Everyone seems to be talking about Facebook these days. "It's just for kids", "It's addictive", "YOU have a Facebook page?!"... so, ok, here's my two cents.
I live in a country different to the one I grew up in.
My family and friends (ok, mostly my family) are spread all over the world.
This is a time of living where you want to, and being very separate from a physical community.
This is the age of email, blogs, online social networking, and television... a lot of living via machines.
I started using Facebook because my younger cousins were on, they were traveling around the world, and using Facebook to keep in touch and communicate their adventures. Next thing I knew my older cousins were on, and for a good long time there, I had a "friend" in most of my relatives! These are relatives I see... NEVER... and talk to a little more often, and with Facebook, I suddenly know what's going on in their lives, how they are feeling, and what they did on Sat night! It didn't got $2/min, nor was it a lost letter, and I didn't wake anyone up with a 2am (OMG I didn't realize the time changed) phone call!
Then, I started getting friend requests from friends... and now long lost people of my past are getting in touch with me... people are reminding me of names, places, and relationships of my past that I had completely forgotten. Its like a full circle of remembering who you are.
I have been reading blogs for a couple of years, and I've gone from one to another like an org-chart of connections. I got the idea of using a blog and reading blogs out of a need to find like-minded people. On online community since I felt so different to the neighbors I lived around in Phoenix. I found, however, that the more frequent, interesting writers were the "mommy-bloggers"; well, you don't have to look too far in my archives to know I'm not one of those. Instead of finding an online community, I quickly became "involved" in the public personas of a whole slew of people, that didn't know me!
So, here's what I think of Facebook. Facebook is the easy way of staying in touch with the people you know, who know YOU!
I'm sure all the bloggers I read have Facebook pages, but they keep those secret along with their names and email addresses, and I stay away from looking those up and adding them as friends. Because...
Facebook is how I stay in the know with the people who know me!
