So I just joined Facebook....

Sozobe knows what you mean...

Somebody please tell me what one is supposed to do on Facebook.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Log onto facebook.com and take a look.

catch up with friends, plan things - I definitely find it a useful social tool

I have seen people on there that I have not seen in about 25 years.

Yup - friends from my hometown, friends from university have checked in. It's been awfully nice.

I'm reconnecting with some college pals.

Have you got the friend wheel application? s'very cool - discovered connections between friends that seemed quite unlikely.

bit sad for those of us who are friendless???

Come here Margo dear. I'll friend you.

It also used to be a great procrastination tool with Scrabulous, but they've taken that away. Scramble is a pretty fun time-suck too.

Is that the "circle of" thing?

OK, I joined but I haven't found anyone I know ther. How do you find people if you don't know their email?

One good way is putting their first name, maiden name and last name in the search engine there....it will pull up a list of likely candidates...sometimes I find them, sometimes I don't.

That assumes you know all that info. I don't know who specifically I'm looking for. I just want to see if there is anyone I know there.

You can do searches based on school names, employers, organizations, etc.

put something in the Search field, hit enter.... when you get to the search page, you will see "Search Profile" next to the search bar... Click that, it will bring you to an advanced search, where you can search by multitude of criteria - hometown, interests...whatever. it searches within your networks, so it's good to join a network if you haven't yet (e.g. I joined "Slovakia" and "Boston University"). Also, you can go through friends' friends and see if someone you know pops up there.

I connected with over 20 classmates from primary school out of which i only kept touch with one over the years. we had a reunion recently...without facebook it would not have been possible. nifty at times.

Definitely nifty though I do wonder who's interested in when I report that I'm making soup or something.

I always find it entertaining when people respond to the most innocuous (to me) status notes.