Fun with social networking

I've really had a lot of fun on facebook recently. Our kids have used it for years, and I always thought it was a kid-like obsession. That is until the greying of facebook started occurring. I opened an account years ago when you had to be a student. Since I work at a university, I qualified. But there wasn't anyone my age to communicate with, so I didn't use it. Lately, there has been an explosion of friends and family on it. It's become multigenerational in our family. My family members, my in-laws & their spouses, all of our kids and their kids. Now my 85 year old mother in law just started!!! It was a funny feeling thinking that a parent would be watching. Now I know how our kids felt when we all joined.

A lot of our kids friends requested to be friends with us, so my friends range from 19 -85. I think the farthest friends/family are in Thailand, England and Iceland. But I'm also able to keep in touch with very dear friends in Hawaii, Seattle, all over the US and Canada. I've been able to experience different facets of others. I have work friends that are very professional however with facebook we've been able to be very silly and playful. I've reconnected with some high school friends. Even some of the dogster people are on it, and I get to see them as people, unfiltered through their dog's personalities. I've also discovered many distant relatives all over the world and we've joined a group where we've shared genealogy info. A few meet-ups are planned now. I'm starting to meet friends of friends by being introduced through facebook! We get to share lives through photos. I also love sharing articles, links and videos. And I'm playing word games like Scrabble with friends. Seeing how someone is feeling today through their current status might trigger a public or private communication. I get to keep up with real time experiences, celebrations, changes. It is much more multi-layered than myspace, which I've given up all together. I've been able to enhance my experiences with people whose lives are so very far away or so very busy.

Recently, my niece asked me to join Twitter. It's a unique experience. Kinda feels like shouting out what's going on. I haven't felt the need to do that. Maybe there's another experience to it I just haven't discovered yet. I'm much more the story teller.

Many people use their mobile services to stay in touch through facebook. I think it'll be interesting when mobile networking will link us up with others who want to get together in the same area. Already my iPhone is an amazing way to receive and store information. There are apps that allow you to invite others to get together, but that's usually with established friends. I don't think I'll be out there looking for new friends, but I'm sure the kids will jump right on it. It used to be that we taught our kids the lessons we thought they needed. We can learn much from our kids these days.