The World Before Facebook

Do you remember the world before facebook? I do.

The year that we got it at Birmingham-Southern was 2005. It was actually January of 2005 because it was our interim term and all I did all month was work on my senior project until... we got facebook! It was a glorious day. If you will recall, your college had to get enough signatures and then they would let your school start up a network. BSC finally got it, and I was such a believer in it that when my friend Rachael returned home from her awesome month of sailing the Caribbean, I was like "that is cool, but have you seen facebook." We made her an account right away.

Facebook has been good to me. It allowed me to communicate with Eric and flirt shamelessly on the world wide web before we started dating in real life. Also, it has allowed me to stay in touch with old friends. Now, when I see someone from the past, instead of asking "What have you been up to?" I can simply say "Congratulations, on the new baby. I saw it on facebook." It isn't even creepy anymore to say that. Furthermore, I often get friend requests from people I barely know, but now I will know every detail of their lives evermore thanks to facebook - even if we never really hang out again.

Think about how facebook has changed from it's original format. We would probably all laugh if we could see the old version and call it lame. However, every time it changes everyone gets really mad and says they hate it, but then we get used to it and like it again.

Remember when they added facebook statuses? Everyone likes facebook statuses. Even if you don't use them for yourself you probably enjoy reading other people's. How funny are they when something out of the ordinary happens, like snow in Alabama, and everybody's status is something like "Sarah loves the snow" or "Johnny is making snow angels!" or "Fred is stuck in traffic in the snow."

Now that we have facebook we can connect with old and new friends, look at their pictures, brag about how awesome our lives are, see what our friends ate for lunch, etc. How did we ever live without our "social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them"? I don't know, but the world is definitely a more informed place now.