By LaTaviya Goldstein-Martinez

Facebook.com is by far the most entertaining and useful website I've seen since Google. Similar to MySpace or Friendster, Facebook is a sort of friendship network website for college students. People go on and register a profile, add people to their friends list and post photos for all to see. You can also create and join groups at your school such as "Dysfunction, Thy Name is Bluth - An Arrested Development Group" or one of my GW favorites, I'm Not From the East Coast, Therefore I Am Foreign." The groups are great because of the weird names people think of as well as seeing how many people at your school are into the same obscure things as you.

What makes Facebook so great is the way it can easily be used for quick background checks or cyberstalking of anyone you meet at school. You sit down in your class at the beginning of the new semester and start up a conversation with the hot guy next to you, that night you go home and look him up on Facebook only to find that he is part of "GW Republicans" and all of his pictures are of him and his frat buddies with the collars of their Izod shirts popped up drunk in the south of France over spring break. It's great because you can really weed out the people you don't want to talk to right away and devote all your attention to the people you do want to talk to.

The best part of Facebook is high school search. With this feature, you can find anyone who went to your high school and see their pictures or check out who they're friends with now. This feature is especially dear to me because I was able to discover that the most popular girl in my high school now looks like a drag queen Gwen Stefani with a nose that descends into schnoz territory. Priceless!

The searching feature also allows people to find you, which can be both good and bad. I've had several girls from high school or even elementary school send a request to add me to their friends list. It's an unwritten rule of Facebook that you always confirm a friendship request, even if you hardly know the person, so I usually just confirm and add them. Many times, it's girls from the bitchy popular clique that add me, but I just can't bring myself to reject even their friendship request. Searching can also be a good thing. For example, a few weeks ago a guy I knew back in Colorado who I always thought was the hottest guy alive sent me a friendship request and I was so excited I screamed when I saw it.

It always amazes me when people I meet at school aren't on Facebook. One gorgeous guy in my class didn't have an account, so I had to resort to Googling him to find essential background information. Some make a conscious effort to not be a part of it, which to me seems like the Goth kids from South Park being such nonconformists that they all dress alike, drink coffee, and listen to the same music. Facebook is for everyone, not just the ditsy sorority girls and frat boys who want to show off that they have 200 people on their friends list.

I recently set up a MySpace account because I wanted to see whay all the fuss was about there. It's nice, but it's no Facebook. I think that what makes Facebook so great is that it's still pretty small. MySpace has millions of profiles from people all over the place where as Facebook has college students, alumni and prospective college students who are still in high school. Besides, anything that lets a hot guy add me to his friends list and also shows me that miss popular from Boulder High now has a nose that rivals Barbara Streisand has to be good!

(I typed this on a Mac, so I apologize for all the weird spacing.)