Call it a social network, a place to keep track of your old friends and fill up those empty hours when you have nothing to do, or even call it a place to hook up — whether you like it or not, the Facebook website has become hugely popular among Egypt’s upper-class teens and twentysomethings.

Launched in 2004 to students of a limited group of US-based colleges, Facebook is a social networking site where members create profiles that are visible only to other members; they can then form networks of friends, create groups open to people with similar interests, upload and share photos, and send messages to friends. The site sorts member profiles by the different groups each belongs to, making it easy to find old (and new) friends.

Facebook has seen explosive growth in Egypt among its target market of English-speaking college students, with over 20,000 Egyptian users signing up since general registration began in October 2006. Although young Egyptians still visit MySpace and other social networking sites, Facebook is the clear winner locally.

In fact, the site has become an essential part of the day to many (myself included) who first mocked the vanity and shallowness of the people who had become obsessed with it.

But as soon as I got an account, I too was hooked, and I’m not alone.

“I have about 10 friends who used to make fun of me because of Facebook, but it ended up that they all joined it — and they’re addicts as well,” says Nazly El-Missiri, a management student in her third year at the German University in Cairo (GUC).

Mohsen Allam Matchmaking heaven or a pathetic attempt to get a date?

The site is also frequented by users looking to pass the time browsing through masses of pictures (complete with comments from other users), reading posts and blogs and keeping track of people’s news. “It’s an addiction for me, as I am free and have nothing to do,” says Neveen Amin, an unemployed business-administration graduate of the Modern Sciences and Arts University (MSA).

Amin isn’t the only person spending every minute on the site. “I log on almost every hour — it became an addiction,” says Marwan Sameh, a student in his second year at GUC. El-Missiri, who also describes the experience of using Facebook as an addiction, says she logs on anywhere between twice and six times a day.

And the visits aren’t short: “I log in three hours a day, more or less, and usually at night too,” says Sherry El-Maayirgy, a marketing executive at Horizon Fairs.

Nor, I found out, is everyone visiting Facebook for solely, well, platonic reasons. For many, Facebook is a new way for those looking for casual relationships to meet up. More on that in a moment.

Although similar to other social-networking sites such as Hi5 or MySpace, Facebook has caught on in Egypt because it provides more privacy, allowing users to control their settings so that only their approved friends can see their data. Most other social-networking sites allow members to access the info of any other user without restriction.

Omar Attia, marketing manager of Nile Lily restaurant, agrees that being able to limit access to your profile is important, especially in Egypt, where women will often attract unwelcome advances not only on the streets, but also on the web.

“It limits horny, desperate geeks from checking girls’ profiles,” he says.

“The difference between Hi5 and Facebook is that [on Facebook] you can’t see [profiles of] people you don’t know or you are not connected to through a network or something,” adds Mohamed Ismali, a marketer who also holds a pilot’s license. “Anyone on Hi5 can see anyone’s pictures and it is not all that big on privacy. Also, Facebook is more user-friendly and helps you be interactive, like the writing on the wall is simple, quick and I think very convenient.”

For many users, finding a common friend with another member reassures them that this person is more or less in their same social network and so it is safe to add them. “You can get to know new people; it happened to me when someone is on my friends list and he or she adds me, I accept it since there’s someone mutual, so it’s not a complete stranger,” says El-Missiri.

“It’s not Hi5 or anything public like that. I will only meet people I know through someone else, that’s the good thing about Facebook,” says Fouad Hammoud, a mass communication student at the American University in Cairo (AUC). “I like it because I don’t have to deal with anyone, and only with people I know.”

No matter how secure or private, the internet can never be 100 percent safe, and some Facebook users are more wary. “I don’t meet new people just meeting up with old friends, and I don’t think it should be a place to meet new people,” says Amin.

Salma Hussein Amer, presently unemployed, shares Amin’s worries and agrees that the internet isn’t a place to meet new people. “How should I know what this person is like?” she asks.

As the media have extensively portrayed the dark and dangerous side of the internet, the users have learned their lesson well. “I’m worried they’ll turn out to be psychos or something!” says Sarah Ibrahim, a circuit procurement analyst at Orange. “I’ve noticed people tend to make up stuff about others and unfortunately bad news gets around pretty fast.”

“It is really an amazing place to meet new people and catch up with old friends who have drifted away through time,” says El-Maayirgy. As the site allows people to organize networks according to common interests, people can join their college and school networks and browse through lists of other members (as well as lists of their friends’ friends), making it easy to find friends with whom they had lost contact.

“I keep track of my friends and share our photos,” says Ahmed El-Nakeeb, a graduate student. Others like Sameh find it an opportunity to stay in touch with people they don’t get to see.

Those who live abroad or have friends who do have also benefited from the service. “I use it for keeping track of my friends and trying to stay in touch with ones I lost or I may eventually lose,” says Mohammed Atef, operations manager at Procter and Gamble Bahrain.

El-Missiri uses the site to scroll through lists of her friends’ friends. El-Missiri finds it fascinating, “[It] keeps you updated with what people are doing, where they hang out, their interests and so many other things.”

Tony Amer, a business-administration student at AUC, also uses it to stay in touch with friends abroad and to “pop my friends messages when I need something, since I don’t normally chat.”

While the site is clearly useful for keeping track of existing friends, it also makes it easier to meet new people and make friendships. “I like to meet new people and make new friends from everywhere,” says Louay Essam, an engineering student at the Alexandria Institute of Technology.

Facebook, along with other social-networking websites, is also used as a place to form well less-than-innocent relationships. While few would openly admit to using the internet to hook up, many actually do.

“A lot of people use Facebook and the internet in general to hook up, which is stupid; I think it’s pathetic too,” says Essam.

“Most of the users come here mainly to score. The increasing numbers of female users indicates how desperate and depressed they are — and when they hook up with guys who just want to have fun and realize this late, they blame them and say that guys suck, faking it and stuff like that,” says Facebook user Mohamed Siam.

Essam attributes this to the Egyptian culture, and believes that the phenomenon of people hooking up on Facebook is just because “this is [what] Egyptians are like.” And while many frown upon these relations — or at least see them as “pathetic” attempts to find love — others find it a matchmaking heaven. “I don’t see a problem if two people hook up through Facebook,” says Siam.

Although she thinks Egyptians are “losers” and only interested in foreigners, Sanabel El-Mazny, a store manager, says she uses Facebook and MySpace to meet and hook up with foreigners. “I hooked up with a lot of foreigners through MySpace and Facebook; it’s one of the good ways to make you meet new people and hook up too,” she says.

Innocent or not, Facebook has become incredibly popular in Egypt, and new users get on the bandwagon daily, forming discussion boards, new networks and interest groups. The website becomes more than just a way for people to contact their friends, it becomes an online community with its own weird culture.

Need an example? Look no further than a classic Egyptian group named “If this group reaches 1,000 members, my girlfriend will sleep with me.” Created by the hopeful boyfriend — in cooperation with his girlfriend, who has administrator privileges — this group is surprisingly popular on the site, filled with the most interesting and supportive comments. As of press time, I was unable to confirm whether the group, and its hopeful founder, had reached its target.

Although many of the member interactions are random chitchat, members also participate in meaningful discussions and form political and religious groups, or even use it to promote charity and upcoming events.

The site itself has become the stage for events. Controversy recently hit the AUC community as students and staff debated a beauty contest to assess the “hottest girl at AUC” on Facebook. With hundreds of girls posting their pictures, heated debates ensued between those who saw it as simple innocent fun, and others attacking it for how shallow it makes the AUC community seem.

Whether for or against the contest, hundreds of members logged in to see who the hottest girl turned out to be, and as the heat of the competition increased, the contestants started fighting with each other and with the organizers — many of whom took it as a matter of life or death. The competition isn’t one of a kind — it is only one of many beauty contests, which remain highly popular on Facebook.

As the site becomes more popular, twentysomethings are increasingly whipping out their mobile-phone cameras and smiling: “Let’s take a picture to put it on Facebook.” The picture will be posted on the website only a couple of hours later.