My First 7 Days of Facebook...

First of all, I have to apologize for not posting any pictures or videos from our vacation yet.  I will be doing so shortly.  I had some very grand schemes in mind to produce an amazing video using some software that we got with Brittan's new computer, but as it turns out, there isn't nearly enough time available in the real world to do everything you want to.  I'll probably just post one of my favorite videos and then a slew of pictures and call it good for now.

Anyways, on to my real point for this post...

While Brittan and I were in Florida, we visited with one of Brittan's long-lost cousins (I probably haven't met 90% of her extended family) who lives there.  Brittan asked for contact information, and her cousin told us about facebook.

Mind you, I had heard of facebook before, and I had immediately lumped it together with all of those other social networking sites out there.  I have received invitations to join at least three or four of those social networking sites in my e-mail before, but I never found any of them to be effective enough to be worthwhile.  Specifically, I had a hard time justifying the effort it took for me to connect with people I knew, generally because the people I wanted to connect with weren't using that particular network.  In fact, it was my general dissatisfaction with my previous experiences in social networking websites that led me to start this blog.

Needless to say, I was fairly skeptical about the idea of using facebook to get in touch with people.  Less than a week after returning home, however, I gave it a try.  I don't know if I did it more because of Brittan's cousin suggesting it or if I did it more out of curiosity from all of the coverage facebook has received in the media lately.  Either way, you get the same result.  I dove into something that I never thought I would do.

I signed on for the first time on March 5 at 10:30 AM.  Brittan had created her profile the previous day, and insisted that I have my own, rather than sharing.  I was immediately impressed by how easy it was to find people I knew on this network.  This was obviously something different from my previous social networking experiences.  I was also very impressed by the varying levels of access control provided by the site.  Although the steady stream of e-mails arriving in my Hotmail inbox was somewhat irritating at first, I quickly found the controls to change that, as well.

Within a week, I have managed to find nearly 140 friends, past and present.  Best of all, it was surprisingly easy.  Even better - I get the feeling that the site has a lot more to offer that I haven't even begun to explore.

I know this has been sounding somewhat like a sales pitch, but I assure you that it isn't all good news between facebook and myself.  I am still not quite satisfied with the communication tools available.  When it comes to making general observations about life, I prefer to use our blog, simply because it seems more accessible.  Anything posted on facebook quickly becomes buried by all of the continual activity surrounding it.  The blog is more stationary, much easier to control.

Ideally, I would like to use facebook to help people visit our blog more frequently.  I have already posted links between the two, and I'm hoping that I can figure out the best way to handle my online presence.  I love the idea of being able to communicate with people that I know, love and respect, even if we are separated by thousands of miles and nearly a decade of experiences.  It has been a lot of fun so far.  And even though blogs and facebook conversations will never replace being with these people in person, I prefer having a meager online relationship to having no contact whatsoever.  I'm sure that Brittan feels the same way.

If any of you out there have any ideas, just let me know.