Ahh, Facebook.

I have a mixed relationship with Facebook. When I first joined, I became slightly mad with obsession - must get more friends! With just a few friends to start, I felt an urge to connect with as many people as possible, to build my online community. It was like moving to a new city, where I just knew I knew people ... and I had to seek them out. It took over my life - total time vacuum. I joined some groups and gave a lot of thought to which quotes defined me as a person. Yeah.

Then came the disillusionment phase. Sure, now I was connected ... but I was connected to people who I saw everyday anyway, and others who I hadn't seen for years and wasn't likely to reconnect with beyond a yearly message exchange. And they all had the potential to be voyeurs in MY LIFE. Weird.

Moreover, the stream of information was often boring. It turned out I didn't want to fill my days reading someone else's Daily Fortune Cookie message ... or finding out how often some 'friends' were frustrated with their kids, jobs, partner's absence. A forum for complaining? I needed newer friends, or fewer friends, or truer friends. For many months I stopped checking Facebook. Once every week or two I did check in - just often enough to ensure I didn't miss the best events. Then I got a little cut-throat and axed a few people whose friend requests I should have ignored to start with. Do I miss them? Uh, no. We hadn't seen each other since high school anyway, and there is probably a reason.

The purging helped a bit. I do still have to glance past the Farmville announcements but appreciate Facebook's utility for sharing photos, quick updates, interesting links, creating events, and the like. For now I'm leaving the rest of the friend list intact, but I predict more purging in my future.

I am now blessed/cursed with an iPhone and its delightful Facebook app. It is simply too easy to access, and so I access it much more often. Yep, I'm back to being a daily user. To be fair, I now check my personal email far more often too, whereas I used to neglect it for weeks on end. Spending the day in front of a computer at work does not encourage computing for personal use - unless you have an adorable smartphone like mine. ;) Now I somehow feel more efficient keeping up with email and Facebook daily, though I'm sure I spend twice as much time at either as I did in the past. iPhone, you have revolutionized my world, alright. Facebook - looks like we'll be friends for awhile longer.