The Brogan hundred

Chris Brogan recently wrote a list of one hundred things he would like people to blog about and I would like to make my way through the list. It may take 100 days but it may take fewer. It depends on how busy I get and what interesting things are there to sidetrack me.

The first question is about Facebook and how we use it as individuals. In order to answer that question i must describe the four groups of friends I have on the website. The first group is made up of many friends I have met over the last three years. This includes university friends for the most part. Within this group of friends are many complex friendships with many overlaps between networks of friends and there is a true sense of community in the real world sense. We share photographs, videos, events and more.

There is a communal history which makes for some insider jokes. Groups such as “The curse of the N18” reflect how this network of friends has grown use to catching a nightbus home after a long night of fun in the centre of London. If you’ve ever taken the bus you’ll understand why the group gets such a name.

The second network of friends is made up of friends I’ve known for more than three year but may not have seen for a decade. These are the highschool friends from life in Switzerland. Almost every single one of these friends has been to study at University and completed that phase of life and is now moving into the professional life. They are spread globally although there are the occasional communal group meetings that occur where we all meetup. This group is part of the International community and they are not too hard to identify.

The third group of friends are those I know through other social networking websites. This group is about people whom I got to know through websites such as the Flipside back in the days when the Internet and World Wide Web were the realm of anonimity. Everyone had a nickname but through facebook that nickname has disappeared.

The last group is that of people I have met only briefly and know relatively little about. This is due to two reasons in particular. The first of these is that “we randomly facebooked each other” or simply that we met and chatted for a few minutes in real life without taking it any further so far.

What this means is that Facebook, for the most part, is a network of close friends that I have known for a number of hours in the real world. They are people I have shared adventures and travel with, good nights out and many boring/interesting lectures with. As a result of this keeping up to date with what they are doing allows me to see what we have achievedÂ as a group of friends. In brief I use Facebook almost exclusively to keep up to date with what real life friends are doing thus the reason for which I avoid adding “randoms”.