We Invented The Facebook

During the summer before my freshman year in college, I got a mailing from my University.  They wanted me to fill out a brief questionnaire about my background, my hobbies, and future academic plans.  So I filled it out, dropped it in the mail and didn't think anything of it.

Oh, yeah.  They also wanted us to send in a picture.

Little did I know that these details would be compiled into a manual,  a guide even. Maaaaaan, this book held the key to some of the most important information I needed as an 18 year-old!  

It was titled, "The New Hoya Register,"  but everybody called it by another name.

The Facebook.

When I first got it, I'd sit in my small dorm and skim through, looking at which females I hoped to "get at" when I saw them on campus.  If by chance I had a class with one, or saw her in the cafe, I already knew her name, what high school she went to, and her major. This was all valuable information to have when trying to make a freshman love connection. 

What also happened, was when me and the fellas got together and one of them started talking about some girl who he was trying to talk to or had already gotten with, we'd just flip open The Facebook to get her name and everybody's opinion on whether she was worth the attention.

"You know I hooked up with [Name edited to protect the guilty] last night!"

"Who?"

"[Edit] from the second floor.  Get The Facebook."

As the year went on, you'd see different girls' pictures written on, circled, or X'd out all together. Don't ask what the notations meant but use your imagination and I bet you'll be close.

The fact that we had our own printed directory for getting to know our classmates didn't really hit me when the online version made its debut.  It wasn't until I heard about the movie, The Social Network,  which comes out Friday, that I remembered our college book.  I saw a report on Good Morning America that 1 in every 14 people in the world have a Facebook. The creators came up with the idea for their website while they were in college.

Created in college you say?  Hmm, this story sounds familiar.

Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to the Newark, New Jersey Public Schools.  I saw him make the announcement on Oprah. The large sum of money and the overall popularity of Facebook got me thinking about my place in this whole thing.

All I'm saying is that we coined the phrase.  I don't have any graphics or coding experience, so I'm not making a claim toward the idea for the website.  I am however, stating that the ways we used The Facebook and  how the 1 in every 14 people in the world use the site to make connections with others is very similar.  When I ended up officially meeting certain girls back in college, they told me they knew who I was from my picture in The Facebook.  So as a representative of my freshman class, we just want what we're owed.

It's  nice dream, but can you really imagine if we got a piece of that Facebook money? It would probably look something like this.

On second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea.



[image via textually.org]