face it: ‘…now we’re gonna live on the internet.’

Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.

You know that when a website becomes a verb, it has become a phenomenon. For example, if there’s something you want to know, you ‘google’ it. If you want to connect with someone, you ‘facebook’ them. So, in light of The Social Network, this week I’m going to talk Facebook and all of its implications.

Since this column intends to discuss all of the ways that technology has changed both us and the world, I’ll probably spend a decent amount of time waxing lyrical about Facebook. I mean, if we’re talking 21^st century internet inventions, Facebook is the 21^st century invention. Yes, there’s a lot to talk about, but there will be plenty of time to cover relationship statuses, friendship requests, photos and status updates at a later date – not to mention deconstructing the poke.

Ah, Facebook. You could say that there was life before Facebook, and life after. That’s not hyperbole – it really has changed the way that we connect, interact, interface and communicate with each other. The world is different now that we’re all logged in, updated and posting like crazy – and never before have I known so many people’s full names. Facebook reunites us with childhood friends, old boyfriends, travelling companions and long-lost relatives. These days, almost everyone exists in cyberspace, and a large chunk of that space belongs to Facebook.

I remember when I first joined Facebook – you still needed a university email address to create an account, and ‘Too close for missiles, I’m switching to guns’ was still written at the bottom of the homepage. After not long at all, I could look around at the other computers in the university library and see that almost everyone was checking their Facebook.

The internet itself is a place where everyone’s opinion can matter. Whether it’s blogging or commenting on someone’s Facebook photo, everyone can contribute their own two cents. Facebook has made it so not only can we comment on other people’s lives, they know when we’ve commented, and so do all of our friends. One of my friends once received over 100 notifications in one day, thanks to people commenting on an album she had uploaded of a party the night before. Facebook is like one long conversation, and we’re all involved.

There are good and bad things about having every facet of our lives uploaded. I mean, we know more about each other than ever before, and we can find out even more with just a mere click of a button. Facebook covers it all – it can tell you what someone is doing, where they are, what events they are attending, and who they are friends with. But how far should we let that go? Does it take the mystery out of getting to know a person face to face, one step at a time, in real life? Should one undesirable thing in someone’s ‘Likes and Interests’, or one ill-advised photo, affect how we see them? More importantly, should the contents of someone’s profile page have a bearing on whether or not they get a particular job?

So do we own our Facebook pages, or do our Facebook pages own us? Is Zuckerberg laughing in a pile of money and North Face fleeces somewhere, marvelling at how everyone is part of this one giant club, of which he is the king? Or is he ferreted away somewhere coding frantically, thinking of new ways for us to summarise and live out our experiences on the internet – experiences that we forfeit the right to own as soon as we make them part of the news feed?

For me though, at the end of the day, Facebook really does help me to connect and share with the people in my life – just in a different way. You can share photos from across the globe, check in with people quickly and easily, and stay in touch with hundreds of people with just a few clicks of a mouse. Facebook is one big map of where people go and what people do, and quite frankly I find that fascinating.

Let’s face it ­­– now that we have it, life would be weird without Facebook. We’re all spiders stuck in this crazy world wide web, and for those of you without a Facebook, I’m sure you still talk about it. I’ll be perfectly honest ­– when it comes to Facebook, in spite of everything that goes with it, Megan McKeough and 500 million others like this.

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