Facebook. Ok - I caved in to peer pressure....

I've always dismissed Facebook as a networking site pour les enfants. That's not to say that I eschew all such sites: I'm a MySpace veteran, I use aSmallWorld regularly and, under duress, joined LinkedIn, which is wholly useless. But Facebook always seemed to be the province of teenagers and twenty-somethings, a theory borne out by the active presence on there of my 23 yr old flatmate AC. MySpace doesn't seem to be so age specific, but it attracts a very certain type of person: those of my contemporaries (that is people in the early 30s) who have something to promote: freelancers like myself, DJs, models, musicians, actors, small businesses. Very, very few of my real friends have a presence there for anything other than networking.

After initially refusing point blank to join Facebook, I did sign up to see what all the fuss was about, (excusing my actions as journalistic research), but shut down my account almost immediately. However, Facebook is not stupid: even though I terminated my account, they kept my email active so anyone using their email search engine would find me as a member. From somewhere around the beginning of June there was some kind of tipping point in Facebook membership. I started to receive five or six emails a week notifying me that I had been added as a friend. By last week, the trickle had become a flood, and many requests were friends who I hadn't even realised could turn a computer on, so I caved, created a profile and flicked a few friend requests.

In ten days I have accumulated 88 friends - all of whom I know, unlike MySpace where most of your 'friends' are bands you've never met or even heard of - but many of whom I haven't seen for five, ten , even fifteen years. It's curiously addictive as it relies less on personality and more on email, posting photographs, writing on friend's walls, and throwing sheep at each other. I like it as it is both intensely private, and very public. Profiles are private unless you are a friend, and if you don't know someone's email address it can be difficult to find them if they have a common name. The public side comes from your personal home page digest which is continually updated with your friends' actions.

As an ex-pat I love being able to see what my friends in London are up to, although ironically it makes me less eager to return to London, as I can still feel connected to my social network without actuallyhaving to be there in person. Still, I'm sure I'll be lurking around on Facebook for a few more months until the next on-line fad reaches its own tipping point....