Space Miner

I’ve had time to think about Facebook’s role as a communication medium while receiving the equivalent of a busy signal for the last two weeks.

A few weeks ago, my purse was stolen. What a headache — replacing credit cards, phone, everything. Luckily service providers like AT&T and American Express are prepared for such a situation, and quickly handled it, whether it meant replacement cards or shutting down the phone line temporarily or whatever.

Coincidentally, a few days after that, my Facebook account was mysteriously shut down. I had been logged in and poking around, and it suddenly logged me out and told me that my account had been disabled. I shot a quick note off to support and assumed it would be righted soon.

At first I thought, well, maybe this is good, I’ll waste less time. But now that it’s been more thantwo weeks, it’s become more and more apparent how much I had used Facebook as a tool in everyday life. I messaged (and had messages out to) friends, old professors, etc. I received party/event invites a couple times a week. I fly to my hometown today and had been planning to try to have lunch with some old high school friends — except I don’t have any of their real world contact info.

I don’t feel that I’m entitled to anything from a free internet service. Facebook has 200 million and counting users to think about — that’s 3% of the entire world’s population. I have to realize that I am just one of an inconceivable number of things Facebook employees have to be concerned about right now.

But Facebook is more than just 24-hour-news-for-my-social-life. It’s a communication medium just like phone or email, and a damn useful one. I don’t own these tools and have little control when they are revoked.

When it happened to me, it made me realize the value of reliable service providers, and responsive customer service. I would absolutely pay a membership fee to be able to count on both, even on a social community site.