There are millions of people on the social networking site Facebook. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone under the age of 35 who doesn’t have an account.

And a number of politicians have taken note of that. The latest is Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, 54, who is showing that he can be hip to the lingo of today’s youngins with a spiffy new Facebook page.

Coble’s profile features a picture of him with an unidentified baby (he such a softy) and links to articles about, yep, himself. He lists his religious views as “Trenholm Road United Methodist Church” and his only mentioned interest is “Improving the City of Columbia.” Whatever that means.

The State newspaper noted that he has notched 227 friends in the two months he has had his profile. I noted that The State newspaper needs to get a life.

But then I took it back when I realized that this was actually a real story with real implications:

“So, in the context of Facebook, you can be a friend of Joe Azar,” Coble said, speaking of the Upstairs Audio owner who runs against the mayor every election. (And yes, Coble is Azar’s Facebook friend.)

Azar said Coble asked him to be his friend, not the other way around.

“I really don’t use it much, I just get invitations all the time. It’s kind of how you keep up,” Azar said. “It was very pleasant and polite of Bob to put me on that.”

You see, Coble is using Facebook to tactically lure in his rivals so that he can CRUSH THEM! It’s genius because they’ll never see it coming. Azar is so screwed.

Anyway, I added Coble as a friend, but will he accept? Will I feel snubbed if he doesn’t? Will Coble post scandalous pictures of himself in a bikini? That and more coming up…