Today, a Facebook page can keep an unemployed talking head permanently in the news — hello, Sarah Palin!

So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that the 43rd president, George W. Bush, has up and joined the social networking site after a relatively quiet post-presidential presence in Dallas.

But unlike other aforementioned politicos using Facebook notes as policy platforms, it looks like Bush's presence is run by as assistant and geared towards publicizing his family's projects — there are posts about Laura Bush's recent memoir and a brief synopsis of how the President has stayed engaged since leaving office (cue the mention of his upcoming tome, Decision Points), plus links to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, the Barbara Bush Foundation, the Global Health Fund and his presidential library.

Sadly, you can't actually friend W — on Facebook he's not officially a person, he's a public figure — but you can 'like' him. And since the page went live this morning over 30,000 people (and counting) have done so.

Just 1,570,000 more and he'll be as popular as Palin. But the most popular politician in the Facebook world is still the one leading the country — Obama has 8.6 million fans.