Yes, I am finally on it, after months of coy declining of invitations from cyber-resident-happy-friends. It was more out of curiosity than anything. After reading the Wikipedia entry, and being pretty fascinated with discussion on Facebook as a social phenomenon, the intriguing legal suits surrounding intellectual property rights, and the bidding war between giant private equity funds for a stake in Facebook, I was curious enough to finally give in to a friend's cajoling and joined it just before the weekend.
I was promptly Thrown Sheep and all manner of cattle offal, and have been engaged in Food Fights ever since, but I do want to report that it is as much the amazing phenomenon that people have been talking about.
I must say the idea of self-added applications (AIP) is a very clever one - it was pretty cool seeing the bursts of creativity coming from all corners of the cyberworld. And I think it is the best kind of creativity there is - i.e. garnered from the general pool of human knowledge/resource (just like the cool Photosyth technology I blogged about a few weeks ago) and engineered with the clear purpose of human application.
And of course, the biggest boon is that I am connected to some very good friends in another way now (even though not all my social circles are represented on my Facebook - for example, I noted with amusement after a quick search that NONE of my classmates from my junior college humanities class were on it - computer dinosaurs as most of us tended to be. Hello there JC friends, it is not as scary as it seems, really! :)) .
It has been especially good to hook up with those many friends who live in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world that I don't often get to see. It all suddenly dawned on me why I have felt for a long time it is quite challenging to keep up with these overseas friendships. Even though there is email and instant messaging, it is not always possible to keep up constant interaction with these friends because of different timezones and the crazy work schedules that people have.
From that, I am now beginning to recognize that the essence of most friendships is made up of just as much "Talk" as "Play". And of course, Facebook is about "Reclaiming Play". The friendly banter and silly games takes place in parallel with the more serious private one-to-one conversations. But this is exactly as happens in real life! I was quickly reminded of all the crazy raucous goofing around that used to take place within my HK circle, the stuff that formed the bases for many deep life-long friendships from there....
If you came to know this blog through me, you are probably already a Friend or someone that would be able to find me on Facebook through my real name. Be warned though, my favorite activities are Headbutting and drawing Graffiti on people's Walls. :)
