My actual friends are on Facebook...

My actual friends are on Facebook...

Because of Facebook I've reconnected with a LOT have friends I had lost touch with since high school and college. I've been trying to figure out why it's happening now and why it didn't happen when I opened my MySpace account years ago, and have come to two conclusions:

1. People are no longer freaked out about social networking.
2. People learned from the mistakes of oversaturation on MySpace.

I think the first point is a given. Heck, one of my friends got incredibly freaked when her dad Facebook friend-requested her, and if parent are entering the realm then it's safe to say it's largely gone mainstream. The second point is a little more interesting to me though. In my case, i have made a concerted effort to only Facebook-friend people I actually know or have actually interacted with. These are people I don't mind having my physical address, or personal email contact information. On MySpace I think there was more of an effort by folks to "brand" themselves. You had people accepting thousands of "friends" who they would then bombard with bulletins and the like. I was certainly not innocent of this, especially at the height of my concert promoting and multiple weekly DJ gigs. As time went on though I learned how to target people I hoped would be most interested in my events ... and once Facebook opened its doors to non-college students I bolted over there.

My MySpace page is still around, but I primarily use it for "Tankboy Brand" stuff, while Facebook is where I actually post stuff I would want to share with my friends. I tend not to accept apps, so despite the few security snafus in that area I feel relatively safe within my community. (Well, as "safe" and"private" as any online community is going to be ... which is to say not very. But I think you get my drift.) If I want to interact with a band or something not personally aligned with me, I really like the Groups Facebook has set up, and I'm curious to see how their Blog Network dealie works. It seems like there's a lot more choice in how you interact with people, and I think that's why I, and so many other right now, are flocking there. And rediscovering each other. And reconnecting. And finally communicating after some lulls of a decade plus.

It's pretty neat.

SOMEWHAT RELATED HILARITY IN REGARD TO THE ABOVE TOPIC: 12 Great Tales of De-Friending