A few months back, my friend Philip Cardwell invited me to accept an invitation on Facebook. So I created an account and acknowledged my friendship with him. Then, over the next few days and weeks, other people discovered my meager listing and sent friend requests (and all other kinds of requests). I've begrudgingly acknowledged the friendship requests (eventually)--I mean, I don't want anyone to think I'm not willing to be their friend--but I've never been an active Facebook participant.

And I never will be.

Not too long after Facebook friend invites started pouring in, one friend who requested I add her, and after obviously seeing a neglected profile and no interaction sent me a text message saying, "You've got so much to learn about Facebook!" Of course I interpreted her message as saying, "Ha ha, I know more about something on the internet than you do for once!"

Well, not exactly true. And perhaps if you're one of the folks with whom I've exchanged invites you feel the same way. But let me explain my position. Here's the thing... I've got this website that you're on right now called This Lamp. In spite of the fact that I haven't had time to update the site much lately, Sitemeter tells me that I'm still receiving over 400 hits a day, which is pretty healthy for a personal website, especially a neglected one, in my opinion. And that's not even counting the folks who read This Lamp strictly on the RSS feed which I'm not tracking at the moment. And I wonder how many pastors, politicians and other public figures would love to have that kind of audience on a daily basis? Thus, with my limited time, if I am going to invest my online efforts anywhere, I think I should simply do it here.

In fact, I'm going to completely cancel my FaceBook profile in a few days. There's no point in keeping it. I'm warning you now. I have no idea what happens when one of your FaceBook "friends" disappears. Just don't take it personally.

So am I being anti-social by saying no to social networking? No. This website can be quite the social place at times as are some of yours. Frankly, I consider myself a very social person, and if you've ever received an email from me, you'll notice that I even give out my cell phone number freely. Plus, I've got four different instant messaging identities because I have different friends who use different systems. I often have all four running during the day. Feel free to add me:

AIM/iChat: rmansfield@mac.com
Microsoft Messenger: rmansfield@hotmail.com
Yahoo Messenger: rick_mansfield
ICQ: 7367293

Feel free to chat away with me on any of the above. You'll find I'm quite social. But as for FaceBook, and last year's "in" social site MySpace and all the other social networking tools (Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the new ones that launch each day), I'm going to have to pass.

Who's got the time?