Facebook: Are Your Friends Human or Just Furry Contacts?

According to Wikipedia, Facebook is one of the most popular social networking websites on the Internet today. It brags a membership of over 500 million active users, followed closely only by MySpace. By searching for people who share common interests, hobbies, and professions, folks are quickly able to find old friends, form new relationships, catch up with classmates, virtually farm and build empires, or just check out interesting items posted by a variety of topic groups.

Recently, Entertainment Weekly gave the site a rave review saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-worker's birthdays, bug our friends and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"

I don't know about you, but I am sufficiently addicted to the site and I added the application to my smart phone. Heck, I wouldn't want to miss any of my hugely important notifications while I'm away from my computer!

Since folks are able to join Facebook using any identity they choose, it is no wonder that many animal lovers have gone so far as to create a special Facebook account for their pets. How else would they keep their friends current with juicy tidbits concerning their furry companions in a more purrsonal way?

So I was not at all surprised when CNN recently published an online article about this phenomenon. CNN Tech announced that "A quick scan of Facebook yields at least a few thousand profile pages for dogs and cats along with less common pets such as birds, hamsters, ferrets, turtles, fish and rabbits."

But folks creating a Facebook account for their pet may be inadvertently violating Facebook's Terms of Service.

In an E-mail written to CNN by Winnie Ko, Facebook's spokesperson, said, "People on Facebook want to interact with their real friends and people they know in the real world. Since accounts that impersonate anyone or anything can damage the integrity of this environment, Facebook doesn't allow fake profiles for pets." He added, "There are many places online where people assume identities of either people or, in some cases, a pet ... It's something we've seen with a lot of the first-generation social networks on the web."

Smith suggested that pet owners might more appropriately consider joining an already established social network that is specifically designed for furry friends' interactions, such as Catster.com, Dogster.com, Critterscorner.ning.com and myDogspace.com.

This said, however, in my opinion, since heavy-duty Facebook users have already introduced their pets to their friends in many cases, those users who elect to create "pet" accounts may derive extra benefits in giving their fur, feathered, or finned friends the opportunity to play some delightful games, which inspired the users to join Facebook in the first place. To be totally honest with y'all, I often wonder if one of my farms isn't being harvested by a very hungry rabbit who is out for my carrots.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your opinion.

Image Source: Wikipedia