A face on my Wall

Over a month ago I got this email from a friend in Washington State who invited me to be her friend on Facebook. Well, I was ignorant about Facebook so I ignored the email

Then last week I got another invitation from another friend in Northeast Arkansas.

So I decided, "Why not?"

So I clicked on the website and presto, I immediately had two friends. There's a place on my new website to put my mug shot (photo). However, I haven't a clue how to get my face on Facebook. Also, this thing has boomeranged. I'm getting invites from people all over to be their 'friend'.

Some of them I don't even know. They keep saying they are adding something to my Wall. I didn't know my page was called a Wall. Well, all I can say is that friends are coming out of the Wall woodwork.

This photo of a pretty woman and her adorable toddler cropped up asking me to be her friend. I decided I wouldn't do that. She might be a pervert for all I know..

My friend in Washington State has posted my photo on her website. I'm wearing that 1950's outfit I wrote about earlier in this column. It's the black and white polka dot skirt, white blouse with a red silk polka dot tie, and saddle oxfords.

Now I'm on her Facebook wall wearing that garb. No, I really don't mind. She Facedbooked me and said that she would remove it if I didn't like it.

Well, I now have a personal website with nothing on it. My friends aren't going to learn much about me until I learn to post something.

Facebook, I've learned, is just a social networking website to connect friends and share with people in your life. The website currently has more than 250 million active users worldwide.

That's amazing to me since that website was created just a few years ago by founder Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student. My information says that it was created on Feb. 4, 2004 by Zuckerberg and a couple of other students. In the beginning the networking service was reserved for Harvard students only, and then expanded to become worldwide. It is now a widely used social network for sending messages and to update personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. It's possible to upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos and learn more about the people they meet on Facebook. It is also being used by business owners as a networking tool.

That said, I wonder how I can get my face on my Wall. Is it always going to be an outline of a face with a gray area?

I have sent messages to a few of my new "friends" explaining that I am new to this tool and don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing.

I'm thinking that just plain emailing my friends might be the best solution. That's what I've been doing for years and it works quite well. But then if there are millions of people using Facebook, there must be some advantages.

There's another social network that I could look into. It's called twitter. I've been hearing that word bantered about. I think I know why it's called twitter. According to the dictionary the word twitter means "to make a series of light chirping sounds or to talk rapidly in an anxious or nervous way."

When one twitters on the computer, it forces you to write succinctly. There are no long messages. That's because only 140 characters can be used to post short text messages, called 'tweets', to friends or followers. Maybe it's similar to sending text messages on a cellular phone.

Twitter differs from blogging which is time consuming.

I'm hesitant to get involved in twittering because I need to clean house. All these social networks can keep one tied up at the computer for hours, getting nothing done around the house. There are emails, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and heaven knows what else.

Let's face it, I just don't have time to twitter away my time.

So for now, I think I'll skip twittering.

I need to master Facebook first.

I need a face on my Wall.

Hey, I could call it wallpapering..