What is Facebook good for?

I’m generally not a huge fan of social networking sites. Myspace, Facebook and their ilk are lovely ways to get in touch with friends you haven’t heard from in ages, but beyond that, their value is limited. They are made even more useless by the recent trend of placing products and businesses on equal footing with people. Who needs to let the world know they’re “friends” with Pepsi?

A bit of creativity, however, has turned Facebook into a valuable tool for political change. The ability to rapidly link thousands of people with an idea or cause has been harnessed to organize young people in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak is turning 80 soon and some are ready for the occasion.

To mark the big day for the man who has ruled them for 26 years, Egyptians who have known no other leader and who are increasingly going online to challenge him have urged their compatriots to go on strike, wear black, and write “No” to Mubarak on their money.I know all of this, not through news stories, but because activists publicized the details and demands of the strike on Facebook. I don’t know most of my 724 “friends” on Facebook, but their messages and their status updates have become invaluable to me — especially my Facebook friends from Egypt.

A group promoting the May 4 strike has almost 74,000 members, up from about 60,000 a month ago. Its demands are a minimum wage, salary raises linked to inflation, and legislation and other measures to control prices. As admirable as those goals are, I am just as in awe of the creativity that pours into Facebook.

There are many in awe. The Egyptian government for one, seems to recognize the potential power of the internet.

To understand how rattled Mubarak’s regime is by the increasing popularity of what one young man called the “Political Party of the Internet,” look no further than Egypt’s queen and king of Generation Facebook: Esra Abdel Fattah, 27, and Bilal Diab, 20.Esra was detained for more than three weeks for forming a Facebook group calling Egyptians to take part in an April 6 general strike. Her group collected more than 60,000 names. She was released after her mother personally appealed to Mubarak and his wife.

What but desperation would inspire a regime with 26 years under its belt to detain a 27-year-old over a Facebook group?

That was essentially what Bilal told Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif when the latter gave a speech at Cairo University urging Egyptian youth to go online to express themselves. The student interrupted the older man to remind Nazif that there were several young Egyptians in jail for doing exactly what the premiere was calling for. Police promptly whisked Bilal off for several hours, and turning him into a hero for the independent media. The state-owned media did their best to ignore him.

There is no ignoring a mass of 70,000 people though. The ability to easily organize large groups behind their common needs and desires is one which generally frightens oppressive regimes.

More interesting to me is the transformation of Facebook into a political tool. With a massive membership and the ability to group people by interest, maybe Facebook type communities are the future of political activism.