I don’t mean to brag, but I am a pretty good procrastinator — or, rather, I am a bad procrastinator.

Here I am, the night before this article is due, and I find myself distracted by my latest addiction: thefacebook.com.

Thefacebook.com is an online social community that connects college students to one another — not just within their own campuses, but also with other universities across the country.

I find it a healthy and fun way to spy on my fellow students, while effectively fulfilling the category of procrastination.

A few Harvard students, who wanted to develop “an online directory that connects people through social networks,” created thefacebook.com a little over a year ago. In recent months there has been a considerable rise in students who are joining thefacebook.com.

The idea is nothing necessarily new, as other online sites have provided similar services to people (such as Friendster.com and MySpace.com).

I felt these other sites revolved more around providing online dating services, rather than providing a community base. Another similar site is Classmates.com, but thefacebook.com brings a different side of the online community to the surface and offers much more to users.

Thefacebook.com offers students multiple activities online, free of charge, so long as you are a registered student at a participating university.

Creating profiles, joining groups, adding friends or just browsing through members are only a few of the many available options at thefacebook.com. One of my personal favorites is the ability to “poke” someone. That sounds worse than it is. I press a button to “poke” my friend Stephanie, and she receives a message saying that I have “poked” her. I am quite good at having “poking” wars with my friends, whether they like it or not.

My highly-customizable profile allows students at Sacramento State, or people on my friend’s list, to find out everything I want them to know about me, in just a few short minutes; that is, if they really want to.

My peers, in the comfort of their own homes, can scrutinize everything from my birthday and what I look like to my relationship status and even the classes I am taking. This non-confrontational approach to meeting new people may seem strange to anyone who is not fully-immersed in online culture, but I must urge you not to knock it until you try it.

As with all good things, there are plenty of downsides to thefacebook.com, besides the obvious time-consumption problem (as I tend to check the site as frequently as my e-mail).

Anyone at Sac State has full access to view my profile, which means I shouldn’t post my most embarrassing moments unless I want people to read about them. Another downfall may be the “friend-acceptance” dilemma.

Some individuals try to find as many people as possible to add to their friends list (regardless whether they actually know them), competing to have more people on their list than others do.

Add to this the unspoken rule that it is rude to decline a request to allow someone to add you to their list, even when you really don’t know the person, but then again, I’ve rarely heard of anyone committing that kind of online social suicide.

After comparing the options, I feel that thefacebook.com is a great online community resource for students to experiment with. Just make sure you remember to leave your house occasionally and engage with the real world. The bottom line is that college students want to feel a part of a well-knit community, which makes thefacebook.com a great place for students to be as much–or as little–a part of the online community as they want to be. Hey–if you’re ever bored, give me a poke; I always love a good distraction.

Andrew Stewart can be reached at [email protected]