First-year Steven Klimczak created the “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet” Facebook group. It reached 1 million members Monday night. (John Schreiber)

“My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas:” The helpful mnemonic device for remembering the nine planets in our solar system was rendered obsolete last year when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) declared that Pluto was no longer a full-fledged planet. Luckily for Pluto-mourning Facebook users, SMU freshman Steven Klimczak was ready.

Klimczak is the founder of “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet,” the fourth largest group on Facebook. After only just over a year in existence, the group finally attained one million members at 7:30 p.m. on Monday.

“That’s enough people to fill, like, 22 SMU stadiums,” Klimczak said.

When the IAU made its decision in August 2006 to demote Pluto, Steven was a senior at Episcopal High School in Houston. He heard the verdict and came up with the idea for the Facebook group on the spot. He created the group that night.

“I only invited 150 people,” he said. “That’s all I’ve ever had to invite.”

Within a month, the group had already attracted 50,000 members. By August 2007, the group had 883,000 members. Klimczak says the group owes a lot to the “Related Groups” sidebar on the right of every group page on Facebook and to the Facebook News Feed, which informs users of their friends’ actions on Facebook.

“That’s prime advertising,” Klimczak said. “That helped it grow really quickly.”

But why is the group so popular? Was the loss of Pluto really such a devastating blow?

Group member and junior advertising major Matt Lindner thinks the group is so large because it is a group that united everyone old enough to work a computer under a single cause.

“Regardless of the semantics, I will always consider it ‘The Littlest Planet That Could,'” Lindner said. “Pluto’s planethood affected nothing but a few textbooks and the rhythm of the song we used to learn its name.

Pluto was a planet and those scientists can lobotomize me to convince me otherwise.”

Group member and Tulane junior Becca Bello initially joined the group because she thought the “When I was your age” moniker was funny.

“It sounds like we’re all thinking of ourselves as grandparents telling the old ‘when I was your age’ stories,” she said. “But I think the group is so popular because it’s a fact that was drilled into our heads for our entire lives but changed so quickly.”

Anyone in a field of science is probably used to seeing their research and knowledge altered by new technology and the passing of time. But the demotion of Pluto is arguably one of the more major facts of science to change for the younger generations.

And what better way to commemorate that change than with a T-shirt? Klimczak has taken advantage of the group’s wide membership by selling T-shirts on the group’s profile page. Klimczak says that when he first thought of the potential for profit from the group, he didn’t feel like a lot of people were really selling merchandise through Facebook yet. Still, he felt like the group had already hit a plateau.

“I waited too long, actually,” he said. “But we sell enough to keep a business running.”

In recent months, the group got so cumbersome to take care of that Klimczak enlisted some help. He added Matt Jones, a Seattle Pacific graduate student who studied astronomy at Washington, as another administrator for the group when Jones messaged Klimczak and volunteered for the job. Jones says he asked to be an administrator because there is a good amount of spam that gets posted and needs to be deleted to help moderate what goes on.

“There are a number of discussion boards that are completely nonsense, which is fine, but we want to keep those to a minimum,” Jones said. “Because there are so many people, there are many who look to create disturbances, promote their own products or links or just make a quick buck. So I am there to delete the garbage that I see.”

What began as a funny Facebook group turned into international recognition for Klimczak. He has been interviewed by NASA, which sought his opinion on the Pluto demotion for their newsletter. Klimczak also contributed to two articles about Facebook by the New York Times. The group has been referenced in many online articles and even has its own Wikipedia entry. Last Sunday, Klimczak participated in a discussion of Pluto on one of the BBC’s most popular radio programs, the “Julian Worricker Program.”

But news outlets aren’t the only people clamoring to talk to Klimczak. He’s had to take measures to curb some of the enthusiasm of many of the group’s members. Klimczak says he gets 50 to 100 new friend requests every day and that people message him all the time. In order to deter pursuers, Klimczak has left his own profile page relatively bare.

“I had to do that because people can be creepy and message me and write on my wall all the time,” Klimczak said.

But that’s not to say that the creator of “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet” is easily recognizable or widely known on campus. In fact, Klimczak says he’s told only a few people about his successful Facebook venture.

“It’s cool in the right time,” he said. “Some people care and some people don’t. It can be a fun fact when you’re asked for something interesting about yourself.”

Keeping watch over a Facebook group with more than a million members can be daunting, but Klimczak enjoys the work. When asked if “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet” will be the only group he makes, Klimczak is optimistic that it won’t be the last.

“This is still the only group I’ve created,” he says. “I probably will create another group someday, but not until I have a good idea.”