Arguably, my case is one in a million. Being the man with “no nationality” (that’s the way Jeremy introduced me on this blog), I’ve spent the larger part of my childhood being in international schools. There’s a funny aspect to those kinds of schools, something I’ve only seen reproduced in certain multinational companies and when going on an exchange year at uni. It’s that a type of island forms around a community and regardless of the class or social circle you’re in, you start forming deep bonds with people. I’ve considered many of high school classmates family members, even now, many years after graduation, but those bonds have to carry across national boundaries, continents, and different time zones.

Facebook has been an amazing tool in this process of re-discovering past bonds with classmates and, to some degree, continuing my more recent relationships. It doesn’t strengthen that which was never there—people in my contact-list, who I’ve not exchanged more than a few words with in the past, don’t automatically become better friends on Facebook. Instead, it’s little things, like seeing someone’s holiday pictures, the status update of a friend buying a hat (is that a mid-life thing?), wishing someone a happy birthday and back, and writing long, reminiscing private messages, all of which create a series of anecdotes, which, when you actually meet your friends physically again, bring much laughter to those moments.

When I started coming on Facebook, we used it to set up two groups for Tech IT Easy, one internal, one external, neither of which worked very well. Why, when we already have this blog + an effective email system?

Now, more than a year later, I use it to set up a reunion for people I haven’t seen in over 10 years. The group isn’t seeing much activity, apart from the membership-numbers, instead we use Facebook’s messaging system, Google’s free survey-tool, as well as Skype and email for the organisers, to manage this medium-sized event of ca. 100 people coming from all over the world, at, so far, zero cost and minimal effort!

This truly is an amazing innovation, perhaps best appreciated by someone coming from a time where we didn’t have personal computers (until I was 15), the internet (until I came to uni), or mobile phones (until I was 20). Whatever the case is and whatever negative things people have to say about Facebook, I am very glad it has come to my and my friends’ life.

Vincent

P.S. My next post: envisioning a science-fiction like future for Facebook.