The Facebook

Today I took an hour out of my schedule to go to the Marriott Center where there was a forum where about 10,000 students came to listen to Mark Zuckerberg and Orin Hatch.  Questions were submitted from students and they (mostly Mark) answered and talked about interesting topics in technology, education, entrepurnership, and government regulation.  The conversation seemed highly political, neither person wanting to say anything inappropriate to tarnish their reputation.

It was interesting to hear Mark speak about things such as dropping out of Harvard and making philatropical donations, and I found him to be rather personable.  He seemed real, and I think that's why he'd done such a great job with facebook and all, because he is real.

It was about six years ago in May that I sat around a lunch table with my 'friends' at Anacortes High School.  (Having just moved there my friends consisted of those in my classes, the AP calculus and physics nerds.)  One of my friends, who had just been accepted to Stanford asked us how many of us had already been accepted to a university, most of us had, and he told us that with our newly acquired university e-mail addresses we could join an online social site called "TheFacebook.com"  he said, "Go home today, go to thefacebook.com, and make a profile, then we can all be friends."  We created silly groups (The Citrus Horse) and had meaningless conversations which was about all facebook was good for back then.

That summer I joined into some BYU freshman groups and made a few friends, one of which actually ened up in my Freshman ward!  One of the few friends I have ever met 'digitally'.  Facebook of course became an important part of the 'freshman experience' for me, and it's existence changed my life in a small way, as it has for millions of other people.

I have begun to use facebook less and less, but not to say it's not important.  Just this morning I recieved a wedding invitation from a very dear friend, albeit one who I have little contact with these days.  And so facebook goes on, changing lives if ways big and small everyday.