Bill Gates Giving Up Facebook

Yeah. We heard it right. Bill Gates had given up on his Facebook. Why? There’s around 10,000 lined up waiting to be confirmed as his “Friend”. I bet you can see more than a couple of ironies in this, right?

Who doesn’t want to have friends? Where almost anywhere give high praises on friendship, here’s one guy who refuses 10,000 people to be his friend. In his defense, he said he asked himself whether he had met one or many of them before really giving up his FB account. I sympathize with the guy. In this age of social networking, friendship seems to have reduced its meaning to mere statistics. I’ve got 200 plus “friends” at my Friendster but I have got to be honest; I don’t know many of them. Just literally picked them up as they appear on any of my pages. I acquired the “Add-me syndrome”.

On the case of Bill Gates, maybe he just got tired of thinking when or where did he exactly meet those who tried adding him up as their friend. With 10,000 in line, who wouldn’t be? And for a man who built his fortune on computers, it’s kind of ironic to figuratively turn your back on one. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be sucked into the Add-me mania. Imagine him trying to befriend every other man/woman on the Forbes List of billionaires through Facebook?  And even if the B-Listers (billionaire-listers!) add him up, would they say “Bill Gates trying to figure out where to have breakfast today, Paris or Hong Kong?” on their FB walls?

“I read a lot and some of that reading is not on a computer,” he said. So here’s another glimpse of the man behind every Microsoft product that we stare to everyday. We would easily imagine him bringing a laptop where ever he goes. But truth to be said, there are a lot of things out there that can be enjoyed without a glare of an LCD monitor. When was the last time you tried reading, the old fashion way? Me, the last book I read was John Grisham’s The Appeal and I enjoyed it, just like the other paperbacks I have of John Grisham’s work. I’m still trying to find a bargain of Rainbow Six and The Bear and The Dragon by Tom Clancy to add up to my Jack Ryan Series collection. There are rumors of disappointment on his The Teeth of the Tiger but I still have to read it. And of course, I am looking for the Harry Potter collection too. I am trying to instill the same passion for reading to my two kids. My daughter started on her mag collection (K-Zone) and Pugad Baboy series. My son still has to learn to read. Reading and imagining how the characters move around a plot is really more stimulating than clicking or pointing your mouse pointer to every available link.

Borrowing Gates’ statement, the information technology is “hugely beneficial” but it wastes a lot of one’s time if not so careful in using it. Get up. Get out of the house. Smell the flowers before they become your wallpaper.