Back in 1999, the highly successful Friends Reunited website was launched. ‘What a great idea!’ millions of new web users thought, ‘I’ll be able to find out what my friends from school are doing’ and they did. They logged on, found old friends, emailed a few perhaps, but largely (a few flings aside) most people didn’t revive old friendships. Now however, with Facebook and Myspace the opposite is true. It would appear we will never be able to leave some old friends behind.
Regardless of whether we got on with people, it’s not purely chance that we stay in touch with some friends and drift away from others each time we move job or home for example. Social networking sites invite the possibility/horror of staying e-friends forever with everyone!
There is an important point in the hipster phrase ‘Myspace used to be good, now everyone is on there’. The novelty of Friends Reunited is in comparing the sharp contrast between past and present. This will be lost on the ‘Web 2.0’ generation. Any break with the past diminishes each time someone from your school or job adds you as a ‘friend’. These sites mean we can permanently stay within an ever growing network of people we know and have known. I don’t think it’s antisocial to want to cut a few wires and say goodbye to some people.
TH
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