The Facebook Thing

A light post to get us started this morning: Over the weekend, I taped a short, light segment about Facebook with Howie Kurtz and Jeff Jarvis for "Reliable Sources." Kurtz had written a piece about Facebook and, as inevitably happens when an MSMer writes about what the kids are up to, the topic burgeoned from a topic to, well, a thing. (Same goes for Justin.)

I've been playing on it all weekend and while I admit I feel a little like a skeevy alum trolling the high school cafeteria for, uhm, friends, I notice I'm not alone. A remarkable number of famous-for-DC types, famous-for-Swampland types, and even famous types, have Facebook pages. And because Facebook is Facebook, it has to be them. (Friendster failed on this count under the weight of a thousand Homer Simpsons.)

At this point, I have to really stretch to come up with positive reasons for me, as Respectable Professional Journalist (TM), to be on Facebook. "I'm connecting with old colleagues and friends," is about as logical as I can get. And then I created a Dogbook page for Hank. I know Obama is supposedly reaping some kind of Deanish benefit from it at the moment, and I know that, at the moment, my requests to "friend" the marginally famous-for-DC will likely get through simply because, well, there's still not that many people on Facebook. But at what point does Facebook become a life-sized map of the world, as useless for organizing or networking as standing in the middle of the mall and shouting?

Discuss.

Also: I basically okay all friend requests. Does that make them meaningless, and contribute to the life-sized-map problem?

I'll write something about Fred Thompson or impeachment or something soon.