I’ve often been challenged about what the actual purpose of Facebook is - for example by Duncan Brack and Jon Worth. Apart from the ability to take up lots of time, I’ve tended to scramble towards an answer something along the lines of it being a good way to keep vaguely in touch with people that you don’t want to speak to every day, and that I guess it could come into its own as a way of linking up with people you used to work with, go to university with, etc.

Well now it’s started - I was contacted a few weeks ago via Facebook by someone who I must have last seen when we were at school together in 1987. And then last week two people I knew at university but hadn’t seen since got in touch, and yesterday someone else I knew at school in the late eighties poked me. I don’t plan on revolutionising my life to incorporate these people into my circle of most intimate friends, but I’m glad to have heard from them.

Of course it does bring one of the perennial Facebook dilemmas closer. If people I used to get on with well ten years ago can track me down, then presumably so can those I didn’t”¦Of course there’s no reason why you have to sign people up as your friend if you don’t want to, but I find how to handle political antagonists a bit of a challenge. I don’t mean people in other parties, plenty of whom are my friends, but I have plenty of political acquaintances who I’d be quite happy to go for a drink with, but don’t particularly wish to share details of my latest status updates with. Social minefield, this social networking business”¦