Top 5: What I "LIKE" About Facebook

As all (or at least almost all) of you know, I am a Facebook junky.  It took me a while to jump on the bandwagon, so I am not going to act like I was there from the start.  I even remember visiting a good college friend in Columbus post-college who was on her Facebook site and I was just surprised that she liked it.  It seemed so streamlined and boring, with very little color compared to my at-the-time obsession with MySpace.  Ahhhhhh, MySpace, that was so "early 2000s".  I have come a long way since that day in that apartment.  I started with trying out Facebook "incognito" about 5 years ago and have since opened myself up to my friends and family members (still no students - current or former and my security walls are still high) and I am now sitting at 716 friends and counting and I probably haven't signed onto MySpace since before my wedding, over four years ago.   Therefore, I would like to take a minute and dedicate this "Top 5" post to Facebook, the world-dominating website.

 

In no particular order, here are the things I "like" most about Mark Zuckerberg's social-global network:

1. No matter what time of day it is, someone is ALWAYS going to "like" or comment on something I do on Facebook, whether it is a picture post or status update.

2. Every single time I feel like I am alone in the world and make the feeling public by posting about it, dozens of people comment enough to reassure me that I am not.  Praise God I am not a TOTAL weirdo!

3. Facebook has allowed me to become super lazy about Googling or researching.  (I guess I need to consider this when I am talking to my students about research!)  Whenever I want a review on something, I go to the people I trust the most - mainly my MOM friends.  It's like my own personal GMA segment on Mom-tested items.  Does anyone know what I am talking about?  I also like to hear from all of my friends and family members.  It's very interesting to get a variety of opinions about a topic!

4. It's fascinating and heart-warming for me to see people ranging from my family members to former teachers to coworkers to high school buddies to sorority sisters all converse and/or even debate about anything and everything I ask questions or random polls about.  It's a room full of people that will never ever be in a room together anywhere else! 

5. My "Facebook Family" is always there to give me a HUGE hug and a ton of support whenever I need it.  There are people on my wall (oh, excuse me, TIMELINE!!!) that I rarely ever talked to in high school due to our "social class differences" (i.e. far more popular than me) and family members from around the nation that I have only ever met a handful of times.  Some of these people have been my greatest supporters over the course of the past few years.  Other people who I love dearly and would not get to catch up with nearly enough without Facebook are also huge parts of my life simply BECAUSE of this website.

Thank you, Mr. Zuckerberg.  I'll be honest with you; I watched The Social Network once and it confused me.  (Possibly because I had a hard time accepting that Justin Timberlake was playing the role Sean Parker.) I still don't know who to believe in this crazy story about the creation of Facebook, and frankly I don't care.  All I know is that it has truly changed my life and my attitude and it continues to do so every single day.  That's what matters to me, and I sure LIKE that an awful lot.