Discovering FaceBook

There are lots of social networking sites out there, like MySpace and FaceBook. My view of them to date was that they were for kids and singles, and although I thought them a clever use of the Internet (and a potential problem regarding privacy issues and child predators), I did not get involved with them. However, I recently read a post by Robert Scoble in his blog that FaceBook may not be just for the younger set. Despite the fact that statistics posted by a NY venture capitalist show that FaceBook is mainly for the 15 to 25 set and the 50,000 or so in the “TechCrunch” crowd, he posited that that is going to change, since the “older set” are still into tech and do participate in social networking sites. He himself has lots of peers as “friends” in this network, and has seen a downward trend in blog traffic that might be based on a drift to social networks. Even the VC in his post suggested that this trend might change, as the 15 to 25 set get older and keep participating in FaceBook.

As a result, I decided to see for myself. I was quite surprised to see that, although there weren’t scads of them, there were some people on the network that I went to school with in the past. I even made my first “friend” within 24 hours of setting up my account. Although I would not recommend sharing much personal data on the system, there do appear to be some security features in place to protect your privacy. In addition, you cannot see my FaceBook entry unless you have an account yourself and have some connection with me, such as the same school or job, or if I am in your address book and the e-mail address links to me. It will be interesting to see where this goes as I continue to use it. If anything interesting happens, I will let you know.