I'm a habitual Facebook user, and I say this without shame. Since I'm from Chicago originally - and since most of my best friends live hundreds of miles away - I use the social network to communicate. I check out the latest pictures from Iowa football games (go Hawks!), write snarky comments on friends' walls, and reconnect with people I haven't seen for several years.

It's fun, and quite addicting, and mostly harmless.Facebook and I have a long history. In 2004, when I was just a wee freshman in Iowa City, my buddies told me about this cool Internet thing called Facebook. It was college-specific, remarkably simple, and it lacked the covert creepiness of other social networking sites like, say, MySpace.

So, I wandered down to the computer lab (my ancient laptop couldn't connect to the Internet in my dorm - these were trying times) and set up a Facebook account. I downloaded a profile picture, shot-gunned a bunch of friend requests, typed in my favorite quotes and movies, and wrote absurdly personal reflections in the "about me" section (I was melodramatic in my youth).Soon I was checking my Facebook page every couple of hours, and my friends were doing the same. It was a phenomenon, a rage. It took college by storm. "Facebook me" became part of our daily lexicon, and we were absurdly informed. Who's that cutie in Journalistic Ethics 101? Facebook knows. Why's that poor girl crying in the dormitory hallway? Check the relationship status on her profile page - therein lies the answer.

I remember one day during junior year, when the Facebook server blew up and nobody could log in. There was panic, quite literally. That's how important it had become, how central to a college student's daily life. And then things got weird. Really weird. Facebook expanded. It grew larger and more all-encompassing, more invasive. The news feed feature was superfluous and troubling. If your relationship ended, as college relationships often do, your friends would instantly know your heart was broken (there was even a quaint little broken heart icon).

Then high school kids got involved, and (gasp) adults. I thought this wasn't MySpace, we said. I thought Facebook was cooler than that.Times had changed, we realized. Facebook was no longer the "college thing." It had advertisements now, and it was a billion-dollar business.

We had known it was coming, of course - Facebook was just too popular. But still, we were saddened by the network's blatant commercialization, and even as we grew older, as we came to know more about the world and its unfair realities, we felt betrayed. We had lost something pure, something unadulterated by money or greed, and we would never get it back.I'm not quite as obsessive as I was then. Sure, I'll sometimes spend half an hour browsing the network, but I try not to go overboard. It's a dangerous thing, Facebook, because in many ways it's like a time machine - you can look up old friends, leaf through old pictures, remember the good times and the bad times and the carefree moments of collegiate youth, and sometimes it will get to you. On Saturday night I saw The Social Network, that movie about Facebook's idiosyncratic inventor, Mark Zuckerberg. I thought it was a good flick, poignant and thoughtfully made. It detailed the company's founding, went over the various bumps in the road (and many bumps there were).

I don't want to give too much away, so go see it for yourself. Think about where you were when you joined Facebook. Think about what it's become. If you were part of it from the beginning, if you signed up in college and watched the network shift and transform, you might find the film particularly moving.You might even go home and check your Facebook page.

Nick Rotunno is a staff writer for The Press. He can be reached at 665-8176, Ext. 2021 or via e-mail at nrotunno@cdapress.com.