Two years ago I couldn’t get my cousin (who was in college) to answer my emails. I sent her a txt msg and she responded in about 48 seconds. When we finally hooked up over that antiquated device called a “phone”, she explained that she only used email for school and she started urging me to try facebook.
First experience: “This is stupid.” Tenth experience: “This is still stupid.” Then, eventually, I got hooked. I gave a lot of thought to why, and beyond technical reasons, there’s one fundamental thing that came to mind. I miss my hometown.
I grew up in a small steel town. We saw folks — the same folks — a lot. School, stores, games, bowling alley, wherever. And you’d always get the scoop on little things that you just really didn’t think you’d ever care about. When I moved away, I missed that. I found over time that facebook was filling that social void that was left when I moved away. Now it’s like I’m standing in line at the grocery store catching a 30-second conversation with a friend on how his kid did in his baseball game. Haven’t decided if this is good or bad. But was just interesting thinking through why it “clicked” with me.
Coach Boz's Blog
It’s funny – when I first started using it, I thought, “This will be great for planning the high school reunion! We can all get together and pick locations and catch up and so on.”
Now, it’s *replaced* the reunion. People aren’t interested in picking coordinated dates and events – we can just catch up all the time on Facebook and have small meetups whenever it’s convenient.
Comment by Brent Ozar — September 16, 2009 #