Now you can finally live the dream and not visit any site except Facebook for your social networking, blogging, chatting, gaming, vampire-creating, and now searching needs.

Before answering this question, let us examine another internet phenomenon: Nigerian scam emails.  Here’s a heart-wrenching excerpt from one sent to me:

BEFORE I START, I MUST FIRST APOLOGIZE FOR THIS UNSOLICITED MAIL TO YOU, I AM AWARE THAT THIS IS CERTAINLY AN UNCONVENTIONAL APPROACH TO STARTING A RELATIONSHIP, BUT AS TIME GOES ON YOU WILL REALIZE THE NEED FOR MY ACTION.

(…)

PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR CONFIDENTAIL PHONE/FAX NUMBERS SO THAT I CAN FAX TO YOU ALL THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE BANK AND ME.

Starting a relationship?  This sounds like social networking material!  But confidential phone and fax numbers?  Surely they don’t belong in a social network!  Or do they?

Welcome to the Numerical Network

Imagine it: you’ve always been searching, waiting, for that someone to come along.  But how can you find them?  Search for similar interests?  Go out and talk to people?  What if you hate talking and have no interests?  Just enter your name, phone number, fax number, social security number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and anything else you can think of, and let the computer take over.  You’ll be with that numerically-similar person of your dreams in no time!

The use-cases don’t end there, however.  What if you’re a number theorist who has a list of their favorite numbers, and wants to share it with the world?  Or what if you’re a lonely math student looking for someone who’s favorite number is 7.5?

And there you have it.  The future of social networking.  Coming this summer.

Let’s start with “happy birthday.”  Note that no one was born on February 29th.

How about something more morose…so who died on January 22nd, anyway?

And finally, one suggested by Facebook.  Note the two spikes on December 31st and January 1st.

The system, which looks very similar to the Gmail chat interface, allows you to chat in real-time with other Facebook users who happen to be online.  Users’ current status messages are shown below their names, and a a user’s current published activities (wall posts, etc.) appear in the chat window as they occur.  Additionally, the bar provides a new interface to the Facebook notification system; new notifications (messages in your inbox, friend requests, and the like) appear in the bottom right corner of the screen.

At first, such a utility might seem like a nuisance, and, worse, an invasion of privacy.  But, like the news-feed and mini-feed, it shows no more information that one could already access via browsing Facebook.  (Indeed, for the last year or so, a user’s online status has been available on their profile, unless explicitly disabled.)

The chat presents an even more interesting concept–while instant messaging has been around for quite some time now, Facebook’s system allows you to instant message those who don’t use conventional IM services, or perhaps are just acquaintances.  While this could present an annoyance for those who don’t want to be bothered (don’t worry, there’s a setting to disable it in the privacy settings), it seems that it generally, could make keeping in touch easier and more efficient than ever before.

Indeed, the new Facebook notification bar/instant messaging tool promises to become the WAVE OF THE FUTURE!

I have more active users than I do users!  How about them apples?