Now I get it!

When I started this whole Web 2.0 thing, I was most skeptical of the more highly hyped 2.0 features–Facebook and Twitter.  Why would I care who was going to lunch or what was happening at another desk?  I had no interest in updating another spot or checking in on people.  If I needed to know something, that person should tell me.  I just didn’t get why these things were so popular beyond college kids who had nothing better to do all day.

And now that I’ve completely solidified my prematurely old-coot status, I can say that I tried twitter and facebook and must admit that I like them.  It’s fun to chat with people at other branches.  I’m getting to know folks that I’ve never spoken to except to ask them to check on a book for a patron.  It’s nice to hear what’s going on at other places beyond the official memos.  Even though we all work for the same place, we tend to operate as 15 seperate “companies”, and already I feel more like a whole team.

Facebook too has been a lot of fun.  I’ve found many of my old high school and college friends, people I’d lost touch with years ago but kind of wish I hadn’t.  Even though I still had most of their e-mail addresses, I’d hesitated sending that “Hi, sorry I dropped off the face of the earth, how are you?” message.  But I can send a friend request (though I did have to screw up courage for that), and then post a short hi on their wall.  Maybe we’ll reconnect, or maybe I can just drop in on their page occasionally to see how they’re doing.  I can really see why it’s so popular.  My generation tends to spread out all over the place, we don’t stay within the same hometown, so it’s really tough to stay connected in even the superficial sense.  Social networking (and man I hate that term) tools give us a way to keep in touch when we don’t have the time to send personal notes.  It may represent the death of etiquette, but the connections are still nice.