I am using facebook to stalk gorthos. I asked his wife to be my friend. I join all the strange groups he joins. I don't think he's noticed yet. He still owes me for that hippo toothbrush holder, the worm.

Get him!

There's less to this than meets the eye. Until October of last year, Facebook only let people at colleges & universities join which skewed the demographic in a particular direction [i.e. thus explaining the high college attendance rate!]. As time passes, we'll see Facebook trend toward the norm (so to speak) of the English speaking Internet population.

Why is that less? I think there is also a particular success in the toll that has to be admitted.

Not to mention the fact that Satan, apparently, hangs out at myspace.

"Less", because it's like saying members of The Redheaded League have more redheads and freckled-faces than the social club down the road.

That is just a post hoc argument. I think you are missing something, David. There is a cultural reason that Orkut works in Brazil and no where else. There is a reason that people like MySpace over Facebook and vice versa.

Orkut was originally rather whitebread "North American" several years ago. Wanda used to be on it way back when. Some other friends joined up and they used to be on there all the time, a la Facebook, until everyone started getting enormous amounts of Portuguese "Join my Orkut group" spam (aimed at Brazilians, obviously). Eventually all the English-speakers I know got fed up of daily foreign-language spam from people they did not know, and bailed out.

I don't like Facebook or Myspace. Facebook was an easy way to catch up with people I haven't seen in 10-15 years, but now that I have their e-mail address or phone number, it's much easier to just call them up and say "let's go to the pub". Checking out the old photos was fun, but it's old news to me now. There is only so much nostalgia I can handle before I want to slap people silly and holler "Get ON with your LIVES, already". Now I'm content to basically never log on unless I get an SMS alert that someone's e-mailed me there.

My crowd is spread out over the country and has an unending facination in the trivial. Finding a Facebook group dedicated to the Mighty Hercules cartoons was a real breakthrough.

It is not a <i>post hoc</i> argument Al -- "B" follows "A" is doesn't imply that "B" is created by "A"; it doesn't imply <i>anything</i>, in and of itself.

However, can we not agree that <i>if</i> "A" creates "B" <i>then</i> "B" follows "A"?

To follow this further, in fact the authors of this study (and yourself, apparently) are making this exact logic error: "a greater percentage of Facebook users are university students than on MySpace" therefore "university students prefer Facebook to MySpace".

You can't make logical inferences of this sort without studying the actual underlying reasons or mechanics of people's choices. In this case, the fact is that 7 months ago _100%_ of Facebook users were college students. If this study came out then, would you be still be impressed with the author's conclusions?

Of course it is a post hoc argument. You are saying that the success of Facebook is due to its focus in the way that the presence of the redheads at the club is due to the fact that it is a red heads club. It is post hoc because the club was founded for a purpose as is proven by its population therefore the Facebook's success must be also due to its founding purpose. The <i>post</i>-ness is the success and the dependent <i>hoc</i> is the population of each group. But unlike the redheads club, the population of facebook is independent of its purpose now that it has been unleashed on the general population. You have not proven the analogy therefore it is a weak post hoc.

All of which is very tangential but I am willing to spar so go for it. I do think that Facebook is actually doing something differently and not just preaching to a choir - though I do not know what exactly.

Now you've just invented stuff and claimed I've said it. I said nothing about the success of Facebook (in this arguement). I said the university statistic was uninteresting because seven months ago it was all university students _and_ I made a prediction that the university skew would disappear relative to a norm population over time.

Nor would I argue that having a university skewed population is "success", because success in the Internet world cannot be defined outside the context of a metric or purpose.

However, I can see why we're arguing past each other here (I think), as you see the first paragraph of your post the key one, whereas I identified the second one as such.

Wonder where gorthos is?

His new boss doesn't approve of surfing on company time.

David, then you have to admit your illustration used to forward your argument is an entire failure and you need to replace it with another analogy as I honestly tried to describe what you were talking about. No need to engage in fisticuffs.

It's like I'm in some parallel universe, where you are seeing something entirely different that what is here. We need an official judge. Where's John Gushue these days?

But that is not how communication works. Even if it is me, you need to make your point in a way that I can receive it. I admit I may be not getting something another might.

Sheesh.. I start a new job, get a little busy catching up on some video gaming and boom, its a conspiracy as to where I am :)

for the record: Gary, your payment in the form of beautiful hand carved hardwood walking sticks will be delivered on July 21 whilst we eat, drink beer and giggle at silly men in tights in Centennial Park

CM: My laptop and blackberry JUST arrived in my office today. I have been luddite-boy for a couple of days.

Gorthos: Go to the RIMarkable blog and look for the "Free BlackBerry Games" and "Free BlackBerry Downloads" categories. Then download like mad. And welcome to the Stonecutters.

Chris: most excellent. Thx
re Stonecutters: Hey, I get to sit beside Tom Baker!