Old hat

by William Jackson on 2007-03-04

My life is so immersed in technology that it is difficult to see anything as newand exciting.

My activity on Facebook has increased recently. And, I have successfullyintroduced two of my friends to Facebook. Let me tell you, they have gone crazy.

What I mean is, they took hold of this new service and ran. They jumped in withboth feet and they werenʼt holding their noses. The excitement with whichthey began using Facebook was astonishing to me.

The first case: Iʼll call her Rebecca. I was at her apartment and we werelounging, waiting for something, surfing the web, &c., when I said, “We need toget you on Facebook.” She responded with a look that probably meant,“Iʼve heard of that, but I donʼt know if it is something I wouldbe interested in.” But she was a good sport about it, and she set up an accountand started filling in her profile, and I added her as my friend.

Not ten minutes after her account was created did she receive another friendrequest, from her sister, who doesnʼt live in the city. I think this wasthe catalyst that sparked her total conversion to Facebook. Even I was impressedwith the speed with which her other friends discovered her profile.

Facebook also recently added the option to specifically view photos that containyourself and one other person. She tried to see photos of her and me, butFacebook only replied, “You and William arenʼt in any photos together.You guys should hang out more.”

“Weʼd better do what Facebook says,” was her reaction. So we did. Sincethen, we bring our cameras to everything we do together, “to document it forFacebook.”

My second convert was Rachel. I uploaded some pictures to Facebook and taggedher in one of them. Because she did not already have an account, I had theoption of giving her email address. I did, and she received a link to the photoand an invitation to create an account.

About thirty minutes after that, there she was on Facebook, with a decked-outprofile. Granted, she uses MySpace, so all this profile business is old hat.

As a result of these two experiences, I have been more active on Facebook. Ionce refused to store pictures there, but now I do. But weʼll save thatstory for next week.