Um... since when is Facebook like any other website? Second only to the horrors of MySpace, Facebook has got to be the ugliest website in existence at its level of traffic. Facebook harks back to the bad old days of frames and flashing clip art on websites devoted to people's cats. Only Facebook is worse, with its insidious viral marketing masquerading as cutesy little applications, its ubiquitously cluttered design and never-ending scrolling.

Granted, Facebook is useful for reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances and sharing photos of trips abroad, shared experiences, and so forth. But the user in the article who laments having clicked too quickly when forwarding applications is wrong to blame himself. Facebook is designed for the quick, haphazard forward, the better to spread applications to a greater number of users. You're clicking fast because Facebook wants you to. Otherwise they would have included a nanny dialog ("Forward to 25 people? Click OK or Cancel").

I have yet to use a single forwarded Facebook application with any redeeming value whatsoever, other than dithering about comparing the respective beauty of B starlets.

Remind me, please, why this company has any value at all?

You can pre-approve friends and comments and tagged pictures.

(Oh, and if you don't want to be in pictures on the internet doing keg stands, DON'T DO KEG STANDS WHERE THERE ARE PEOPLE WITH CAMERAS. This is regardless of whether or not you are on Facebook or MySpace.)

I have these arguments with the boyfriend (who, by the way, is a year YOUNGER than me) about how I shouldn't be on MySpace because it's "for kids."

It's a SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE. Yes, you can use it to broadcast your teenage foolishness to the world, but I use it to keep in touch with all my writer friends, and we use the blog feature extensively to critique each other's work.

There are still some of my kids who won't "friend" me on fb. And I resent people my age who think about business contacts first and foremost.

Psst. Mark Zuckerberg is 24, not 22, and the other founders are similarly no longer in the 19-22 group. Yes, they were when they founded it, no, they are not anymore as you contend.

Facebook was once a "college site" as you insist it still is, but it's been open to everyone and multiuse now for two years, which is pretty much an eon in internet time. There are large numbers of younger and older professionals who use it for either social or professional networking within their own groups of friends and acquaintances, not to be the metaphorical old person in a bar hanging around with college kids.

The beauty of a social networking site is that non-overlapping groups can use it for their own purposes and hardly be bothered by anyone else's use of it. I know the people I don't care for from my past are on Facebook, but I don't see them unless I look for them. Just as Facebook originally kept the universities more or less separate, it now keeps each person's social sphere more or less separate.

Your rant is entertaining but it would be slightly more credible if you bothered to check your facts before trying to use them to bolster your opinions. Having a Facebook account (or, for that matter, being an older student -- good job throwing a random insult out there) is not a sign of being immature and refusing to grow up. The two things are unrelated.

...you're offended by someone making reference to "old people."

To all the people over 30 protesting that they're not old.....

You ARE old!! You have only to spend the weekend with some niece or nephew under age 25 to realize you're old.

It's ok! It's fine! Young is a lot younger than you remember it.

I'm 39, and I don't get what all the indignation is about.

Embrace it! Let people joke about it! It's ok, I promise.

now it really is a global village. If your name is on it, assume ANYONE can know about it.

I want to second Dabney. At 33, I guees I'm "old" (thanks, Salon!), but I'm not stupid. These Faceboook over-sharing horror stories have been around for years already, so I know how not to spam my entire group of friends with every stupid time-wasting app I try (hint: you have to pay attention to what button you're clicking).

But some of my much-younger contacts sure as heck spam me with every lame app released. I figured out how to turn off app requests from those friends, and I didn't even have to get help from the 13-year-old boys Salon seems to consider the only non-stupid demographic.

I guess I'll add "you" are old and stupid to "we" love to hate Paris Hilton as another strange and insulting assumption Salon has made about its readers.

It sounds like twentysomethings and teens make the same stupid mistakes as their elders, but lack the capacity to be ashamed of it. That's not actually smarter.

From the sample in this article, I'd say the people who suck at the Net are women. The designated expert is male; the bunglers are female. What an odd stance for Salon to take.

This is great! Of course I posted it on my Facebook page. Hello!

In popular media when being ageist, be sexist as well, in the grand tradition of "I've fallen and I can't get up!" :/

Come on, tell me that all of the posters getting upset about the "old people" reference are just being facetiously angry!

They're like those kids I remember from high school who would aggressively look for reasons to feel they's been slighted, snubbed, offended, "disrespected," etc. by someone - and then wildly wail in self-pity over it.

Lighten up, geezers!!

(Just joking, just joking!)

Wow, an article about how "old people" (in this case anyone over thirty, since apparently in Michael Martin's world personal computing has only existed since perhaps 1990 or so) just don't know anything about the internet or Facebook. How enlightening! I'm eagerly anticipating future pieces embracing other similarly accurate cultural stereotypes, such as Asians being unable to drive, Jews controlling the world's finances and African-Americans possessing natural rhythm. Did anyone on your editorial staff read Martin's article before it was posted? And if so, didn't it occur to anyone how offensive and poorly informed it was? If nothing else, one might imagine Salon would have the good sense not to insult the people who have been reading your journal since it went online in 1995 (and would make them older than dust according to Martin's article). I'd threaten to boycott if you didn't regularly feature Keith Knight and Carol Lay (both of whom are also "too old to understand the internets" ... wonder what they made of the article).