'Old Farts' Invade Facebook

Journal's Matthew Rose experiences mid-life crisis in cyberspace
By Wesley Oliver,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 3, 2007 1:00 PM CDT
'Old Farts' Invade Facebook
Facebook.com's mastermind, Mark Zuckerberg smiles at his office in Palo Alto, Calif. in this Feb. 5, 2007 file photo. Rapidly rising Internet star Facebook Inc. has sold a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft Corp. for $240 million, spurning a competing offer from online search leader Google Inc. The deal...   (Associated Press)

Facebook has matured from an e-frat house where co-eds post pics of their hedonistic exploits to a cyber-cocktail party where the well-heeled gather to display baby pictures and taunt each other like, well, school kids. “I am so telling Rupert,” a columnist teases the Journal’s Matthew Rose, after discovering Mr. Murdoch’s future employee playing Scrabble on the site.

“Old farts have been swarming the place,” an editor tells Rose, whose obsession with Facebook becomes a comedy of errors: he airbrushes his picture with Photoshop, “the great equalizer,” and “defenestrates himself” by clicking the wrong button. He snubs Jonathan Franzen but befriends Martha Stewart. “The adults have invaded the playground and the kids don't like it,” one user wrote. (More Facebook stories.)

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