Facebook, in case you're old and unaware of developments on the intertubes, is a social networking site in which you link to the facebook pages of all your current and past friends, and they link to your facebook page.
Why do people do this?
Mainly because we don't have much time for each other anymore. There's too much to do. We work a lot. And we go to the gym so that on the rare occasions when we do see these people they don't think we're slovenly or gluttonous.
Facebook allows us to keep in touch without having to actually speak to or see people.
How is this different than email? Well, email doesn't give you the opportunity to connect with people you once knew. There are people I attended Sunningdale Public School with in Oakville. I don't plan on ever seeing them again, or speaking to them, but now I know that they work as heating and air conditioning installers or flight attendants and travelled to Tibet, or Paris, or "Spring Break 2003!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH, [expletive]."
I like knowing these things about people. I think we all do.
I'm way off point on this post, though.
My intention was to tell you all that Facebook is becoming a place for politicians, too.
Albina Guarnieri is signed up. So are Omar Alghabra and Navdeep Bains.
Albina has 85 friends on Facebook. The Re-elect Albina group has 159 members.
I'm not sure how many friends Bains has since he restricts viewership to his page, but his Re-elect group has 147 members.
Alghabra appears to be leading the pack in the number of friends he has: 418. His Re-elect group, however, only has 82 members.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I only have 92 friends, though I have requested an online friendship with Stephane Dion. Curiously, Stephen Harper doesn't appear to have a page.)
Paul Szabo and Gurbax Malhi don't have Facebook pages. Szabo's Re-elect page has only one member. Malhi's, 27.
Those guys are behind the curve.
Perhaps the most interesting Facebook presence is MP Wajid Khan's. Khan, as you may remember, crossed the floor back in January, leaving the Liberals for the Conservatives.
He doesn't have a page, and he doesn't have a Re-elect page. I don't think Conservatives have much of a presence on Facebook. I don't want to speculate on what that means.
What Wajid does have, however, are two groups dedicated to his work.
The first one is the "I Respect Wajid Khan a Conservative for Mississauga-Streetsville." It has two members.
Then there's the hilariously funny "[Expletive] Wajid Khan Group," which has 20 members.