I'm Liz, and I'm a librarian (duh)

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

"Faces" on Facebook

What a funny thing--I joined Facebook for pretty much one reason only: to communicate with my cousin Paul who moved to Italy over the summer. I mean, he is family but I wasn't about to call overseas to have a two minute conversation with him. When I asked my uncle what the best way was to get in touch with Paul, he told me that there were pictures posted on Facebook. He then proceeded to gripe about why did it have to be Facebook, he couldn't get in to see the pictures without joining up, why wasn't kodakgallery good enough, and what about email...whatever. My uncle is another story entirely. So anyway, I just joined so I could say hi and wish Paul a happy birthday, and the next thing I know, some people I knew from high school and college and various jobs were contacting me, trying to be my friend. My cousin Dominic's ex-wife contacted me; my senior prom date poked me just this weekend (ooo-er, as Georgia Nicholson would say)! So my point is, despite thinking that I was too old and married and busy to have any use for a social networking site, I have been pleasantly surprised. Also, once you have your little core group of people on there, it's kind of easier to post something on there and know that everyone will see it, instead of worrying that I missed emailing something to one individual or another. Plus, no spam!
Here is the thing, though--half the people on Facebook don't use their real pictures, they use avatars or some other picture that they feel represents them, and many of the people I went to school with are married with different last names (interestingly, my prom date changed his FIRST name, but then he found me), so finding the person you are looking for is sometimes a challenge, especially if you are not sure where in the world people are living, etc.
Anyhoo--mission accomplished, I found Paul, he takes fantastic photos of Bologna and makes me jealous, and I know more about him now than when he was living in CT, so it's a bonus all around.

1 comment:

maura said...

great post about facebook liz.
that is my main selling point for facebook, that it makes it SO easy to stay in touch with people. i don't have to email all 250+ people in my contacts about my trip cross country. i'll just throw it up on facebook and those who are interested will check it out.

and the newsfeed... you can thank RSS for that great feature!