An ode to Facebook

Do you remember where you were when you heard about this crazy new thing called "Facebook?" I do. I was in my "U.S. History Since 1877" class, at the back of the HBLL. My professor was Dr. Andrea Radke. It was the summer of 2004.

In some ways, not much has changed since then; I still spend most lectures drifting back and forth between listening to the professor and chatting with friends and family. On that day, my sister sent me an instant message. It said something like, "Go to http://www.thefacebook.com and sign up. You will love it."

I did sign up, and I did love it. That was a smaller, albeit somewhat less intimate Facebook. You actually had to go out of your way to stalk someone, because there was no News Feed; you basically jumped directly from profile to profile. If you didn't want the latest and greatest news about someone, no problem; you just didn't view their profile.

"Fan pages" didn't exist yet, and groups had "groupies," which (I think) were people who kinda followed a group but weren't allowed to join it. This allowed my roommate, Steve, to declare that "if Hitler had a Facebook profile, he would be a groupie for the 'Men Who Wear Women's Pants' group," still one of the greatest lines I can remember from that period of my life.

These are the stories we'll tell our children about a simpler era, when status updates hadn't taken over the search engines and you had to be in college to join. (Yes, there was a time when you didn't have to worry about mom reading about your social life on the Internet.) You had a profile photo, and that was about it; no massive photo albums broadcasting your life to the world. And, of course, those stupid quizzes hadn't been invented yet.

What really blows my mind, though, is that in the beginning, we all felt a little ambivalent about belonging to Facebook. Today, that would like saying, "I'm not sure how I feel about oxygen. Does spending so much time breathing air make me a creep?" In fact, today I stumbled across one of the first Facebook groups that I joined: "I'm Slightly Ashamed To Be a Member of thefacebook.com." (Oh yeah—it used to be called "The Facebook." I forgot about that.) In those days, we still weren't sure whether loving Facebook made us hip or pathetic, or some combination of the two.

The group is still around; it has 307 members, and hasn't had an update in nearly three years. Nobody is ashamed of Facebook anymore. (In fact, some would probably say that our comfort level with Facebook has exceeded healthy levels, and that we should be a bit more reserved in throwing ourselves out there.) For better or for worse, we can now whittle away our lives staring at those blue-and-white pages without fear that we are social outcasts.

Really, the opposite is true. These days, when someone we know isn't on Facebook, we're surprised and might wonder what is wrong with the person. "Seriously," we think, "it might be time to crawl out from under that rock, buddy." The site has over 300 million subscribers—more than the entire population of the United States. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world, behind only China and India. Not only do we accept or even expect Facebook membership, but part of my job includes using the site to help build brand loyalty and excitement for my company; it is so widely accepted that companies must have a presence there in order to have any control over the discussion about their brand(s).

Somewhere along the way, the site coined not one but two verbs (Take that, Google!)—"to friend" and "to facebook." And what are we doing when we aren't at our computers using Facebook? Of course. We are facebooking (there's the verb in action) on our phones. And what do we see wherever we go? Fan pages, ads, groups, events and status updates. It's a constant stream of information from friends, acquaintances, and businesses. Over the course of five years, the Little Web Site That Could has gone from StalkerNet 2.0 to probably the most powerful social and marketing force ever created.

It's hard to believe we ever doubted its place in our lives, knowing what we know today.

But I still wish they would get rid of those annoying quizzes.

Full disclosure

"Full disclosure: I am an employee of the company on which I am doing my report." That's something I may or may not be saying to my professor shortly.

I started a new, five-week class last week: "Data-Driven Strategies." The first assignment turned out to be a 15-page paper due in three weeks. I need to choose one data warehousing product, one data profiling/ETL product, and one advanced business intelligence product, then research and give a basic report on all three of them.

If there is one thing my company does well, it's give other firms the tools they need to implement data-driven strategy, so on some level, our products fit the criteria for all three of the types mentioned in the assignment. I even asked the professor if I could focus on my company, and she said it would be fine. Of course, I didn't tell her that I work for my company.

Nor did I mention that I write documentation for my company for a living, nor that I could write 15 pages on our products without doing an ounce of additional research.

Really, though, this would help the rest of the class, because they would get an in-depth, authoritative look at top-notch online business optimization software when we present our findings, right? People pay thousands of dollars to understand these products. So I'm serving my classmates here. I'm doing the selfless thing. (No, I don't really believe that, but it's an interesting perspective.)

On the other hand, I am doing myself a disservice. I could use this assignment as an opportunity to learn something new—something I don't do 8-12 hours a day, five days a week. Why not take the chance to learn about Oracle, or SAP, or Teradata? Well, did I mention that I have two other classes, a full-time career, and—oh yeah—a family that I'd like to see occasionally?

More and more, my MBA experience is filled with choices like these. Another example: in preparing for an open-book quiz, should I actually do the reading, or should I just bring the reading since I will be able to look up whatever I need to know, anyway? I'm finding that the answers to questions like these depend largely on how engaging the class is, and "Data-Driven Strategies"—even though it's in my wheelhouse—is not very engaging.

So what do I do? Should I tell the professor what I do for a living? Or should I take the free pass that the universe has given me? (This is your chance to exercise your moral superiority—or moral relativism—should you so choose. Have at it!)

Blogspot Fail

The folly of blind rivalry

Here's something I've never understood about college sports fans: Why do you root against your rival when they're playing an early-season non-conference game? This mentality makes a little more sense once your own team has lost in-conference, because in that case standings are key to chasing a conference championship and sometimes you need the other team to drop down a notch. But even during the conference season, you want both teams to be undefeated for as long as possible prior to the rivalry game. In non-conference games, rooting against your opponent makes no sense at all. When Utah is playing Oregon, and BYU is playing Florida State, I bleed both red and blue.

That didn't work out very well for me today, but even more disappointing was the reaction of the fans. Utah fans were only too thrilled to revel in BYU's annihilation in Provo, and Cougar fans returned the favor as the Utes' 16-game winning streak ended in Oregon. I was upset about both results.

Fans try their darnedest to believe that their team will win every game it plays. I'm sure that every Utah fan is positive that the Utes will roll on November 28 in Provo, and BYU fans are itching to avenge last season's turnover-laden debacle. So if you're sure that your team will win the rivalry game, why wouldn't you want your opponent to be ranked as highly as possible going into that showdown? Even if you don't think your team will win, you probably stand just about the same shot of beating your rival whether they're 11-0 or 6-5 or 2-9, because rooting against them doesn't change their personnel or how you'll prepare for the game.

College football isn't like pro football; rankings matter. What if BYU had successfully defended its home field against Florida State today and then won its next eight games. The Cougars would be 11-0 on the morning of November 28, probably ranked third or fourth in the nation. If I'm a Utah fan, I'm salivating at that point. After all, I know my team is going to win, and a victory over a top five opponent on the road in Provo would mean a whole heck of a lot to me. I would want BYU fans to come into that game chanting "BCS!" so that I had a chance to rip their hearts out and let them watch their shot at history bleed to death in front of them. It would be very disappointing that the Seminoles stole that opportunity away from my team today.

Same story for BYU fans. Last year, Utah trounced your Cougars 48-24. Wouldn't you prefer Utah to come into this season's edition of the rivalry game as spotless as possible, so you have a change to rip the heart out of the Utes' Mountain West championship or, for that matter, BCS hopes? And wouldn't the crowning achievement of the regular season be a post-Thanksgiving victory over a highly ranked Utah team, proving that you are for real by beating your third highly ranking opponent of the season?

(On this same note, what is the deal with the "OVERRATED" chant that we hear at basketball games when the home team pulls an upset? If your opponent was overrated, doesn't that diminish your accomplishment? You're basically saying, "You weren't as good as people thought. . . which actually means we should have beaten you, so it's not really as special we seem to be saying it is.")

This doesn't even begin to address the fact that both BYU and Utah fans stand to benefit from every win (by either team) against a quality opponent from another conference, inasmuch as it makes the Mountain West Conference look good. Winning in conference has the same effect when it produces high rankings and national attention. We're all trying to show the nation that we play great football out here, and if BYU helps win an automatic BCS berth for the conference, Utah will appreciate that contribution, and vice versa.

I know, I know: You just can't bring yourself to root for your rival. I get it—I really do. It's hard to tell your heart to shut up and root with your brain for 11 games. You've trained yourself to hate everything about the other school—especially their smug fans (and yes, both sides of every rivalry have smug fans), and, well, you just like seeing them lose. I'm telling you that rejoicing in BYU's loss to FSU, or Utah's loss to Oregon, is myopic. You're selling your birthright for a mess of pottage. You could have had so much more joy if your opponent on November 28 were unblemished and highly ranked as they strapped on their pads that morning.

It's worth it, because nothing is sweeter than beating your rival when they're flying high.

Blogging on blogging

I think blogging used to be fun. Did I kill it? Maybe. Also, it's possible that I put too much pressure on myself. One of the downsides of being a professional blogger—part of what I do for my company is blog about our software—is that you realize there are really intelligent people out there analyzing blogs and what makes them successful. You also begin to over-analyze everything you write from every possible perspective, trying both to please and not to offend your audience.

Toni, Anna, and I are in Logan, visiting Thad and the other heroes of Butterknife Estates. They're playing some Super Smash Brothers Brawl on the Wii and I am on the couch, reading some of my earliest posts on this blog. It's hard for me to believe I'm the same person who wrote those things two or three years ago. Also surprising is how easy it is for me to see this change (progression or regression; I'm not sure which) as I move forward chronologically from post to post.

I blame two additional factors:

1. Twitter (and Facebook). Why should I spend 45 minutes writing hundreds of words when I could spend 30 seconds writing 140 characters and express the same thought much more concisely? I would blog more freely if I didn't waste so many of my thoughts on micro-blogging.

2. MBA school. I don't have 45 minutes to spare for blogging, most of the time. Beyond that, I'm not sure I allow thoughts to crystallize in my mind, expect for work- and school-related ones. And I assume that people don't care to hear my complaints about David Eccles School of Business.

I'm sure that nobody else really misses good old carefree-blogging Ben—there are plenty of other bloggers out there to fill our lives with their thoughts—but I do. Blogging used to be my creative outlet, and I need a way really write freely about random ideas and events.

Anna the baller

I know, I know: back-to-back posts about the baby. What have I become? Hosander? But this one was right up my alley.

First of all, thank you to the wonderful people in Mexico for making a baby-sized door-mount basketball hoop that Walmart could sell for $1 and still make a profit. Anna loves it.


Here she is dunking on me. There was no one around to confiscate this tape. I have to own my shame.


Now she grabs the rebound and is about to throw it down with the kind of authority that only an 18-month-old girl can command. After this dunk, she proclaimed herself the next Dominique Wilkins.


Well, maybe not yet. But she is definitely the Darryl Dawkins of two-foot-high rims.


Here she causes a 45-minute delay when her monster dunk breaks the rim. So powerful. Shaq would be proud. But she is the complete player:

She is working on her crossover. She wants to go one-on-one with Kevin Garnett, but she is waiting until his knee is 100% recovered after surgery so that it's a fair battle.

How to make an 18-month-old hate you forever

I blogged about my thoughts on children's shows here 18 months ago. Well, fast forward through Anna's entire life thus far and you will find a girl who now loves—loves—Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, on Playhouse Disney. Sometimes she stands at the top of the stairs, points to the bottom, and says, "Show! Show!" (Since we don't want her to get addicted to television, this often leads to a tantrum when we refuse to take her downstairs.)

At the end of each episode, the characters do a ridiculous dance to a song called "Hot Dog" written and performed for the show by the quirky, somewhat annoying band They Might Be Giants. Last week, I happened to find the song on iTunes, and when I played the 30-second free preview, Anna dropped whatever she had been doing and bolted across the room, thinking that I was playing an episode without her.

Today I got the full version of the song, and the same thing happened: I started playing it, and she practically flew over to me (at the kitchen table), her little legs a blur. We listened to the song, with Anna somewhat confused the whole time; after all, there was plenty of music, but no video.

As soon as it ended, she said "Show!" in a tone so demanding and matter-of-fact, it was as if she had said, "You'll play an episode for me now, thank you very much." I immediately busted up laughing. This hurt Anna's feelings deeply, and she cried and cried on my lap—not a whine or a tantrum, but a deep, sad cry.

Even after I relented and started playing an episode of the show for her, she was still heartbroken. I delivered her to Toni and gave her a few minutes to calm down, but the sight of me made her cry again. She finally got over it after maybe 20 minutes, but I'm terrified that I've scarred her for life and that she will have self-esteem issues because daddy laughed at her.

Hopefully these little kids are as emotionally resilient as everyone says they are.