Social Networking

A few years ago I had a conversation with a friend about blogs, MySpace, and Facebook. I had a blog and she had joined MySpace. She told me that blogs seemed like too much effort. She also mentioned that very few people our age were on MySpace. After that, I have never really thought about social networking sites again. Since there was nobody for us to network with, what was the point?

That changed about 2 months ago when a friend of a friend sent me an invitation to join Facebook. I was quite surprised that she had my e-mail address, so I joined mainly to be nice. Oh yeah, I was also a little curious. I was immediately surprised by how many of the people I knew that had accounts. I had no idea what the next few months had in store for me.

As I have mentioned here before, I have moved A LOT in my life. I have made and lost touch with so many friends that I can’t even begin to count (or come up with names for the searches). I have really enjoyed finding and being found by friends. I have been able to reconnect with friends I had while living in Qatar 11-12 years ago. Just this week, two friends from different high schools and different states found me. I haven’t talked to either of them in over 17 years. I feel like I am just seeing the tip of the iceberg here and I am a bit sad that I didn’t know this before.

I am guessing that everyone who is into blogging and is reading this is thinking - duh! Over ten years ago, I was very frustrated that so many of my friends hadn’t jumped on the e-mail bandwagon. Now, I am very late in joining this movement.

A few friends have told me that they are afraid of losing their privacy. For that, I must say that you pick and choose your “friends.” I currently have two requests from people I don’t know and who will not be gaining access into my profile. On top of that, like a blog, you are responsible for the content in your own profile. Don’t share anything that you feel iffy about (perhaps your home address). I honestly feel like I put more of my personality and opinions into this blog.

If more people my age (mid-thirties) and older would just admit that it was great, then the rest of us would have joined sooner. Here I am admitting, actually declaring that I am on Facebook and there are LOTS of people (who are much older than high school or college kids) to network and reconnect with. To be honest, the older you are the more friends that you have and want to keep in touch with. It should be more for us (the over 30 crowd).