facebook(s): yes, with an “s”

this is not a post about emerging competitors to Facebook. no, this is a post about facebooks. with an "s" and without the capitalization.

yes, indeed there was once things called "facebooks" and some of us even remember what they were.

indeed, when i was in college one of the first things you received upon arrival at campus was a facebook. this was an actual book (!!!) and it provided the names and dorm locations of each student. it was sort of like a telephone book for your college. (what are telephone books again?)

so i was chatting with my nieces recently and mentioned that I had used the original Facebook, the one that had nothing to do with social media, had no pictures or posts and was not a source of news or ads. it was, instead, a very basic electronic version of a facebook. well, lets just say two very confused faces stared at me.

"wait, you mean Facebook was based on a book? what was a facebook again?"

in other words, the genesis of social media has been lost within a single generation. my twenty-something neices were astonished to discover Facebook was anything but a sort of boring brand name; they had simply no idea that Facebook got its name because it was intended to be a facebook. they had no idea what a facebook even was. who needs a facebook when you have Facebook?

i feel sort of sorry for mark. he created one of the most powerful, world changing social media networks and his accomplishment is long ago lost (in fact never known) by its younger users. apparently "Social Media 101" can now be part of the history curriculum at college. (well, not that sorry. there are those billions to consider. #gometaverse.)

lets just say the world is moving fast

what does that mean for those of us who use Facebook (its the old person social media now...) well, for one, we might want to let the younger people in our life know a little bit about where Facebook came from anyway. not because we are trying to teach some life lesson about how social media is neither necessary nor even all that useful at times (because, let us just accept it -- it is part of our world now and it is not going away). the lesson, i think, is a lesson about how small dreams can become world-changing phenomenas. that the founder of facebook wasn't looking to become a billionaire; he was trying to provide college students an easier way to find eachother and communicate.

why does this particular lesson matter?

it matters because when your life is about doing what matters to you, what you are interested in, good things usually come from that. maybe you will become a billionaire (probably not though). but you might just be happy for having accomplished your dream.

want to learn more about the history of Facebook? check out The Facebook Effect, by David Kilpatrick.