I Took the Facebook Plunge

So I took the plunge a few weeks ago and joined facebook. Well, let me correct that. I actually started to join a few months ago. I heard my two daughters, Rachel and Kelly, talking about "updating their pages", and I thought I would just go on and take a look. I started it late at night, and about halfway through the process, I got bored and quit. I guess I actually completed the process, because for the next few days, I got random e-mails asking me if I wanted to confirm some people as "friends". Since I had no idea what that meant, I just ignored the whole thing.

Fast forward a few months, and I am talking with some writers who are describing their facebook pages and discussing how they are terrific networking opportunities to get to know some publishers and agents.

Now this spurred my interest, so I logged on again, and of course, my "secret password" was way too secret, so I had to go through that annoying process of setting a new password. After I completed this part, I began to panic a little bit. I have a tendancy towards extreme privacy, and somehow, this felt a little scary and vulnerable. But after a few deep breaths, I opened the page and filled out a little information (name, sex and marital status). Then I quickly closed the page and logged off. I needed to make sure that nothing bad would happen. What that was, I had absolutely no idea. I waited a few hours and logged back on...nothing. Just that blue face staring at me. I felt a little more calm now, so I got a bit brave and pressed the "find friends" button. It prompted me to open my address book and select all, and whoever was on facebook would be added as friends. This didn't soound too scary. I mean, I didn't review my address book or anything, but I knew I didn't have any mass murderers in there, so I hesitated, took a deep breath, and hit "send". Of course I had to log off at this point, as I again begin to feel a little exposed.
The next morning, I got on again, and lo and behold, I had some "friends" . There were some surprises, some friends and family who I did not know were "closet" facebookers. Then there were some acquaintences who I now know more about than I wanted to. (I'm actually just kidding, but it's amazing the things some people are comfortable "sharing".)
I enjoyed being a voyeur for a few days, just looking on everyone's page and trying to figure out how to participate. I finally broke down and told my daughters that I was on. For some reason they found this extremely funny. Rachel told me to not to delve "too deeply" into their sites for fear I might be offended. When I asked her if that meant she posted nude pictures or something, she dropped the phone laughing.
The next day Rachel sent me a message: "Mom, good grief...loose the blue face. Post a picture. Write something on your wall." I had no choice, I had to do it. It was like a dare and I didn't want to fail. So I downloaded a picture and wrote a note. And guess what? It wasn't bad. It was actually kind of liberating. In the following few days, I created an album and posted a link to my blog. Now it started to feel "useful" and "productive" which are two of my favorite things.

I read an article yesterday about a man who let his wife know that he was divorcing her on his facebook page before he told her in person. I suppose this is facebook at its worst. But I have to admit, besides that fact that I have made some good contacts, it's been kind of fun.
Maybe next will be Twitter...