I came across a pretty funny article in last week’s Time magazine that explained the reason why all of a sudden my old classmates from high-school, college and business school are coming out of the woodwork and joining Facebook. The sub-title (which is missing from the online version) best sums up the phenomenon:
It was designed for college kids. But it took legions of people their parent’s age to fulfill its ultimate destiny.
The article illustrates that the greatest value of Facebook comes not from facilitating connections, but facilitating re-connections.
Facebook is for Old Fogies
Here are the 10 reasons that the author, Lev Grossman, lists to support the above thesis:
- Facebook is about finding people you’ve lost track of.
- We’re no longer bitter about high school.
- We never get drunk at parties and get photographed holding beer bottles in suggestive positions.
- Facebook isn’t just a social network; it’s a business network.
- We’re lazy.
- We’re old enough that pictures from grade school or summer camp look nothing like us.
- We have children
- We’re too old to remember e-mail addresses.
- We don’t understand Twitter.
- We’re not cool, and we don’t care.
The article is short and you should read the whole thing. That is of course unless you are an old fogie whereby #5 will stop you.
Pau for now…
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