OPEN

First off, I haven’t abandoned this blog to tend my Facebook profile.

I never really had anything to do with Facebook – other than objective personal interest – until a couple of weeks ago. I had heard from friends and bloggers that it was pretty good but, and this may surprise you, the last thing I need in my life is another social network to keep up to date.

However, like many of you I would guess, Facebook’s network expanded in the last couple of months to incorporate (infest, assimilate, co-opt?) my personal networks. Not just my blogging, twittering, flickring online networks but several of my personal networks (former colleagues, currrent colleagues, clients, contacts, personal friends).

Invites came at me left right and centre. Sooner or later it was inevitable that I would accept one and set up a basic profile.

And then tinker with it.

And then upload a photo because it felt like I was the only person in my network with a question mark and – hey – this is Facebook, right.

Then I’m on the train with a colleague of the same age as me and we’re marveling at how Facebook has swept through our friends. How people who would never dream of hanging out in MySpace are on there… how it’s all part of the spread of social media.

And we think about whether it is sustainable. We remember Friends Reunited sweeping through a lot of the same networks some years ago – who goes there now? (Well, quite a lot of people, actually, Hitwise listed it as one of the top 20 soscial networks in the UK…)

And we muse that late 20- and 30-somethings being sucked into this will have to come to terms with the new rules of privacy that MySpace teens have been coming a-cropper with for so long. That they will quickly find themselves confronted with the dichotomy of what feels private is actually public.

The next day I take a look at my profile and I see a friend has joined an interesting looking group. I take a look and see they are debating things I’m interested in. I join.

I think to myself: it’s got legs.  I add this blog’s feed to my Facebook profile…