I am personally not a big social networker – it’s handy for making contacts for business and there is a novelty to looking up what my junior school gang are getting up to in the world these days. But as far as ‘poking’ someone who I haven’t been inclined to speak to for over a decade goes, I’m of the attitude that I’d rather not rattle their cage after all these years – there’s usually a reason why a decade has passed without feeling the urge to get in touch!

However, the rest of the nation seems to be sold, so, as a ‘social experiment’ I finally signed up for a Facebook account to see what I was missing.

Since opening its doors to the masses Facebook has rapidly been gaining ground on MySpace, which was recently the most visited site on the web and as of August Facebook has overtaken MySpace by racking up 6.5m unique visitors in that month alone.

How has this been achieved?

Well, I didn’t have to review the features as countless others already have. For me the key area where Facebook beats MySpace though, is that connections are meaningful. You connect with people you actually know and that know you – and once you are connected your homepage allows you to keep track of people’s goings-on who you can’t be bothered to call anymore! Genius.

Another reason for my not ‘getting on’ Facebook sooner was that I am always wary of investing too much time in a system that I might dump the next month. Facebook won’t be the last place I spend hours setting up a profile and inviting friends to connect with me – I did so with Myspace and I might soon be encouraged to try out a newcomer, like Perfspot.

Well anyway, I’m here now, and it looks like I’m here to stay. The Facebook policy for closing down accounts appears to be fairly prohibitive to anyone wanting off the ride – to leave you would have to delete every single piece of information from your profile, including contacts. Otherwise your account is simply deactivated and all your data is stored in a nice little box for Facebook to distribute to what they call their ‘trusted partners’.

So it’s catch-22 for me then. I either stick around but don’t login, therefore coming across as anti-social by ignoring counteless messages and birthdays, or, I leave by dis-associating myself, once again, with a large number of people I haven’t seen in years (though I’m sure my close friends and family would understand!).

Maybe though I should make the effort and send the odd flower as a gift and buy my posse the odd black’n‘tan?? Well, I’ve got enough time to decide as Facebook should be heading up the social-networking race for a little while yet…