My New Commitment

It's been several years since I signed up with Facebook. Back then, you needed an email address ending in "edu." My job at Michigan qualified me even though I didn't have anyone to talk to. But Facebook opened up to the world at large, which was a spectacularly popular idea.

Now, after several years of trying to keep up with friends through blogs and MySpace and LiveJournal and classmates.com and email, I have a critical mass of friends to connect with on Facebook. I suppose it helps that I'm using my real name (so people can find me) and my main email address (so people can contact me.) My desire for web anonymity crippled my MySpace experience; I see that now. But I also prefer the neat and clean appearance of Facebook. MySpace has democratized crappy web design -- ugly webpages for everybody! No disrespect to my MySpace friends, but there are a lot of pages out there that deserve a Surgeon General warning.

So far, so good. I'm hoping that by directing my online socializing to Facebook that I'll redouble my writing efforts on the blog. But you've seen me hope/promise/pledge/swear to write more before.

If you're comfortable using "friend" as a verb, look me up. And if you haven't joined Facebook, please consider doing so.