The Facebook Experiment

Every time I decide to engage in a new online technology, it tests my boundaries between the personal and professional.

Facebook is my latest adoption. I signed up for an account about two years ago, but abandoned it soon after. I didn't put any effort into finding any "friends", which made it hard to see the point in continuing. It's a social platform, after all.

I deactivated my account, but of course it never completely disappeared. My real friend Amy found me on Facebook a few months ago, so I decided to give it another try. It took a few weeks, but I even filled out my profile and added a picture of myself. I've become quite progressive in this whole online world. Maybe someday I'll even get an iPhone.

Anyway, it wasn't long before some of my other real-life friends found and friended me. Still, I thought Facebook was weird. It seemed little more than reading other people's email. Not so much from a voyeuristic point of view, but that it was extraneous information. I could barely keep up with all of my RSS feeds, work and personal email, and print information, so looking for yet another spigot to open felt like I was one step closer to going under water for good.

I finally began to see the appeal of Facebook. I liked how the platform allowed me to simply touch base with the people I cared about. It helped to facilitate my real world relationships.

Then the test came. I started getting friend requests from former classmates, colleagues, co-workers, and people who I hadn't spoken to in years. Even though I was selective about those requests, I suddenly had people from all parts of my life in the same room. Individually, I had varying levels of intimacy with my "friends", but I soon realized that I needed to find an identity that would work with everyone as a group.

And that's what I've enjoyed about Facebook. It's challenged me to look at my relationships in a new way. I've made some meaningful connections with people who, in another time, I thought I would never hear from again. I get bits of information about my real-life friends, which allows me to slide right back into conversations with when I see them. And I'm learning about some really cool projects my colleagues and professional contacts are working on.

And I get it all from a single interface. Life should be simple like that, shouldn't it?