The political and networking joy of Facebook

by Dave Riley

I cannot help the fact that I'm a web 2.0 junkie.I like all this networking platform stuff "out there"-- blogging, sharing, user content creation ...it's all very exciting.

But my enthusiasms aren't as contagious as I'd like, and on the left, despite, my strident advocacy within my own activist milieu, the lefties I know and nag are slow on the uptake.

Web 2.0 does, I grant, whiff big time of geekdom. It is handy to know HTML and it would be nice if people were confident with harnessing RSS feeds...so the Web 2.0 promise is not a self evident thing.

Enter Facebook.

I love Facebook. It's fun, easy, very fluid and creative --and you never know what next will be on offer to engage(and maybe so often waste) your web time.

But the wonderful thing is that others I know within the community of leftdom love Facebook too. Forget the tenuous promise of MySpace -- Facebook has a engaging and fluid style that encourages you to network like there's no tomorrow.

So on Facebook you can promote and run groups and causes with a level of pizzaz that's almost heady.

Already on Facebook is a Green Left Weekly appeciation group, Socialist Alliance networks, solidarity groups..in effect layer upon layer of political projects linking hither and yon such that I can play funny buggers with my political associates across the globe.

Of course Facebook is all about grabbing a share of the web touring traffic and flogging consumerables via advertisements. Let's not pretend it transcends any feature of capitalism. But as a tool at this early stage of our collective engagement -- Facebook is delivering the goods and you should sign on too -- then come looking for our collective milieu there so we can network like there's no tomorrow.

Dave Riley's profile is on Facebook here. You can read GLW on Facebook here.Get excited about Hugo Chavez coming to Australia here .Join 218,683 supporting the Burnese protestors here. Read LeftClick on Facebook here.... Say no to Gunns pulp mill here....and much more. [Frenzied networking that may amount to something.]