Now on Facebook

OK, yesterday I finally gave in and signed up on Facebook.

I'm not going to post a link to that account here, any more than I would post a link to my LinkedIn profile. I'm going to start off by only friending people I know, but that includes people I know online. If you know me and have a Facebook account, drop me a line and I'll give you the link - or check your e-mail and see if I already sent you a friend request.

I'll be honest with you: I'm not so thrilled with the whole Facebook concept. I feel like it's another step in the destruction of the "Global Conversation," which is how I have always thought of the Blogosphere. Once upon a time the Internet was full of people standing on soapboxes, shouting out their ideas and opinions and taking questions from the wandering crowd and waving to their friends on other soapboxes. Back then everyone could hear what everyone else had to say, and in most cases anybody could chime in with their two cents. Ideas got traded back and forth, friendships were made, enmities were spawned, and somebody from Norway and somebody from Australia could inspire somebody in Pennsylvania to join in.

That's still going on. But a few (quite a few) years ago sites like MySpace started to change the game: Now in most cases you could still hear part of the conversation, but to join in and give feedback, or just to see everything someone had put out for public view, you had to join in - as in, sign up as a member of that service. Now instead of an organic social network of bloggers linking to bloggers whose blogs they liked, enjoyed, or admired, you had artificial networks of people joining together for entirely different reasons. And the conversation became a little muffled.

Then along came Facebook. I never heard of it before the Virginia Tech massacre, when Facebook became a primary means of students getting out "I'm OK" messages to their families and friends, but it had been around for some time before then - in fact, I've heard some techno-hipsters who insist that Facebook "jumped the shark" well before April 16, 2007. But the trick with Facebook is: to actually see anything beyond a limited "public profile", you must also be a member of Facebook.

And so the Global Conversation moves from the Commons into private clubs. There is plenty still going on, and plenty of conversation being had, but unless you're a member you can't have any part of it.

So is this the end of the Global Conversation? I have written in the past about Blogging Energy Units: people only have so much time in the day to be online, and read blogs, and post comments, and engage in discussions. If all that is going on behind closed doors, what is left that will be shared with the public? Will people even have the time and energy to say anything online outside of Facebook? Or will much of what they say and do be hidden away, to be viewed only by Facebook members?

I'm not going away. I have things I want to say and an indefinitely finite time in which to say them. I promise you, I won't be saying these things in the shadows, in the back room of a private club somewhere. For good or for ill, I plan to keep exposing my words in public, to keep participating in the Global Conversation.

How about you?