Author Description

During Facebook's early days, membership was limited to students, so a new Facebooker's initial impressions of social networking would have included discussions of keggers and panty raids. But after opening up to the general public in late 2006, the site finally began to reach critical mass. These days, most folks can easily reconnect with old friends, former colleagues and onetime classmates. The artificial barriers between celebrities and normal people are often lowered too, thanks to Facebook's granular privacy controls. In Alan C. Baird's latest book, "facebookworm: dispatches from a social networking junkie," he distills the essence of an egalitarian world currently evolving in cyberspace, using techniques ranging from wry humor to flash verité. [Keywords: creative nonfiction, web, internet, virtual communities.] Videos, samples + more: www.9TimeZones.com/fbworm.htm