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During my MBA program, I was a member of the TEC, which was a selected group of students interested in entrepreneurship, who met and talk with actual entrepreneurs for one Saturday per month for the entire school year. We toured huge office buildings and factories of mostly non-technology businesses that were at one point figments of the imagination of each of the entrepreneurs we met. It was the first time that I have been inside a factory, and it raised my awareness of the world.

In our entrepreneurial sessions, I talked about my lack of relationships and my social life, and my thoughts of automating my relationships through software, for instance, by developing a software application that would automatically generate a happy birthday email to all my friends. Of course, this could go incredibly wrong, if it became obvious through a software bug that I submitted a form letter.

I had a Facebook account for a few years, but it was left languishing until January of this year. I have used Orkut, Plaxo, Linkin, and Classmates.com, so I figured Facebook was just the same.

It seems that Facebook in the last year has really taken off, and, for one reason or another, its appeal became more apparent and I became more involved, checking up on my home page on my daily basis. It might be that Facebook suddenly became more compelling, when friends and family, with whom I have shared fond memories but have lost communication, requested to be my friend and then presented new and old photos and information of themselves (and of me).

I recently came back from a middle school reunion, marking our 24th anniversary since eighth grade. It was a small class of 12th students.

I tracked all of my classmates despite significant changes to first and last names by using internet directories and search engines and the lack of internet presence by a couple of former classmates, who shy away from technology. Each one of us has taken a different path in life. All but one went off to college, at least a third of us pursued graduate careers. One person is a celebrity, another a model; one is in the military, and another an entrepreneur; one is a cop, and some others are corporate workers.

I managed to come away from the reunion with a photo of myself with two female classmates and a wine glass to mislead others about my nonexistent social life.

Just as with Facebook, I am currently undergoing a similar realization about the potential of twitter, which I have ignored for some time, even though I have an account (wesnerm). There are a lot of little things that I encounter on a daily basis that may be too small to blog about, but that might be good enough for micro-blogging.

With the Internet, suddenly a nerd like me can become more social through the use of semi-automated processes like blogging, Facebook, and Twitter. Perhaps this is more effective so that through traditional real-world means of developing relationships.

Comments

[Judah Himango]

"I managed to come away from the reunion with a photo of myself with two female classmates and a wine glass to mislead others about my nonexistent social life."

Hahah, nice! - that's the way to do it! :-)

"With the Internet, suddenly a nerd like me can become more social through the use of semi-automated processes like blogging, Facebook, and Twitter."

I can totally relate to that.

[Zébulon]

Very beautiful girls, Wes. You were extremely lucky in high school. Are they single? ;-)