Monday, June 8, 2009

A New Adventure in Cyberspace

Recently I'm exploring the SNS called Facebook. I recently joined without even meaning to, just by checking out my son's url link shared in Mixi, a Japanese SNS. It was all in Japanese, and since I can't read kanji perfectly, wasn't even sure what I was clicking "yes" to, half the time. Before I knew it, I had my own page and the computer was automatically sending out invitations to all the people in my email address to add me to their list of FB friends. It was kind of daunting, frankly, but having already navigated Mixi three years ago, I didn't immediately panic, and have been able to roll with the punches as they've come. (It also helped when I changed the language to English!)

A real motivation in this effort, of course, is getting connected to a variety of old friends...or distant friends; or making new friends, and getting to correspond with this palette of people who weren't accessible two weeks ago! I'm always hungry for correspondents...I can't get enough human contact EVER, so social-networking sites are one form of technology I consider user-friendly!

I was reading an old Entertainment Weekly magazine the other day and happened upon an article written about how Facebook had undergone a "face lift" in March of this year (news to me!), and how awful everyone was finding it, as a result. Having nothing to compare the newly designed format to, I am relatively satisfied. Ignornace is bliss, as they say.

I got very excited today when an influx of messages appeared in my email inbox, all reporting on lots of Facebook activity. Since I use the computer as a stress-diffuser most of the time, having a new "toy" to play with in cyberspace has been awfully nice. Since an old high school friend had tracked me down, and another pal had just gotten married and shared his wedding/honeymoon photos in an album, I had fun today reconnecting with two more fellow c-space explorers!