Does anyone need a friend?

FACEBOOK: Is it not easier to communicate by email?

CAN anybody tell me if there is a Facebook helpline for users who feel they suffer from Alzheimer’s disease? I keep receiving messages with the portraits of lots of my ‘friends’ or their holiday snaps from all over the world. But the strange thing is I don’t seem to be able to recollect ever having met any of them.
Sometimes, however, I do find friends from other countries whom I remember. Last summer I was travelling overseas and met a group of very nice Brazilians as well as a Polish family and we agreed to become friends.
My Facebook page is now cluttered up with messages and photos they exchange with all their friends. The only problem is that they are either in Polish or Portuguese. When I first linked onto the site I rather selfishly thought it was a fantastic means of advertising my recently published novel for free.
All I had to do was mention my book and the message would go to millions who would be rushing to the bookstores or Amazon. It does not exactly work like that. Each person can only contact his or her friends. And these friends first have to be invited to become friends and then agree to become friends. I did a quick calculatlon.
lf I could only become friends with 20 or 30 people, and this could take years, it would neither make me successful nor rich. I could not count on my friends telling their friends to tell their frlends about my book until the whole world knew about it and I was a celebrity and would have my picture in the Sun or the Mirror – with a friend.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg conjured up an amazing new service for members who could log in wherever they were and tell their friends where they were. It is believed to attract over 500 million users but he stated that privacy would be preserved. So what is the point?
In Spain I learnt the word iluslon means both hope and illusion. This applies particularly to how stock markets value internet companies. Facebook doesn’t make any products, it doesn’t sell any, nobody pays to use it. Yet this is now a global organization worth billions of dollars. Are we living in another lnternet bubble or is it the dawning of a new corporate age where the social networking sites are the big brother George Orwell warned about?
What exactly is the point of Facebook and the other sites when it is as easy, if not easier, to communicate by email and attach photos too?
If anybody wants to be my friend, please give me a call or send an email. Does anyone still have a fax machine? A fixed telephone line? Morse code? Or how about posting a card or using carrier pigeons. Is there anyone out there?

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