Facebook Turns Five

The Setting: The social networking site Facebook is five years old today.

It was started in 2004 by then 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, and now he's a millionaire. Oh wait, I meant billionaire. Although, according to this article, no one's really sure how Facebook is making money, other than through advertising. Really doesn't matter. Dude's rich.

I resisted signing up for the longest time. My impression was that it was something like MySpace, which I thought of as a site for a bunch of 13 year olds and a bunch of pervs pretending to be 13 years old. I thought of Facebook as something for college students, but my brother convinced me to sign up after I looked at his FB page. That was back in August 2008. Since then, I have connected with a bunch of friends, including a couple from high school; I have found (and been found by) old co-workers; and I am FB friends with many current co-workers. I have friends and family all over the place who, I admit, I don't see or talk to on the phone as often as I would like but it is very easy and fast to communicate with them on a regular basis using FB.

Some people use the site for business, although most I know use it to stay connected with friends and family. Some people post their statuses so often, you feel like a fly on the wall of their lives, watching the whole thing unfold. FB works really well for posting photos and creating albums, which is one of the main things people with kids do so their families living elsewhere can see pics of the kiddies. There are countless applications you can add to your page (I like Sudoku), altough many people choose not to add any apps.