Getting Faced

You know how it is - you're having a pleasant evening, and you open a bottle of wine. And you have a glass and it is quite tasty, so you have another, then another, then that bottle is running dry and you open another, less-expensive vintage because your taste buds have already been pickled and then you wake up the next morning and realize that you've done something you'd never do otherwise.

Like sign up for Facebook.

Actually, I didn't have that much wine, but I have been getting the continual pings from friends who mention that they are on Facebook, and you can come look at their Facebook and hey, the water's fine over here in Facebook! So I created an account, invited about ten people I know, and started poking around.

First, there's the networking thing. I've already got 50+ friends in about 12 hours without even telling anyone, so I guess that's interesting. And while some of them are fans, most are people I know in real life, and have talked to in the last ten years or so. And almost all are from the Hobby Industry, none from college or high school (though, of course, when I was in high school, we still had crank-handled telephones, so there may be an age thing going on here).

Still, it seems to be a low-impact blog, which for me is a bit of a challenge, since I tend to treat blogging as a full-contact sport. I don't quite understand the applications yet, and rage against the lack of customization available (I think I was looking for a place to stash my CV online - I don't think this is it). It also seems to be a timesuck at the moment, but I expect that to pass.

In general, though, it feels like a convention. You go to GenCon and wandering the floor is one of the regular features, if only to re-connect with the people you haven't seen since the last time you were at the convention. I don't know how the continual contact of networking software will affect this feature of convention-going, but I do find it interesting.

For the moment, I think I'll have some more wine, and check out this Linked-In thing.

More later,