Hello Facebook!

Facebook, "a social utility that connects you with the people around you", is a handy-dandy, no-nonsense tool for keeping up with friends, (and making new ones? The jury is still out on that one). Before Facebook, there was MySpace. Not that MySpace isn't around anymore, it was just born before Facebook. I had a peak at MySpace and didn't like the busy, hyperactive "look". Ivor Tossell, Globe and Mail writer, finds "MySpace [to be] a post-aesthetic wasteland of blinking, honking, neon things; photos that [cascade] down the page, animated baubles and all manner of widgets." He's got a point. Most profiles on MySpace are just too darn hard to look at. Every attempt at creativity in MySpace lends itself to hideous results. Facebook offers the same services as MySpace, but without the messiness, so I think I'll stick with a social utility that is organized, uniform and aesthetically pleasing. The only drawback with Facebook: it would not allow me to enter my surname (but my brother found a way around it, so I must ask him how he did that).

I found some famous Canadians on MySpace, just by accident, I might add (I didn't go looking for them, honestly.) George Stroumboulopoulos and Sook-Yin Lee could be my MySpace friends, with just a few clicks (but it appears George has 3 MySpace profiles... hmm, which one is the "real" George? uh-oh, the first one doesn't display graphics in my browser. wow, Sook-Yin Lee has 3013 friends... how long will it take me to be that popular?) Well, as tempting as it may seem, I think I'll stick to friend-ing folks who show up in my Facebook networks and groups. (Not that I don't want to be friends with George or Sook-Yin: they are very cool and it would be neat to run into them in the street, or maybe just watch them on t.v. ...or listen to them on the radio... gosh, I guess I already do that from time to time, so that makes me cool too).

Tam