Faith + Reason = Truth

Finally, a firsthand demo of the phenomenon that is Facebook. Thanks to my college niece who was visiting the house last night, I was the lucky recipient of a guided tour by a crusty veteran. For background, she uses MySpace as well as Facebook, but as she explained, "I used MySpace all the time and still do some, but once I got to college, EVERYONE was on Facebook, so that's what I spend most of my time on now."

Things that immediately struck me:

1 - pictures, and lots of them; the "walls" are just plastered with photos of the various people that are associated with you; I almost had a "peeping Tom" feeling as I glanced at all of these college-aged kids in various states of revelry with each other, knowing none of them, wondering what they would think about people they've never met seeing them like this. I don't see just plain old words having much of a fighting chance against all of that visual competition.

2 - the creativity of these kids is stunning. My niece, being 19 years old, obviously has her acquaintances mostly in that age range. She's in several groups, or "networks," which can be based on high schools, colleges, junior highs, even elementary schools, as well as places of employment or other commonalities, not to mention the multitude of special interest groups ("Causes" is, I believe, the terminology for these), sports teams, etc. One of the groups was called something like "I Will Go Slightly Out Of My Way to Step on That Crunchy Looking Leaf." And that's exactly what that group, or cause, or wall, or whatever it is, is about.  There are literally pictures of people  holding their foot above a crunchy looking leaf, just off the sidewalk for example, posing, looking back at the camera for the picture, as they go slightly out of their way to step on a crunchy looking leaf. But that's not the shocker, this is: that group has over 200,000 members. As for a "Cause" such as "Stop the Seal Hunt", there are open and easily visible stats, including how many members it has and how much money those members have contributed. Some have received hundreds of $, some thousands, and I'm not sure how high it goes - however, it's readily apparent that these are, after all, starving college students, and though their passions run wide and deep, they don't have the cash to back them up in the form of online donations!

Now that I've seen it firsthand, I kind of get it even less than I did before. Yet I can clearly and instantly see the addictiveness, the dependence, the kinship, the energy, the creativity, the openness that these millions of people seem to possess. It is not like anything I've come across or even imagined, and contrary to my previously-held opinions about it, it isn't going away and it isn't going to be easily duplicated or replaced. This company's founder has found and seized the holy grail of demographics, the college kid and everyone they've ever bumped into in any social setting in their entire lives; he knows it, and he won't be letting go of it anytime in the near future.