Facebook.

Today, for whatever odd reason, I feel like posting about facebook.

Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg who, with his roommates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin, launched Facebook from their Harvard dorm room.

From Harvard, Facebook took it's first steps in the world and now reaches to the farthest four corners of the Earth. Here are some staticts straight from facebook.com:

The General Growth: More than 200 million active users. More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once a day. More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college. The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older. The International Growth: More than 40 translations available on the site, ith more than 50 in development. And about 70% of Facebook users are outside of the United States. Wow. As for the User Engagement: The average user has 120 friends on the site. More than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook a day (worldwide). More than 20 million users update their status at least once a day. And more than 4 million users become fans of Pages each day.

Facebook's headquarters are in Palo Alto, California and it's offices run from Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, New York, Venice Beach in California and it's International offices are in Dublin, Ireland; London and Paris.

Up here in Idaho on the university campus, the word is used everywhere. Facebook this. Facebook that. Today, more specifically, I'd like to touch on those common facebook relationships.

Just the other day someone was telling about how silly they thought facebook was. She mentioned that a friend of hers had been dating this guy and naturally they made it known on facebook. However, when they had 'the talk' the girl decided that the relationship just wasn't working out. "So," the boy said sluggishly, "I guess this means I have to change my status on Facebook." I laughed when I heard the story. I mean, of all the things on his mind the one thing he was worried about was facebook.

For me, I have a total of 193 friends on the site and I think I talk to maybe ten of them. I know them all personally, though, whether I remember them or not is another story. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to know who's married, or engaged, or expecting, but honestly I find it pretty crazy to have so many friends that I'd hardly call friends at all.

When the semester started a girl in my art class made the suggestion that we should add each other on facebook. So we did. And do you know what? We've barely said a word to each other. The other day in class this friend asked for the names of the two boys that sit at our table. (It's funny, in college -even though really none of my classes have assigned seating -the students always sit in the same spot anyway.) When we re-learned the boys' names I asked my friend if she remembered my name. "Julia," she said as-a-matter-a-factly and continued. "We're friends on facebook. Of course I know your name." That was reassuring. At least now I know that all 193 of my facebook friends will never forget my name.

Facebook, to me, seems to say "Our relationship has already been determined. We're friends. So, there really is no need to chat with each other."

...Well, that's my opinion. I could say more on the matter, but I think this post is long enough as it is. Right now, I'd actually like to hear what you have to say. What do you think about facebook?