by Alma Hassoun

While I was abroad in the summer of 2009, a friend of mine warned me: “this is your last chance to create your Facebook account to keep us updated, and especially to see pictures of you over there. If you don’t, I’ll make one for you.” Most of my friends started using the social networking site since 2007, I guess. Hesitantly, and only to save face, I started using my own profile. Before then I didn’t have a strong reason to use it. I resisted using Facebook because I wanted to keep a small space in my busy life without filling it with more technology, and because of issues of privacy. Today, though being rarely active on Facebook, it is really hard to ignore it, unless it is blocked. It moved from being a social-networking site to being a tool for journalists. It’s an easy way to make contacts with people, and even celebrities or politicians who were so difficult to contact before, and a great source of ideas for articles. The most interesting part of the Facebook feature , we published in our June edition was a caricature about young Syrians’ discussions on Facebook. All it needed to turn the “peaceful” small table tennis balls into burning bombs was a very interesting three-sided conversation between Nadia, a friend now based in Budapest, our other friend Ala, the caricaturist, based in Aleppo, and me sitting in the Syria Today office in Damascus. All thanks to Skype which made such conversations possible. Technology is not anymore annoying to me, but a major need. Although the ping-pong idea was used many times to express political differences, conflicts and fights, Ala managed to carry the feeling of the Facebook atmosphere in the cartoon in a convincing way. This summer, my Facebook account entered its third year. It’s no longer a way to check my friends’ new personal photos, or to comment on their personal statuses, like most other young Syrians, especially journalists, I use it to do my job. At Syria Today we are really making use of Facebook and other social media outlets. We are trying to be more active on our Facebook page, and since mid-April we started our online Daily News Brief, developed our website and most recently created this blog… we must stay connected, it is not a choice any more.