Bill Gates checks out of The Hotel Facebook...

Here I was ready to write a column on another topic that has been burning a hole in me, and Facebook just has to screw it up.

By now, you probably heard that Bill Gates is taking a hiatus from his Facebook page. Understandable. The poor guy set up a page and now has 8,000 people - yes, eight thousand - who have sent him requests for friendship on Facebook. Who says a man can't have too many friends? At least we have a good idea that the website is performing well. That type of love can crash a server, and there were no significant hiccups.

Ah, but here comes the fun part - Bill can't exactly delete his account. In fact, the New York Times showed that deleting an account on Facebook is, as one frustrated customer said, "[Facebook] is like the Hotel California, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

More than a few users have found that in order to truly delete your account, all data must be removed manually, and then pestering Facebook customer service may not be a bad idea. You see, Facebook says the following in its Terms Of Use:

''You may remove your user content from the site at any time" but also that ''...the company may retain archived copies of your user content", which means that you may unknowingly leave an electronic footprint when leaving Facebook "for good".

Since the Ultimate Worm programs that will remove all records of you on The Web (written about in many a sci-fi book) doesn't exist yet (to the best of my knowledge), users wishing to completely delete their Facebook presence should check out this site.

Facebook has responded, but you have to dig into their Help section under "Privacy", where they say, "If you would like your account deleted, please contact us using the form at the bottom of the page and confirm your request in the text box."

Forgive me for asking a dumb question, but why not simply give the user a button saying "Delete My Account", with a couple of "Are you really sure?" decision boxes? Is that too darn practical?

And in light of my previous post, will Facebook ever "get it"?