Philip KENNICOTT Friends all over the world.. .That's all very well but if music is a map to the soul, am I giving away too much of the real me?

Onceagain, kicking and screaming, I've been dragged to new technology. This time, it's Facebook. For those of you unfamiliar with the website (bless your Luddite hearts!), Facebook is a networking site where you can post your likes and dislikes, your current state of mind, the books you're reading, the movies you're watching, and collect friends from the far reaches of cyberspace. It is popular with people of all ages, for whom it functions as a kind of perpetual class reunion, keeping people in touch with old classmates, colleagues, friends and neighbours.

The etiquette that governs these new technologies is fluid and amorphous. If someone asks to be your friend, and you agree, they instantly gain access to your self-description, which includes, prominently, a listing of your musical likes. It used to be you went to a concert hall to meet people of like minds on the subject of music. "Oh, so you're a Mahler man," someone would say, with a hearty yuck-yuck and a back-slap as you went down the aisle.

These days, you just inscribe your preferences on Faceboolc Here's what I wrote: "St John Passion, IVIissa solemnis, Machaut, Piaf, Schiotz, Mahler 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, late Beethoven, and Chopin." And then, realising how pretentious that list must seem to anyone who isn't a ferocious classical music lover, I added: "Also, singers from around the world, pianists of many stripes, various folk/pop/world music groups, and Piazzolla." I'm not sure that really softens the blow.

Now, is any of this honest? Of course, Facebook doesn't give you any guidelines on how to use the musical preferences page. Should they be exhaustive? Or representative? What to make of omission? I confess, now you know a dirty little secret once known only to the intimates in my Facebook circle: I've never cottoned on to Mahler's Third and Eighth symphonies. The Third just wears me out, and the Eighth is too clangorous, too metaphysically pompous.

Want to be my friend? One supposition behind Facebook is that shared passions, shared prejudices, shared blind-spots (and these Mahler symphonies are undoubtedly personal blindspots), give you entree to the emotional life and inner character of a person. But

I suspect if I met someone who presumed intimacy with me based on a mutual dislike of Mahler 3 and 8, the chances are I would find him or her a total bore.

I started my campaign 15 years ago. My inclusion of the cryptic "Schiotz" reference is really an acknowledgement of defeat. Schiotz lovers of the Facebook universe, let us hunker down in cybercommunion, us against the world. Melchior be damned. Let the friend requests roll in.

Of course, I'd much rather do this sort of sharing the old-fashioned way, after dinner, over a post-prandial drink, with a stack of promiscuously assembled vocal CDs and a group of well lubricated friends. The new sharing seems too easy, too clinical. If you see a mysterious name on someone's music list, just punch it into your web browser and 99 times out of 100, mystery solved. A lifetime of musical discovery can be distilled, and replicated by a perfect stranger in a matter of hours.

I suspect I'm using this technology in an idiosyncratic way. The essence of websites like Facebook is speed, change, and the constant marketplace of the new, the fashionable, the hip. Most users, it seems, are constantly updating their musical and movie preferences, as pop music comes and goes. I think of music as a map to the soul, and am then more than a little disturbed to think that that map is now out there for anyone to read.

If my Facebook circle grows, Twill probably remove most of the music I've put on my profile page. It will be replaced with something more generic, less directly revelatory. I'll throw in more contemporary stuff (I'm not entirely stuck in the 19th century) and make it all a little less pompous. But there's one thing I won't change. The 10-volume Aksel Schiotz collection remains on my Facebook wish-list, and one day, for certain, I'll send some credit card numbers through cyberspace to an online record store and, miracle of miracles, real, tangible, threedimensional CDs will come through my front door. And I'll listen to them, at least for a while, in blissful, private seclusion.*