Wormtongue Rubs Saruman's Feet, Whole World Goes Crazy

So today, Mark Zuckerberg, the coolest kid in the world who's actually a full-grown man, revealed his solution to what he calls "The biggest problem in social networking": the new version of Facebook Groups. Now, I've never used the old Groups, but judging by the 17,000 pages Mashable dedicated to the launch today (Mashable: the Wormtongue to Zuckerberg's Saruman), the new Groups feature is way better. Somehow, it will make people more social. Which is a bit like Willie Wonka telling you his candy will solve world hunger. Yes, candy will sustain you in the absence of other food, but it's not really living, is it? You know what else makes people more social Mr. Zuckerberg? Not being on a computer.

The strategery behind the new Groups - which Zuck (and I only use the condensed version of his name for ease of use, not because I idiotically think of him as the free-spirited kid next door) admits will not catch on like wildfire right off the bat - is to get a core group of people using them, maybe 5 to 10% of Facebook users. Or, in other words, all of the 30 year olds in the world still living in their parents' basement. He hopes these doorknobs will eventually invite their friends to join their groups (Zuck might be waiting awhile on that one) and these friends will help "define these subsets of the social graph" as Mashable writes on their website.

Up to this point, most interactions on Facebook were either one-on-one messages or were status updates where all of your friends saw the inane crap you wrote. But now, I guess, you can have conversations within groups (i.e. you can tell Suzie and Steve and Bobby that you had a PB&J sandwich for lunch, and not all of your friends will see it), so the new Groups feature sits right in the middle of the two prior functionalities.

Ah, Facebook.  You know what this whole media event reminds me of? When you were a kid, do you remember the first time you recorded yourself talking into a tape recorder and then played it back? Remember how weird and embarrassing it was to hear yourself, because you'd thought all along that you sounded so smart inside your own ears, but, to your astonishment, on tape you sounded like a lobotomized Charlie Brown? I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg ever has this feeling while up on stage, talking into his McDonald's drive thru headset. When he waxes existential about what the true definition of a friend on Facebook is, does his heart crinkle with remorse? Does he ever wonder what it would've been like to find the cure for Leukemia, an invention actually worthy of a $5 billion paycheck? I wonder.