My Name is Glen Paddegit, and I’m the new Merchant Talk insider. I wanted to take a moment to talk about why I love Facebook, and how it has changed my life for the better. While the MySpace craze is dwindling down, Facebook, on the other hand is stronger than ever. What’s the difference between the two you ask? Well, for starters, many of the people who were with Facebook from the beginning use their real names, because it started in college, unlike Myspace in which names such as “Mr. Incredible” and “I’m Da Bomb” seem to be the norm, hence making Facebook easier to find someone. Another great feature of Facebook, is its networking feature. What that means is that you have the option of only allowing people within your network (your city, state, or even college you attended) to view your profile. Facebook has less glitter than Myspace, which seems more like a competition of how loud and obnoxious you can make your profile page.

Ever wonder what your ex-girlfriend looks like now? Sure you can hire a private investigator to stalk her out like Ben Stiller did in the movie, “There’s Something About Mary,” or call her up and find out the hard way that she’s been engaged for 2 years. But why go through all that trouble when a simple search on Facebook along with a click of your mouse to “add to friends” can tell you all the answers you were looking for in a matter of seconds, free of charge! Has she been eating right, and going to the gym twice a week, or is she still the same wing-eating, binge drinker from college, and is slowly but surely looking more and more like Jabba the Hut? Does she have a boyfriend, or is she looking for “random play?” Check her pictures on Facebook and check out what a weekend out with her girls really consists of. Check her wall and see if that schmuck that always flirted with her while you two were together is still trying to talk to her.

The main function of Facebook is to make socializing easier. Remember the days when you went out to a bar, met a cute girl, bought her a drink and then dreaded the awkward moment when she had to leave, in which case you had a split second to decide whether to ask her for her number, or walk way and never see her again? Nowadays, all you need to do is find out her last name, or college she attended, and voila! The next day, hungover, you can see whether Allison really was a knockout, or it was you that was knocked out from all those beers. For all you shy kids out there, Facebook makes asking a girl out 10x easier, and getting rejected was never so harmless. Facebook also allows you to create events and find out who’s really going to come, without calling each person in your phonebook individually.

So, to sum things up, Facebook is a great utility that has consumed a lot of my free time since I’ve joined. I will continuously look to it for relationship guidance, to make me feel more popular, and to stop myself from stalking people in real life…I guess you can call Facebook my virtual therapist.