C21AGVoices

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About two and a half years ago, while my daughter was still in undergraduate school, she came home for a visit and during one of our discussions said, “Mom, Bill ‘friended’ me on Facebook and it creeped me out”. Bill is my partner and friend. I said, “Well, did you accept?”. To which she replied, “No, I haven’t done anything”.

Flash forward about 6 months. I just finished a management meeting where Bill gave us an overview of something called ‘social media’ and what we needed to do to keep up with it all. So, I joined Facebook, among other social media sites. By this point, my daughter had accepted Bill as a friend and was even willing to be my friend.  Facebook opened up her world to me. I now got to see her friends at school, what parties she was attending, when she was coming home for a visit and where she was planning her spring break vacation. Before Facebook  the communication with my daughter was to her need for money or help, which were pretty infrequent. If I was lucky, after meeting her needs, I got two sentences about her life before the call was over. Facebook changed our connections in a very positive way and we don’t even have to talk on the phone.

By February of 2009 I had become a veteran Facebook user. All of sudden old friends appeared. Within a few weeks several people that I had gone to elementary school with found me on Facebook. We started catching up on life and thought it would be fun to see if we could locate others from our class and try to get together. Within 10 days, we had a group email that included aobut 25 people from our class and in May 2009, we held a reunion brunch that 22 people attended, traveling from Ohio, Utah, DC, NJ, Florida, etc.  The stories we shared and the bound that we have is amazing. This experience is something that the people that have grown up with Facebook will never have. Whether they see each other or not, they never have to lose connections with the people they grew up with and went to school with.

As Facebook becomes more populated, more things occured, even impacting my business. For example, someone I knew from high school who now lives in Colorado needed to sell a relative’s house in my area. Because of our Facebook connection she knew that I was in real estate, and knowing she could trust me,  reached out to me for help. Another friend from elementary school needed help for her daughter who wanted to buy a house. Guess who had the priviledge of helping her ? Another person had a friend whose mother had passed away and needed to sell the house. I guided them through that process. And now another friend from high school now in Arizona has a mother-in-law t whose housing needs have changed, and to help her I’m on the job! All of these friends would have been forced to deal with strangers if not for Facebook.  I know this for sure.

Some say they don’t have time for social media or think that people are losing personal connections because of computers and electronic stuff. I say, WRONG! Yes, it takes more time, but that’s because we’re making reak connections. It’s opened wonderful doors both personally and professionally and I hope it never goes away.

Maybe I’ll see you on Facebook too!