After a few months of losing my husband to the computer for a few months, I too fell victim to the beast which is facebook.  I remember my students coming to show me that so-and-so made a comment about her picture and my response was “What is facebook?” “Oh, its like MySpace, but safer.”  Well, 3 years later, even my parents have hopped on the facebook bandwagon. 

So here I am today to talk about how facebook can be awesome and suck all at the same time.  Reason for its awesomeness….

1. connecting with friends you haven’t seen (or thought about ) in years.  Let’s face it would you really send someone from high school that you sat by in Physics class birthday wishes.  You don’t even have a clue where they lived.  Who knew they had kids and became a plumber or a rocket scientist? 

2.  Planning events that you want people to come to.  Great example, our college’s homecoming.  We have to drive 8.5 hours to go back to the town where our college homecoming is held.  Not a drive we plan to take often, however, thanks to facebook, we saw that lots of our friends were going so we decided to go too.  Another example was the pillow fight in Overton Park in Memphis, Tennessee held March 21, 2009.  The whole event was planned on facebook and had tons of people attend. 

3.  Pictures and Videos – It is so great to upload pictures and videos of your family and fun events to show your families who live far away and to share them with friends.  It has been fun to keep up with my friends’ kids and fun events through looking at the photos. 

4. Moments of Crisis – Earlier this year, we had a family crisis and my facebook friends all reached out to help us.  They offered help as doctors, teachers, and psychologists to answer our questions.  They in many cases also offered to pray for us.  It was the best reason for facebook. 

Why does facebook suck sometimes?

1.  The apps sometimes get obnoxious.  I had to block Lil Green Patch and Blue Cove because I got too many of them a day.  Now I am fighting the Classmates beast. 

2.  People you don’t want to find you do.  ; (

3.  People can see everything you do.   When someone posts that they are in a relationship and the other person doesn’t know they are in a relationship.  That can cause a problem.  The status can also get people in trouble sometimes. 

So what are your good and bad experiences with Facebook?