Dear Facebook...I'm preggers!!

There are 750 million active users of Facebook worldwide, yes that's 750,000,000 users logging onto the world's most popular social media platform to share stories, feelings, photos, videos and do all other manner of exchanging information and interacting with friends, family and sometimes complete and utter strangers.

We have heard all of the statistics, founded in 2004 by a 5 year old Mark Zuckerberg, now worth a Gazillion dollars, soon to be used by every human being on the planet. Ok so I am being slightly facetious but you get the picture, this piece of software is a big deal, it's all things pervasive and invasive. What started out as a cool way to post your personal profile and your innermost thoughts on-line to your friends has become a social phenomenon, it's power and all encompassing girth straddles generations, your 14 year old son is on Facebook, so is your 35 year old sister, your 59 year old boss has a Facebook profile and your octogenarian grand aunt Gertrude is kicking it back once or twice a week with a cup of cocoa and a half hour catching up with her Grandkids.

Facebook is not just the preserve of teens or twenty somethings, neither is there a need to be a geek or technophile in order to get the most out of the platform, indeed it might be said (no data to back this up though) that real geeks probably shy away from Facebook and it's underbelly of prurience.
So the real beauty (or ugliness, depending on your disposition) of Facebook is in the fact that Mom, Dad and their teenage son could all be on the social network at the same time chatting and catching up with friends and relatives, it's long tentacles wrapping around each of them and entwining them and their contacts together in the social ether.

In my extended family there is a high level of Facebook usage amongst my 10 siblings and our 38 children, a decent few of the siblings have a profile and most, if not all, of their offspring over the age of 13 would use Facebook too.

Cousins catch up with cousins, sisters chat to brothers and there is a general exchange of family gossip, events and so forth, nothing mind blowing and rarely too controversial.

I have used the term 'crossing the Rubicon' a few times in my life without ever knowing the historical context of the phrase and where it came from, a couple of years I Googled the term, good old reliable Wikipedia gave me the following :

'Crossing the Rubicon is a metaphor for deliberately proceeding past a point of no return. The phrase originates with Julius Caesar's invasion of Ancient Rome (January 10, 49 BC), when he led his army across the Rubicon River in violation of law, thus making conflict inevitable. Therefore the term "the Rubicon" is used as a synonym to the "point of no return". Alea iacta est ("The die is cast"), which is reportedly what Caesar said during the aforementioned crossing of the Rubicon.'

So with that historical context firmly laid out I can safely say that I believe we have crossed the Rubicon in relation to how we use Facebook and the level and detail of information we post on the site for all to see.

Last week my niece, Belinda, posted a fuzzy photograph on her wall, no comment, just a photo, subtle and succinct. It was inevitable that one's curiousity was piqued as to the exact nature of the image, the Facebook thumbnail was small and you couldn't really figure out was it was without clicking on the image to open it. It quickly became evident that this image was a scan of a baby in utero and for that exact second of recognition the clarity and the simplicity of the message hit me like a ton of bricks, Belinda was pregnant! She posted no comment alongside the image, she knew no words would be needed, the visceral visuality of the message was delivered directly to your cerebral cortex and was processed in milliseconds, fait accompli!

And this is the point, Belinda wanted to deliver some good news to the masses, some wonderful information to share with her friends and family, she didn't want to send 50 text messages and emails, she didn't have the time (or phone credit) to call everyone, yet she wanted to spread the cheer to one and all. So the medium she chose to broadcast this deeply personal and joyful news was Facebook, pure and simple Facebook with it's open and candid format, tell the world how you feel, write it on your wall and hit the enter button, and that is it, done and dusted.

And the really amazing fact is the absolute reality that we are in the throes of a social media revolution, a couple of years back and Facebook was certainly not completely mainstream, in 2008 there were 100 million users, an absolutely massive number for sure, but fast forward to today and there again is that colossal number of users ; 750 million. To put some context on this let's consider that other great social club otherwise known as the Catholic Church, according to the Census of the 2011 Annuario Pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook), the number of Roman Catholics of the world is about 1.181 billion!

Wow, another global organisation with a massive membership across multiple countries and continents, but hang on, the Catholic Church has been recruiting members for the past 2000 years, ever since JC sacrificed himself on the cross for our sins the Catholic Church has been trying to expand it's reach while feverishly striving to hang on to existing members. In the crowded social media space Facebook competes with MySpace, Twitter and other platforms for the attention of their users, in the flesh and blood world where religion exists, and just like Facebook the Church spends considerable time and money competing with other religions to recruit, convert and retain followers. It will be interesting to see if the social media giant can usurp the Church in terms of members at some stage in the future!

So indeed we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in terms of how we use technology on a day to day basis to communicate to others various items of information, from the mundane 'I am feeling like a piece of crap today' to the much more important matter of announcing to the world that you are going to produce a new human being!
The Rubicon has indeed been crossed, there is no going back to the slow and low key nature of communications methods in the past. Today you can do a pregnancy test, get a result and share that news on-line within 30 seconds.

The real question is what comes next in terms of using social media in ones daily life?
Where is this all going, what happened to a good old fashioned chat over the phone or dare I suggest an actual social encounter in the flesh where you actually go and meet somebody to catch up on the comings and goings of life? Pressing and intriguing questions indeed!

Well that's it, this article is over, I am going to call my mother to talk to her and see how she is, how she is feeling and what she is planning for the rest of the week, maybe I will call in for a coffee..?

So I just called her house and my brother tells me 'she can't come to the phone, she is just updating her Facebook status, she will call you back later, or probably IM you during the week'!

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Thanks
Alan