When I was at college, in Canada, I had a facebook. In fact, everyone at the college did.

It was a physical thing - a slim volume handed out at the beginning of the year, containing photos and pertinent information about each student and faculty member. The photos we’d had taken in a classroom a couple of days after we arrived young, blinking and mostly jetlagged onto the campus on the western edge of Canada, photos which had been used already on student IDs and bus cards, were reprinted in the book along with the scantest of details - each person’s name, details of hometown, birthday, which class-year they were in and hall of residence.

This facebook - which we called the directory, but same difference - became invaluable as we started freshers orientation and then classes. It became my habit to consult it at night, back at the student residence, as I struggled to reunite rapidly forgotten (or unknown) names to recently met faces.

As the days progressed, the pen came out and the facebook became gradually annotated, with each entry scrawled beside with cryptic symbols, and accompanied by a legend on the back page. By adding extra little nuggets of information - facts or shared things or relationships - I was able to make sense of the names and faces in the book, and use that information to build relationships.

Over time, I got to know everyone’s names, and their faces become so familiar by being seen every day, sharing classes and meals and hikes and so on, meaning that I no longer needed to rely on the directory. Eventually, I sent the facebook home to my sister in London, covered in scribbled notes, so she could see a slice of my new life in Canada and put faces to some of the names which were featuring in my fortnightly calls home.

The margin scribbles provided colour and context, and indication of my relationship with the person: This person is in my English class. This guy is dreamy. This girl is in my dorm. He’s a good friend. She’s been nice to me. These two are an item. He plays the cello. Her mother is English. This photo is terrible. And so on.

Without the notes, the scrawls, to provide colour, it would have been just a list of names and faces, with limited interest and utility. Which is why it’s interesting to see how Facebook - the site, not the physical object - is developing beyond lists of names and faces of identifiable, casually connected classmates.

Facebook, like other identity-driven social networks, has crossed the line from being an end in itself, to being a means to an end. There comes a point within these sort of social applications, at which having a list of friends isn’t enough. What then?

I’ve got a few posts half-written on recent developments and thoughts about Facebook and social networking in general, which I’m going to try and publish over the next week or so. I’m hoping that by putting this commitment in writing, I’ll be goaded into action…

Watch this space.

* The title for this post comes from the earworm I’ve had in my head for a week or so, which involves putting new lyrics to the tune of Madonna’s Dress You Up:

“You’ve got style, that’s what all my friends say
all the apps and loads of wall posts too
all your mates are in the network “London”
But I know someone that I think you know

Gonna look you up on Facebook (on Facebook)
and poke you, and poke you (all over your body)“

It works surprisingly well.**

** We did this before, a while back, with Coldplay’s On MySpace.