kid's allright

I have the distinction of not having an "official" generation.  By some accounts, I’m on the tail of Gen X.  By others, I’m just at the cusp of Gen Y.  But regardless of the original intentions and date demarcations set forth by Douglas Coupland,  when I look at my friends (who tend to all be anywhere from one to ten years older than me) compared to my sister and her friends (she is three years younger), I would say their tastes and worldviews could possibly be generationally different.

I registered for Facebook last night for the first time (here I am).  I’ve dabbled in social networking sites for some time, but hadn’t used Facebook specifically.  Where Facebook differs from other sites, of course, is that it is the next-gen Classmates.com in that it’s original focus was on helping college kids connect.  Much of that "connect with your classmates" infrastructure survives and it is fascinating to play around with. 

Here are the number of my ex-High School schoolmates presently on Facebook by high school graduation year.  Just for reference, the average class size at my high school is about 70.

• 1991 – 0
• 1992 – 0
• 1993 – 0
• 1994 – 0
• 1995 – 1 (it’s me)
• 1996 – 2
• 1997 – 2
• 1998 – 8 (my sister’s year, though she’s not on there)
• 1999 – 8
• 2000 – 21
• 2001 – 40
• 2002 – 47
• 2003 – 52
• 2004 – 54
• 2005 – 65
• 2006 – 68

Now, let’s compare this to Classmates.com:

• 1991 – 11
• 1992 – 15
• 1993 – 15
• 1994 – 11
• 1995 – 18
• 1996 – 32
• 1997 – 19
• 1998 – 20
• 1999 – 26
• 2000 – 19
• 2001 – 16
• 2002 – 26
• 2003 – 8
• 2004 – 12
• 2005 – 10
• 2006 – 2

Interesting to see how Classmates sort of peaks right during the initial college age years of internet bubble 1.0 (1995-1999), and right at the tip of Gen Y’s entry into college.  I wonder how those growth numbers on Facebook will look 5 years from now…

UPDATE: My good friend and 1995 classmate Matt, who is also a bit overly web literate (just like me) just pointed out that he too has a Facebook page.  So that updates the 1995 Facebook user count to 2.  I wonder why he didn’t show up in my search?