An About-Face

Ok, I have officially changed my position regarding Facebook.

A few months back I wrote a blog entry about how I just didn't get Facebook, and the whole site seemed to be more bizarre than anything. Well, over these past couple weeks I have found myself spending more and more time messing with that site, as though I really need yet another time wasting activity in my life.

My initial impression of Facebook was based on the fact that I was getting all sorts of whacko e-mail requests to join gangster battles, throw virtual pillows at people, or stupid things like that. I figured out how to turn those e-mails off -- woo hoo!

The cool thing about the site is that practically everyone I know has a profile there. I have found people I haven't talked to (or thought about) since grade school, and I've been able to catch up with them and find out what they've been up to these last 300 years.

There's another feature that allows people to say what they're doing at that particular moment. This is goofy, sure, but it is rather interesting to see how people use this tool. Oh, and I have also figured out how to upload pictures to the site (and change my "what I'm doing now" status) right from my cell phone, so that will give me something to do at times when I would otherwise just be steering.

Even my brother, who would have been the last person on Earth I would have suspected to find there, has dipped his toes into the Facebook pool. I half expect to find that our cat has his own profile, which would explain the times where I can't seem to find him around the house.

Mrs. Smoot has caught the Facebook Bug, too. Several nights this week she has come home with allegedly important work to do, and oddly enough she'll still be sitting there late at night with a goofy grin on her face as she reads someone's profile.

I still think some of it is bizarre. I don't get e-mail alerts for these things any longer, but I still see on my page that I have a "Kidnap" request, a "Christmas Ornament" request, and a "Snowball War" request, among others. Who knows, in a few more weeks, maybe I'll get into these weird things, too, and I'll be hosting my own Facebook Elf Bowling Events, or some such thing.