Facebook Friends

I am not an early adopter of all things technological.  Sometimes, I'm pretty set in my ways.  I have a good buddy, we'll call him Jim, who is a 'heat seeker' and does everything the minute it's available.  For a couple of years, he tried out every social networking software that he could find.  He'd send me links, I'd join up, and then we'd be able to communicate.  He had me up on Twitter a full two years before anyone I knew used it.

Of all the social networking sites, two of them have become very useful to me.  I use LinkedIn to keep in contact with work people, and I use Facebook to reconnect with friends from my past.

Let's face it.  If I know you, I probably have your email.  That's the main way I communicate with people.  But there are a lot of people in my past: folks I've lost touch with, moved away from, or dropped contact with; these are the people I'm finding on Facebook.

I don't always find them, sometimes they find me.  I get a friend request, look at the name and realize there's a 'blast from my past'.  I don't just sit down and type in names from my high school yearbook, sometimes, when my fingers are on the keyboard and I think of someone, I do a search.  Sometimes I find them, often I don't.  But it's certainly opened up an avenue of detection that was formerly too difficult to handle.

I recently had a high school buddy look me up and keep in contact while he suffered and died of cancer.  I later learned that tickling the keys on his computer was about all he had the strength for.  He enjoyed finding people and getting caught up on their lives.  I'm blessed that he reached out to me and allowed me to share a few memories before he moved on.

What astounds me are the number of total strangers who send out friend requests.  Like if they are friends of someone you know, you will also want to know what THEY are doing.  This baffles me.  If I don't know you, why would I want to keep up with you?  If you're interesting, I'm sure our mutual friend will tell me about your trip to Everest, or your visit to the ashram.  Otherwise, leave me be.  That's right.  Don't send the request.

Tenuous friend of a friend links are good when job hunting.  Then you can sometimes get your resume right to the person who needs to see it, or controls the job.  That kind of network link is great on LinkedIn.  On Facebook, not so much.

--Sandee Wagner