Book of faces

I first heard of Facebook aeons ago but never bothered taking a look. Then suddenly, a few weeks ago, there was huge hype about South Africans on Facebook in the press. There was mention of it on the KFM breakfast show and then Eishman, author of a blog I read regularly posted about it. I decided I should take a look.

At first I struggled to find anyone I know. The methods provided for finding friends are pretty lame. None of the schools I went to showed up in the search list. Neither did the companies I have worked for.

One of the expectations I have of this kind of site, is to be able to link up with long lost buddies whose e-mail addresses I don't have. I don't know why they don't just provide a facility to search for friends by name like other sites do. That would be the simplest and no harm could come of it as people have to confirm they are interested in linking up with you before you can interact with them.

The only way I eventually found a friend of mine was when I went to invite him to join Facebook. I happened to enter the same e-mail address he used to register on Facebook (an unlikely coincidence as he, like most of us, has several e-mail aliases) and then it told me that he was already a member.

Once I had found one friend, I was quickly able to find some others through his profile. To my surprise, it seems that half of the company I work for are Facebook addicts. I wonder why my company name search never yielded any results?

After playing with Facebook for a few weeks, I have concluded that it is a clever web site with some great ideas, but that is all there is to it. I don't think it's going to change the world and I certainly don't see what all the hype is about.

I heard from a network admin at the office that over 2GB of bandwidth went to Facebook this month. No, it wasn't me and yes, I guess it won't be long before it gets added to the blocked sites list.