First there was MySpace, then Bebo. So why is Facebook now the most fashionable social networking website? Because it's utterly, ruinously addictive, writes Peter Crawley
By the time you read this, Facebook may be done for. It isn't really anybody's fault. The online social networking site, where you can broadcast the full uniqueness of your personality as long as it fits into the strict template of its profile form, now has more than 34 million users, and it's aiming for 60 million by the end of 2007. These users, or friends, connect to each other's pages in order to exchange messages, write on one another's "walls", compile and share lists of their favourite music (or films, or books, or cocktail recipes) while downloading any number of purpose-built applications that will furnish them with, say, kitschy stripper names or transform them into a zombie (or vampire, or werewolf).
They may also pause to cultivate their virtual gardens (or aquariums, or lunar landscapes) or simply play a game of Scrabulous with a friend.
Basically, you can do all the things on Facebook that you used to do in life, before life shackled you to a computer screen. But Facebook, a once exclusive club, now looks like it is becoming a victim of its own success.
Just as a good bar loses its appeal when it becomes too crowded, so those that flocked to the "new MySpace" will soon start looking for the "new Facebook".
If you asked me why I joined Facebook, I couldn't tell you. There were certainly less ruinously addictive pursuits out there, such as heroin milkshakes or high-stakes roulette. And, like Groucho, I would never belong to a club that would have me as a member. But, having missed out on Flashmobbing, happy slapping and MySpace, Facebook seemed like an opportunity to get involved with a pop cultural fad before it had left the ground floor. Besides, I wanted to see what one looked like.
A Facebook page has been meticulously designed and steadily honed to be as idiot-proof as possible. But it was no match for me. Having developed an instinctive aversion to ever supplying genuine personal information online, even my first step - entering my name - was a misstep. But Facebook, which, thanks to its user-friendly set-up, can riffle through your e-mail address book with the light touch of a master pickpocket, immediately chose to invite a huge chunk of my contacts to become friends with someone called Crunch Tastic. Every Facebook user must be first approached, and then consent, to another user linking to their profile. You cannot choose your family, but you can choose your friends, and on Facebook you can cautiously confirm them. The typical response to my request was, understandably, "Why would I want to be friends with a gym?" An embarrassed Facebook naif finds it considerably easier to disable his profile and reinvestigate flashmobbing. Soon after, though, I got an e-mail from someone who had discovered my dormant account and, rather bravely, asked to be my friend. It seemed rude to refuse. I've been hooked ever since.
If there seems to be something suspiciously clean and collegiate about Facebook, from its bright and reserved design, as preppy as an Abercrombie & Fitch sweater, to its overwhelmingly college-oriented sub-groups, it is no accident. The site was launched early in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a computer geek studying psychology in Harvard. Zuckerberg certainly stole the name: it comes from the college's class directory, a printed booklet of current alumni with photographs and a brief profile, known as the "facebook". What is currently a matter of dispute is whether he stole the concept.
Recently, three former colleagues of Zuckerberg brought a Federal case against him. The creators of HarvardConnection, for which Zuckerberg was asked to write code as an undergraduate, have accused him of fraud, misappropriation of trade secrets and have asked that ConnectU - their own infinitely smaller operation - be given ownership of Facebook. (Facebook has asked that the case be dismissed.) Whatever the facts, one thing is clear; Facebook is worth a lot of money.
Rupert Murdock may have acquired MySpace - which, with more than 75 million users, is still the bigger player in social networking - for €580 million. But Facebook is reported to have turned down an offer of $1 billion from Yahoo! last year. Everyone is betting where the consumers and advertising markets of the future will reside, but could Facebook possibly be worth that? Facebook's principal appeal was once its clubbiness: To begin with, only Harvard students with college e-mail addresses could belong to it. With success, it spread to other American campuses. Then high schools. Then international colleges. Now anyone can join.
Today the Facebook homepage informs us that our profiles will soon be searchable through Google and Yahoo! and that dreadful exposure could not be worse if you went and did something stupid, like write about your relationship with Facebook in a national newspaper.
But Facebook brings out both the voyeur and the exhibitionist in you: You scrutinise the musical tastes of others, lie about your own, leave messages for people where others can see them, and add off-the-rack applications that best reflect your personality. It is partly a place to mingle, partly a place to advertise. Without knowing who's viewing, though, Facebookers can be alarmingly revealing.
Recently, stories abounded of people being passed over for jobs because their prospective employers found Facebook pages which professed a love for "smoking blunts", "blowing things up" or "Shania Twain". (Even without such extreme cases, it is seriously worth checking your privacy setting.) It is also a fantastic way of finding out how old friends are doing without having to go to the laborious effort of actually asking them. The status bar, in which every user can announce, in the third person present tense, how they are, what they're doing or where they are, is a fascinating device that somehow communicates a person's character more clearly than any dinky little application. Otherwise, representing yourself on Facebook is like trying to express your individuality within a sublet flat: you can move its furniture around, put up a few pictures, but its form will never bend to your whims.
Lately Facebook has been blamed for a string of anxieties. Are people too competitive about accumulating friends? What is the correct etiquette to ditch a compadre? Can it be used for bullying? Its nicknames run from Crackbook to Stalkbook. And it is an even greater threat to meeting deadlines than mysterious computer viruses and suspiciously dead grandmothers combined.
But beyond the constant updates it alerts you to, and the freaky compulsion to buff your page until it shines, the benefits are just about worth it. As long as the time-consuming effort of maintaining a social networking site does not turn us into social recluses. There's an actual world out there, after all, where genuine acquaintances are good enough to lure us out from behind our screens. As the old Sicilian proverb almost puts it, only your real friends will tell you when your Facebook is dirty.Facebook is essentially an individualised noticeboard which only your approved friends can see. Users can communicate, post photos and videos, ask questions and compare tastes. A cleaner, and currently less conspicuously commercial site than MySpace, its sleek and simple interface is designed to be utterly unintelligible to anyone over the age of 40. It is the only form of human interaction where it is considered socially acceptable to publicly "poke" someone (an online "hello"), and where "throwing a sheep" at a person is intended as a gesture of affection. Currently there are 34 million potential friends on the site. But, as Marlene Dietrich asked, how many of them can you call up at 4am?
