Hi, my name is Scott Bouchard, and I have a Facebook account.  So do most people plugged in these days. Actually, this morning on the TODAY Show, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, claimed that the social networking giant has surpassed 175 million users and is gaining approximately 1 million US users alone every week.  Even TMCnet is on Facebook now.

I'm pretty good about my usage though.  I log in on average once a day (usually right before bed) to browse through updates, and sometimes more frequently if I have messages coming in that require a response.  But, there are people in my life that almost need an intervention regarding their Facebook habits.

When I check updates at the end of a long day of work, it seems everyone else I know spent their entire day inside Facebook.  There are people updating their status every 5 minutes, commenting on the status of every friend, tagging photos, retagging photos, sending gifts, poking, posting notes on 100 question surveys, and becoming fans of some frankly ridiculous junk.  I barely find enough time in the day to read what everyone changed on their account.  I mean... what do these people do when their boss asks why a report isn't getting done, or a client asks why a job is late?

"Sorry that I'm so far behind, Rick changed his status to say he was eating a tuna fish sandwich, and I had to comment on his status to tell him that I had one yesterday.  Then I posted a picture of a tuna fish sandwich and tagged myself and Rick in it, and then I became a fan of tuna fish and wrote a note about it.  Then other people commented about my comment so I had to reply to those comments.  Then I created a note about the 10 things I love about tuna fish and tagged 15 people in it, and told them to fill it out and tag 15 more people if they like tune fish as much as I do.  I'm really quite tired. I'll try to get to it tomorrow."

I mean... seriously.  My favorite is when the people I know who are on social networks all day complain about how much work they have, and how swamped they are, and how little time they have, and that they have to work from home to catch up.

I even ran a little test this week for my own personal amusement.  I removed an acquaintance of mine from my friends list to see how long it took them to find out.  In less than an hour I was asked why I was no longer their friend.  See... when you remove a friend, Facebook does not send that person a message.  The only way they can find out is if they know what their friend number is, and noticed it decrease.  Then they have to scour their friend list and see who is missing.  Sounds time consuming doesn't it?  This all took place before lunch on a work day.

Facebook has its place in this world, but not during standard working hours.