Facebook

I have always been agnostic about Facebook. Whilst I see its usefulness as somewhere to share photos and witty comments with your circle of friends, I'm not sure that all of my real-life friends share the same interests or sense of humour. A wry observation about cats might amuse one friend whilst prompting a terse reply from another. Photographs of wild mushrooms would fascinate one friend whilst making others think I'm a bit odd.

Then there's the 'friend of a friend' problem. I like you and you like Fred, so it follows that I'll like Fred. Not in my experience it doesn't. It might be true if all of your friends are similar - all final year students, say, or all chartered accountants - but my friends are a diverse bunch. I can think of several who wouldn't get on, either in Facebook-land or in the real world.

So, for the first 11 years of its existence I didn't have much to do with Facebook, simply because I couldn't really see that it would work for me.

But more recently I've noticed that Facebook is increasingly a place for groups - informal groups as well as businesses. So I've created a Facebook ID and have started to curate my News Feed to make it into what Mark Zuckerberg called a 'personalized newspaper' of the things that interest me.

I'm pleased with the initial results. Everything in my News Feed interests me. If I lose interest in something I'll just 'unfollow' it. As a side benefit, I can now unsubscribe from most of the update emails that clog up my inbox because the same information appears in Facebook feeds.

I see this as a bit of an experiment. We'll see how we go.