Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Wed 09 Sep 2007Facing up to FacebookFirst there was MySpace, then Bebo. So why is Facebook now the most fashionable social networking website? Because it's utterly, ruinously addictive, writes Peter CrawleyBy the time you read this, Facebook may be done for. It isn't really anybody's fault. The online social networking site, where you can broadcast the full uniqueness of your personality as long as it fits into the strict template of its profile form, now has more than 34 million users, and it's aiming for 60 million by the end of 2007. These users, or friends, connect to each other's pages in order to exchange messages, write on one another's "walls", compile and share lists of their favourite music (or films, or books, or cocktail recipes) while downloading any number of purpose-built applications that will furnish them with, say, kitschy stripper names or transform them into a zombie (or vampire, or werewolf).