Today I joined Facebook, mainly to see what all the hoopla is about. It was a rather disappointing experience.
First, Facebook wants me to enter my email address and my password so that it can check and see who's in my address book and find them on Facebook for me. Sorry, no. I'm not entering my email password. I used an email address and password that I keep specifically for things like this, so I got around that one.
Second, one can only join college/university networks if one has an email address for that institution. Well, when I was at university we didn't have email addresses (and I'm not quite a dinosaur yet). I was able to set up an alumni address for UKC and joined that network, but I don't see such a thing available for Dalhousie so I guess that's out. This seems a silly restriction to me. It's not exactly a given that one will have such an address.
Third, it was difficult to figure out how to find people without going through a network. I did find it in the help file.
Fourth, if you do come across someone you think you know, you can't view their profile (or any part of it) to verify their identity. You have to get in touch with them to do so. I don't like that restriction, either.
Fifth, and I suppose this is the big one--just about the only people I could find whom I knew were my sister and her husband. Perhaps all the people I knew in high school and university have become dinosaurs and Facebook is too young for them? Maybe they're techno-handicapped? Not Internet geeks like me? Who knows. At any rate, I don't expect it's a site I'll be spending a lot of time at.
