"Can I say you're my girlfriend on Facebook?"

(as for the pasteboard thing: no fucking WAY.)

Radiohead's lawyers live in my broom cupboard.

Actually I was more bothered about the wife sending me public gifts. He's new, please excuse.

Haha, yes I did think re: pasteboard actually I think I don't need to know...

I am pushing for a graffiti application to be added to the new production system, so I can draw cocks on the pasteboard of grimly's pages.

why has facebook suddenly exploded in popularity in the last 2 weeks?

it's all down to us.

Facebook was always insanely popular with people of my age group. Even non-uni students are more likely than not to have an account; I've been able to track down and reunite with virtually all my primary school friends at the mere click of a button. There's been a recent explosion of non-university, non-school-leaver accounts, so now pretty much all demographics are covered (except, for some reason, 'parents'), but since early 2005, it's been pretty much compulsory for students.

Yeah exactly...I know it's been popular always.

But in the last two weeks this thread has been revived here and I've got about 6 friend requests on it. And then read on a blog "So I finally signed up for Facebook".

WHY?

HIVEMIND. I dunno, I signed up 2 weeks ago because some friends were bugging me to (as I said upthread), but it seems I am part of some huge general trend.

Waitaminute. Radiohead leaked?

"studio mixes"

I only know this because of someone's fb status...

It's like Day of the Triffids - we'll all go blind because of this.

I "poked" the one old schoolfriend who I wish I'd kept in touch with and he responded by friending me. Which led to me writing a summary of the last 17 years of my life in an email to him at 1:30 this morning. I finished by 1:32, obv.

hehe....it is kinda creepy the way it has everyone's full name.

I got friended by someone I met for about 2 minutes in a bar with friends a few weeks ago and the people she was with are all in the main picture with full names.

Ah right. Cheers Zoe.

You get a couple of web and press articles on Facebook just because MySpace talk getting boring. Then other papers and magazines see this and jump on bandwagon. All in turn convincing more people out there to join it which in turn prompts more media coverage. I think this is the only reason for the explosion - we've seen it work this way with other things before.

southall hasn't posted his social networking meets ID cards scare stories on here has he? he should. they're very scary.

hehe....it is kinda creepy the way it has everyone's full name.

I know. Makes me wonder I made ILE group closed cause of 90 procent of the *applicants* I didn't know their name!

Which led to me writing a summary of the last 17 years of my life in an email to him at 1:30 this morning. I finished by 1:32, obv

hahahah: i said exactly the same thing to the dude from school, ie: "how am i going to condense 15 years into one e-mail? er ... worryingly easily, i fear."

the place is filling up with my cousins now. it's quite worrying.

guys i got a facebook invite from Darramouss

I was thinking about this while bored the other day - if ILX was deleted tomorrow, how many people I really like here would I stick in touch with? Probably not many, outside London, and maybe not all of them.

This is partly why the "if I really liked them I would have stayed in touch with them in the first place" line doesn't quite hold for me. It happens time and time again that, when the context for friendships vanishes, many of the friendships themselves don't migrate or adapt. Maybe the really close ones but that's about it. Especially when you drunkenly lose your phone and all your numbers once a year like I do.

Where Facebook has been so successful is creating a context for a lot of old/dormant/current friendships to migrate to, and possibly stick there. Far more than MySpace/Friendsreunited/anything else.

Especially when you drunkenly lose your phone and all your numbers once a year like I do

once a month more like and that's generous. did you lose it at glasto?

I agree. I lost touch with a some people just from having lived in 7 cities and moved house many times within an 8-year period. I've been surprised at the lack of awkwardness when re-acquainting myself with a couple of people. There's been no excuses made for why we lost touch. I think a lot of my awkward feeling of 'oh no not them' when I see some old friends pop up on fb is nothing to do with me not liking the blast-from-the-past thing but my own guilt about failing to even say hi for years and years.

xpost

its glastonbury not glasto, chiz chiz more champers what?

abbreviations are not the sole privilege of the leisure classes

my Uni friend Giles said so.

Pompey fans to thread.

Actually, no, Pompey fans fuck off.

abbreviations are fine

just not 'glasto'

what's wrong with champagne?! i mean champers dahling

It is not real ale and doesn't come with with free flat cap and ferret.

all of those are really bad things though

Idea of drinking champagne >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> actually drinking champagne. Most overrated boozestuff ever except possibly cider.

Not in the tipsy topsy world of 696.

people rate cider?

girls in flat caps=quality

- real ale makes you fat and doesn't taste nice, give me pimm's any day
- flat caps are for old men, i do not like old men
- ferrets are ugly and smell and bite

Where do you stand on ferrets, 696?

I rate cider over champagne.

i would never stand on a ferret, ed

id kick a horse in the face though, if you paid me £20

Is that John Willie's 'os? The one what won the the Grand National?

c'mon gareth, say "glastuhr"

that is written glastuhr' you middle class oik.

should i tell everyone which STDs i have in my profile?

Why, are you looking to collect a full set?

let them be pleasantly surprised

I really don't see how Facebook is drastically better than Friendster, except in terms of being able to anticipate users' needs and integrate new features (once MySpace came along, Friendster was always trying to play catch-up when it came to things like blogs and "top friends"). But as far as its ability to preserve contact with friends, what's the difference? I still don't have as many friends on Facebook (or even MySpace) as I did on Friendster at its peak. Whereas Friendster was so novel at the time, I get the feeling that a lot of people are cautious about joining yet another social-networking site at this point.

Dude, the number of people (in the UK, at least), who have ever heard of Friendster, let alone been registered with it, is minuscule next to newly expolded Facebook. I don't think there's any "not another one" issue with take-up among the general population.

zoe otm re: guilt upthread.

I was thinking about this while bored the other day - if ILX was deleted tomorrow, how many people I really like here would I stick in touch with?

::cries::

Yeah I'm not 100% comfortable with the full name stuff yet. And I love champagne for the record. Drunk with a straw. Ferrets do smell

WITH A STRAW!!! Get thee hence woman.

Also you are all wrong about champagne, it can be the most perfect drink in the world. Cider just kills brain cells and makes a piece of string an acceptable belt.

Those !!! were meant to be ??? by the way.

The full name stuff is a bit weird for people like me who are used to pseudonyms, yeah. I still don't really like the idea of people being able to find me online for some reason. Also it means apart from a couple of people on ILX who I've met IRL no-one will have any idea who I am in the ILE group :)