Facebook friends share '25 Things' with the world

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Thanks for sharing.

If you are a member of the 150-million-strong Facebook nation, you have probably learned some fascinating — or, let's face it, some not-so-fascinating — facts about your friends as part of the latest fad, the pass-it-forward viral game "25 Random Things About Me."

Like a mutating chain letter, though more artful and less threatening, 25 Things arrives as a Facebook note from a friend. That friend posts 25 facts about himself and "tags" 25 people and asks them to do the same thing.

The phenomenon continues to snowball. Facebook can't quantify activity specific to 25 Things as it does applications such as Flixster. But spokeswoman Brandee Barker says that over the past week the number of daily "notes" has more than doubled and the number of daily tags of a Facebook member in a note has grown by five times.

"I would say that anecdotally I've never seen a note spread as quickly as this has on Facebook," Barker says. "What is really unique about this is it's a really meaningful piece of content. Some of the these notes are touching and frankly very insightful."

Unlike most unsolicited (and unwanted) e-mail chains, 25 Things is usually welcomed. "It's one of my favorite Facebook things," says Pete Hines, vice president of public relations and marketing at Bethesda Softworks. "I've learned a lot about people I've known for a long time and people I only know a little."

A random thing about Pete: "I am one of the least organized people I know. I don't do well with paper, or filing things away, but I am religious about my e-mail inbox."

Should you choose to join in the 25 Random Things craze, media consultant Shelly Palmer recommends that "you shouldn't put anything online that you would not want to see on the front of the newspaper or that you would not want a potential client or your boss to see," says Palmer, whose book Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy is due this spring.

Social networks represent a paradigm shift in communicating. "This is the beginning of what will be a never-ending raft of social network games like this," he says.

How true. Already appearing in Facebook pages is a new note: "A Bunch of Questions — Share."