photos, as did the group I was there with.
At the end of the weekend we vowed to swap snaps and I offered to email them around.
“Just post them on Facebook, grandad,” I was advised.
So I created an account and now I have a new obsession.
Facebook is like a big book with everybody you know in it. Over a couple of years it seems to have reached critical mass with millions of members.
It’s easy to use and finding people you know is a cinch. Just type in their names and it will present you with a list of people who answer to that name.
I quickly found the people I’d spent the weekend with and, through their pages, further mutual friends.
Uploading the pictures was a doddle and you can tag them with the names of other Facebook users who automatically receive an email telling them their photo is online.
They can comment on the pictures, send you messages and all sorts of multimedia gifts.
The interface is intuitive and elegant. It’s a powerful tool but easy enough for anyone to use.
Once you’re on there, having filled out your profile and posted a picture of yourself, all sorts of magical things start to happen.
I plucked a few names from my days in London, living the life of a new age hippy.
These were people who touched my life profoundly for a few years and then disappeared when I moved to Birmingham.
Lo, they’re all there and now they’re my friends again. Through them I found others, and so on.
Unlike MySpace, you don’t set out to befriend total strangers, although I do admit I have sent friend requests to everybody who shares my name.
As far as I can tell, Facebook excels at hooking you up with people you already know.
I have also found several cousins who I usually only meet at funerals. They all seem like a splendid bunch too.
There’s talk of starting a Cowen Family Facebook group now, although I’ve always shied away from joining anything that would have me as a member, and that includes families.
It seems to me that technology is now evolving at such a rapid rate that it’s really hard to keep up.
I envy The Birmingham Post online team who spend their day immersed in this rapidly expanding network.
It’s really the future.
As more of us migrate to an online existence, the richer our lives will be.
Facebook already knows where I went to school, where I work, what my interests are, what I listen to, where I get my news.
Pretty soon, some harvester of all these nuances will know us well enough to start second-guessing us, leading the way to personalised news, entertainment and friendship delivery.
Today, I now have 18 friends and counting. You can all find me easily on Facebook.
Who knows where it will end?
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