While driving home today there was a segment on CBC that talked about the fad of adding friends to your facebook. The man sharing his story admitted to having around 700 friends, he tried to throw a part inviting all of those friends to a local bar and was shocked when only one showed up. He realized that these facebook friends weren’t friends at all and just a myth

This made me shake my head. Facebook was never meant to be the new myspace, never meant for strangers. I would think the name facebook implies this is someone you have or have had face time with. Perhaps I’m wrong. I have three high school aged nieces who have hundreds of friends of facebook. Basically they make friends with anyone that goes to their school whether they know them or not, this seems a little dangerous to me, but they don’t see a problem.

Now I’ve been on facebook for a few years now (people complain about the new facebook software yet I’ve seen more then a few revisions of the software) it was originally presented to me as a networking site for business. Something like LinkedIn. I thought it might help with landing freelancing jobs so I was convinced. I never realized what it was until after I joined. After everyone else started joining too. I had to quick, back track and reformat my user profile. As it was, some people who I have only ever known online ended up finding out *gasps* my real name from the site. So far I have been able to keep my real name (the one that business contacts and prospective employers would be searching) away from my online name and identity. Work contacts do not need to know how I spend my off time, how often I game, how much I like cult hits, Joss Whedon shows and Star Trek. More importantly, work contacts don’t need to know the real me, they only need to know what I can do for them :)

Once I fell into the facebook thing I was often left wondering why I checked the site at all. What with the constant invitations to the werewolf applications, help my garden grow, and many others it was more a nuisance then anything else. Now though, it has finally become something I love, not for the software but from what the site gives me. Access to my family. Access to people I don’t get to see too often. Access to people who aren’t interested in blogging, podcasts, twitter or any of the other internet geeking that I enjoy.

After checking just now I have 147 friends on facebook. I admit that sounds like a lot but when you consider that around 30 of them are actually my family. I have a big immediate family and ALL of them are on facebook! Even my mother is on facebook, and that really was the turning point for me. (Everyone and your mother is on Facebook). Once my Mom started on facebook I really started to love the site. All of my siblings are on there and now all of their significant other’s are also on facebook and that’s awesome! I live almost 1000 miles away from most of my family so I don’t get to see them all the time, but thanks to facebook I am not out of their lives. I get to see the day to day stuff that happens that wouldn’t make it into a phone call, email or Christmas card. It is the same with the friends I left when I moved so far away.

Also, on facebook people from high school have started asking to be my friend (which is funny since I had no friends in high school :) and it is kinda neat to see what they have done with their lives and what they are doing. Some of them are still in the same town, some just still on the island and some have moved all over the world. It’s nice to see who had kids and who picked what career, but seriously, I don’t interact with them too often. I have just started to reconnect with people from college, and that really excites me as they were my friends and I really do want to know what they did with their lives. Of all of my college friends I would say I miss seeing each and every one of them. I love college and I loved the people I met there. Sadly there is only one person from college that I see often and if by often I mean a few times a year then yes, often. It’s really great to be able to connect with these people again, and while I would love to meet up with them again I know we will not be in each other’s daily lives in any way other then facebook, and that is good enough for me.

I have a whole bunch of people on facebook from my Role Playing community, I have known these people for years, some for 14 years. Some I have never met face to face and never spoke to on the phone, yet they still matter to me. Some I have met often, one I married :) Some are my best friends and came to my wedding. Some are my best friends but couldn’t come to my wedding. Some are in other countries, some on the other side of the world. Some are not far away at all. These people have known me as a student, starting out in my career all the way up until now. Some barely know me, others know almost all of my secrets.

Then I have the podcasting group, a bunch of people I have met through listening and contributing to podcasts. I can’t even remember how half of them ended up on my facebook. A mess of them are from Buffy Between the Lines for which I lend my voice in small roles and do some cover art. BBTL is unique since it is really a community with lots of emailing and a 24-7 skype chat that is open, I have made some good friends there. Some of which I met while going to the Scott Sigler signings for his book CONTAGIOUS. (Oh yeah, he’s one of my facebook friends too) I hope to meet more at a CON or two this spring. Some people met me at the Sigler signings or other events and asked to be friended, so I did.

Not everyone has the same access though. This is what I love about facebook, you can set your own limits. Someone wants to be your friend on facebook but you don’t really know them too well or trust them? Simple, friend them but limit their access. Some people are locked down tight, they can’t see any personal information, they can’t see anything interesting or any pictures I post, but they can see links and what I let them see. Some people just can’t see pictures I post of other people, like members of my family or my nieces and nephews. Also, if there is something I want to post, but don’t want a particular person to see it, I can block them. Almost all of my pictures are set to only allow my friends to see them, no friends of friends or anything else. Others, like the Signing party pictures, pictures of the cakes I’ve made and some bitstrips are open to everyone.

Most of my attention on facebook is with the people I know, and well I have to say of the 147 friends, I would say I know…. 100-120 of them? I don’t understand  friending someone just to friend them. Do you think having a higher number of friends will make people think you’re just that cool? Honestly, unless you are someone who needs to promote, like Scott Sigler, Mur Lafferty, Tee Morris, JC Hutchens or anyone like that, and I see you have multiple hundred friends I think you’re a spammer.