Facebook for all …

I posted this to Facebook …

I don’t see the big deal about why Facebook should be closed to only students. The power of social networking is to expand it as broadly as possible. If they don’t, Facebook may become like Friendster, GeoCities :(, and Webring and fade into a realm of irrelevance.

In fact, I urge Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn to work together on a standard so that we only need one profile that can be linked to any of the other social networking sites. I have an account on each of those for the benefit of my circles of friends, family, and acquaintances who only use those sites. I believe the future will actually be defined by the company that first breaks out and opens up their now closed social network.

Old man in the room

A story from Wednesday.

A large dog hairy dog walked by as I sat with several classmates on a bench waiting for our professor to join us for lunch.

Classmate #1: Wow, that’s a big dog. What kind do you think it is?
Classmate #2: I think that’s a mastiff
A few classmates (in unison): no, that’s not a mastiff
[pause]
Classmate #3: The dog from The Sandlot is a mastiff
Classmate #2: Oh, yeah, that’s right.
Classmate #3: That’s such a great movie

A lot of nods and agreement from the crowd with exclaimations about how cool the movie was and similar statements. Either my silence must have been telling or I must have had a blank expression, because I was found out.

Classmate #3: You’ve never seen The Sandlot?
me: No. I’m not sure what it is.
Classmate #2: Really? how could you have not seen that movie?
Classmate #3: Yeah, that is such a good movie. It’s one of my favorites.
me: I’m not sure. I think I was in undergrad when it came out. When was that?
Classmate #3: Huh? Really? It isn’t that recent, is it?
me: Yeah, I think it probably came out when I was in undergrad. 1992 or 1993.

Then silence and blank stares. I had dated myself.

The akwardness was broken soon after when our professor joined us and the conversation turned to our class.

In hindsight, I don’t think they realized I’m ten years older than most of them. The average age in the first year class (as a whole) is 23. The Sandlot was released in 1993 when I was 19 and they were nine or ten years old. That would be like me in 1993 mentioning The Goonies to someone ten years older than me.

Oh well. I’m flattered that I hadn’t already been considered the old man. I’ll be careful from now on. Note to self: nod head and smile for pop culture references when the crowd does. 🙂