Facebook - A Revolution?

So I've been thinking recently (braces self for jokes as witty as "I know, I saw the smoke coming out of your ears" or the ever-popular "Well, there's a first time for everything"), particularly about Facebook (and online social networking in general, but Facebook is my poison of choice as it were)


For me, as someone who has friends (and indeed, a girlfriend) living in different areas of the country to myself, it is incredibly useful, providing an easy method of contacting people who I don't see often. However, it does lead to some slightly wierd occurances. One that happened to me today was as follows:


A colleague at work (who I know has read this occasionally, so hi Sarah if you're reading, and hi John if you're reading over her shoulder) was having a casual conversation with me and happened to ask if the T-Shirt I was wearing was the one that I had got Sharpie on the other day. Which confused me, as I didn't remember having a conversation with her about it. Then I realised - I'd written a facebook status about it!

So it's good, because people can be kept up to speed with other peoples lives (and if you're a stalker, it's brilliant! Apparently... I wouldn't know... honest... I'm no stalker .. (runs off to hide restraining order within multiple sets of brackets (is it here? (Or here? (Too late, you'll never find it) No it wasn't ) Nope) - That confused you didn't it? Back to the rambling) but there's a flip side to this. For one thing, it means that all of those people on your friends list can see what you are in the mood to write, so I do occasionally find I have to self-censor, so that I don't have to deal with peoples objections to my opinions of things... Also, as I have mentioned before, facebook can lead to people getting the wrong idea about your life...However, none of this is as bad as that most awkward of things, the Facebook meeting...

I have (as I am sure many others of you who have facebook) a lot of friends who are people I have known and who I have, for one reason or another, lost touch with. Not that I dislike them, just that I last saw them ten years ago and our lives have taken us in completely different ways... So last summer (08, not the one just gone) I bumped into one of these people in a queue in a shop. Now, if I hadn't seen a picture of her on her facebook profile, I would never have recognised her, but recognise her I did, and she recognised me. So we opened with conversation "Oh hi, haven't seen you in ages! How are you?" ....

Approximately 90 seconds in, I realised our mistake. We had nothing to talk about (we never really had much in common 10 years ago!) and we were stuck in a queue which seemed to be never-ending and moving at a pace that would not trouble an arthritic snail who was getting on a bit and hadn't been out for a week... So we attempted to have casual conversation.. and it was horrendous. I'm not good with conversation at the best of times.. let alone casual conversation in a queue!

The flipside of all of this, of course, is those people who DON'T have facebook, who end up feeling left out of conversations, events and general tomfoolery because everyone contacts each other through the magical interweb nowadays...

So I don't particularly think that Facebook and social networking in general is a revolution, it's simply a different way of communicating, and does some things better (geographical location for example is unimportant, you can let everyone know what's going on at once) and does some things worse (still ends up forming cliques and groups (especially the have-Facebookers and have-not-Facebookers), and the fact that you can let everyone know what's going on at once!)

What do you lot think? Essential website? Or superfluous rubbish? Draw your own conclusion. I know for me, that I would have trouble doing without it... but is that just me?

(And we'll ignore for a moment the fact that for the last couple of weeks, it's been acting up incredibly badly, crashing, showing multiple chat windows etc..)