When Israel Ruiz learned there was a group on the networking Web site facebook.com named “A.F.F. — the Anti-Frat Faction,” he was incensed. So incensed that he created his own Facebook group: “Gdi’s are Inferior Club.”

“Everybody has pride in their organization,” said Ruiz, management junior. “Whenever you see someone go against things you stand for, when they say all we do is party or buy our friends, you get upset.”

“GDI” stands for “Goddamn Independents,” referring to people who are not part of a greek organization, and as far as I can tell, the apostrophe is a typo; it’s not meant to be possessive.

Facebook spokesperson Chris Hughes said in an e-mail that the idea for the site came to then-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in 2004.

“It was a pretty simple concept,” Hughes said. “To create a universal online database for college students with social-networking functionality. He revamped the idea of the original college Facebooks — the books of bad freshman-year ID photos and boring information — by putting them online and giving students the control over the information they wanted to share with others. At the outset, Facebook was a project by and for Harvard students, but because more than 6,000 Harvard kids signed up within the first three weeks, it seemed crazy not to open it up to a few other schools.”

Today, Zuckerberg employs about 100 people. Facebook has more than 7.3 million members from about 2,100 colleges and 22,000 high schools.

“The site’s growth has been incredible,” Hughes said. “In the beginning, Mark was just playing around with the idea for Harvard kids, but a few months in, it became clear that we’d created a monster. It’s transformed itself from a small, Harvard project to the seventh-most trafficked site on the Web.”

That puts it two spots behind the similar MySpace.com, which The Boston Phoenix reported in the summer of 2005 jumped to the fifth-most trafficked web domain.

For readers unfamiliar with Facebook, it’s a bizarre place. Unlike MySpace, which is available to anyone, Facebook is only available to people who have addresses associated with a high school or university. Also unlike MySpace, which is geared significantly toward employment networking — in an October 2005 interview with The Austin Chronicle, John Cale, original member of The Velvet Underground and producer of Iggy and the Stooges first album, said of MySpace: “It’s a dream for the record companies; you don’t have to leave the house,” — Facebook seems geared entirely toward entertainment.

Once you create a profile on Facebook, you can search for friends, join groups and “poke” people. “Poking” is a bizarre feature that I felt might compromise my journalistic integrity if I experimented with it. There is an array of ways to find friends on Facebook, including searching by school, classes and high school graduation date. Hal Denbar, a Texas A&M University alumnus I knew from high school, found me within a few weeks of joining the site.

“Every once in a while, I’ll click on the high school graduation year because it shows you who all is on facebook from high school.” Denbar said “It’s interesting to see what everyone is up to these days. Who’s changed, and who’s still the same.”

Facebook can get a little raunchy, too. When you add a friend, there are a list of ways you met the person, including “we hooked up.” When creating a profile, the site asks you what you’re looking for. Included in those options is “random play,” all tongue-in-cheek of course. And it doesn’t take long to find pictures of bikini-clad 20-somethings frolicking on the beach or at their apartment’s swimming pool. Don’t worry about your high-school-aged little sister though, you can only view the profiles of people within your social network.

“Facebook is the safest network on the Web,” Hughes said. “We have a two-tiered privacy-control system. In the first, access to users’ profiles is limited only to the other members of the educational community. Unlike other sites like MySpace — where the info is available to more than 20 million people — on Facebook a user’s profile is available at most to a few thousand people who already share in that person’s ‘real-world’ community.”

That’s comforting, because Facebook gives you the opportunity to post such information as your cell phone and dorm room numbers.

“I was slightly anxious about posting my cell number online, and it seemed risky,” Amber Nicole Roy, psychology junior, said in a Facebook message. “I have yet to have any problems as far as anybody I don’t know calling me, and it’s been helpful in keeping in touch with old friends.”

Roy has 70 friends at Texas State listed on Facebook. She said she knows about 75 percent of them and about 25 percent she knows only through Facebook. She also has nine pictures of herself posted, a fairly reasonable number by Facebook standards. Biology junior Bobby Cast, creator of the group “The Liberal University Star,” has 142 pictures posted. He said it took him about two weeks to post that many pictures. Cast’s group and the group “The University Star is Liberal Crap” are devoted to complaining about the left-wing bias of my employer. As I write this, “The University Star is Liberal Crap” has 163 members. Cast and I are the only members of his group.

“I would not say I am disappointed in membership of my group,” Cast said in a Facebook message. “I understand that my views are not those of the mainstream media but so long as one voice is speaking out then I am pleased.”

The site also has the nifty feature “pulse.” “Pulse” lets you compare your school’s trends with other trends on Facebook. The 20,057 Facebook users from Texas State share the No. 1 listed music, movie and television show with the rest of Facebook; Jack Johnson, The Notebook and Family Guy respectively. Texas State deviates from the rest of the site at most listed books. According to “pulse, The Bible is the most-read book at Texas State. That makes sense. I’ve noticed a lot of biblical references in Family Guy. Ironically, the No. 1 book of Facebook is Harry Potter. I guess that refers to the whole series. We’re lucky to be in such a holy academic community, since the rest of Facebook is a bunch of wizard- and witch-worshipping heathens.

In the summer of 2005, United States Marshals arrested 22-year-old Colton Pitonyak at the U.S.-Mexico border and charged him with the murder of 21-year-old UT student Jennifer Cave. The media circus that follows such events led to scrutiny of Pitonyak’s Facebook profile. The Austin American-Statesman reported Pitonyak’s profile quoted Al Capone and listed a screen name as “IloveMoneyandHos.” Similarly bizarre reporting has focused on the MySpace profiles of people involved in other incidents across the country.

Even The Star couldn’t resist going to Facebook for coverage of this year’s Associated Student Government elections. On April 5, City Councilman Chris Jones, public administrations senior, wrote a letter to The Star about the “Gdi’s are Inferior Club.” The letter was published on the last day of Ruiz’s bid for ASG vice president.

“I would hope the Texas State students would have the mentality to not take that type of thing seriously,” Ruiz said. “But after it was all said and done, it did affect the outcome.”

Ruiz received less than 30 percent of the vote.

Ruiz said he hid the group during the elections, but intended to make it visible to Facebook users regardless if he won or lost. After the elections, the group’s site re-appeared with the message “Back Back Chris Jones” prominently displayed.

Ruiz stressed that Facebook is for entertainment, and should not be taken seriously.

“I just don’t think Facebook is relevant in any kind of situation,” Ruiz said. “When it comes to a person’s character, integrity, drive, I don’t think Facebook is the appropriate place to look.”