Facebook Celebrates 500M Users With 'Stories'

You'd think with a count of 500 million, Facebook members would have some interesting stories to share about how the social networking Website has played a part in their lives. And this is exactly what Founder Mark Zuckerberg is banking on with the new Stories application.

To celebrate essentially taking over the entire wired world, Facebook has devised an application, http://stories.facebook.com/, where users can write about their most memorable Facebook connections, situations, reunions, etc. For example, a woman used her status updates as a lifeline for a group of people traveling in Haiti during the earthquake, claims Facebook. After a man found himself in the unemployment line, a mass note to all of "his" friends ended up leading to a fruitful new job. A father reunites with his daughter after 15 years through the magic of the Web. It all sounds like great material for a made-for-TV movie (wait, aren't they indeed turning the story behind Facebook into a movie?) but what Facebook is looking for are these real stories of connecting through the social networking site. Interesting how Facebook didn't cite the well-known example of 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, who has been on a crime spree for the past two years, taunting police through his Facebook page. But anyway...

The application will let users search through stories via a world map, or view them by themes like love, family, reunions, sports, and college.

While many will be inspiring tales of love, happiness, support, and encouragement, it's no surprise that some humorous ones will slip in there. A few I've found: one gal mentions that Facebook has "made her realize that all 16-year-old boys are horrible." Or the couple who plans to get married (one's in Canada, one's in Indonesia) even though they've never met one another in person. Er, ok. There are an endless number of shameless self-promos as well, as la "Facebook helped me meet my current business partner, and things are going well. Check out our Website at..."

The idea is clever, managing to play on people's egocentric and voyeuristic tendencies. But it also achieves one very important task: solidifying Facebook's position as a dominant and important part of 21st century culture. Of course stories will be pushed to friends' news feeds, and can be "liked." The most liked items will then be featured in a "most popular" section. And if promotion among members wasn't enough, the feature is already being promoted through a number of other partners, including LIVESTRONG.com, Justin Bieber, Cristiano Ronaldo, and The American Red Cross; just to name a few.