To begin, I’m a cyberanthropologist of sorts currently interning for the DN project. My master’s thesis was an ethnography of Facebook, MySpace, and Tribe, which is available online at http://www.thevirtualcampfire.org.

As an early adopter (Facebook became popular during my junior year in college), I see in myself and other recent grads a decline in the obsessive stalker/put EVERYTHING on there phase, but an integration of Facebook as a key tool for staying in touch with friends and acquaintances who have moved on to a new stage of life- the troublesome, anxiety-inducing, alienating post-liberal-arts-college-wtf do i do now?? phase. Facebook is not only a phonebook, an address book, and a yearbook, but also a primary means of reconnecting/maintaining connections through creating events and sending private messages, as well as wall posts.

I think you’re right that only the techies will really get into the new developments being unleashed. I do get most of the hits to my websites and blog posts through Facebook, but it’s the yearbook/phonebook element that makes Facebook so critical in our lives. I know of many who’ve “tried to quit,” but what always brings them back is losing one’s phone or wanting to share/view photographs.. truly, a mediated tool for further mediated interpersonal communication!