It is a tradition to do crazy and wild things on New Year's Eve. Some people play with fireworks and other noise making devices, other tend to celebrate the end of year by partying and drinking. I am not big fan of explosives and to sacrifice too many neurons to honor randomly chosen point on Sun's orbit sounds like a pretty silly idea. But still, I wanted to do something out-of-line on December 31st.

So I joined Facebook.

It has been nagging me for some time - the curiosity about the API's and "Facebook applications" and "new platforms" etc. The only way how to find out more and explore was to join. You can find me at firstname dot lastname at gmail dot com - if you have an account.

The reluctance was caused by the Facebook's demographics and motivation. Unlike some other quite geeky social networks and groups, Facebook is wide audience and general public network. It is definitely platform of the "internet generation" - I found there my son and many of his friends. This was very nice discovery because now I know somebody whom I can ask stupid questions without public embarrassment :-).

People use Facebook to get new friends and meet new people and also expose their lives for the others. I have mixed feelings about both - I see the value of networking but .... However great it is to meet new people, if you do not have enough time for those people you already know, meeting new people makes situation only worse. And frankly - most people's life is pretty uninteresting for the others and maybe keeping private things private would be better for all.

So far, I am in discovery mode and try to find out what is that Facebook thing all about. I have added few friends - if you are one of them, you may be exposed to unexpected results of my experiments :-). You have been warned ...