FRIEND ME!

They say we live in an unconnected world. Everyone spends too much time in front of their computer and not enough time in real relationships. I know I can be guilty of that. Why here I am right now talking to unknown or perhaps known individuals that I can’t see as I write this and I don’t truly know you or you truly know me. But here we both are. Me writing in front of my computer and you reading in front of your computer. So clearly we are both alive and clearly we are craving a connection of some sort. Or maybe it’s just a desire for me to be known and my thoughts heard and maybe for you it’s just a curiosity about other people and their thoughts and their lives.

I love the book, Never Eat Alone. It about well, never eating alone. It’s about being in relationships, real relationships with other people. Going out to break bread with them, talking face to face and belly to belly, about helping them and them helping us. I think that’s the way it’s meant to be. Really in relationship with people. That’s where true joy and understanding abound.

But don’t get me wrong, I get this. With the internet, I can now make “friends” with people all over the world and get “in relationship” with people I can’t call and go to lunch with today.

My young adult children think I don’t get it. And ok, maybe sometimes I don’t. For instance, my one son is working on an internet project with a guy he’s never met that lives in Italy and his name is Hacker. That’s weird to me, but brilliant once I shift my paradigm. (or par-a-dig-em as my buyer’s specialist once said…”What’s a paradigem, Anne?” sorry, Colette, but it was really funny.ha!) So my kid’s generation is going to have “friends” or at least connections all over the world. Their world is truly getting smaller and smaller.

But I’m trying. I’m on Facebook. My 16 year old daughter says I have absolutely no right to be on Facebook. Well, more to the point she said, “Someone your age, has no right to be on Facebook.” Ouch. And then of course, I was absolutely forbidden to “friend” her friends. How horrifying. Matt, my oldest son let’s me “friend” his friends. His friends laugh when they get my friend requests. Matt at the mature age of 22, finds me more amusing and harmless, than my 16 year old who is embarrassed beyond words.

But the whole social networking thing is fascinating. I think it could be a great thing for people in nursing homes. My mom had her knee replaced lately and we went to take care of and visit her in the rehab center all the time. It’s not quite as bad as a nursing home, but still there were the old people just sitting in wheelchairs and waiting and falling asleep. I bet they crave connections and while family or friends are the best thing, I bet they would love just talking to anyone. By the time, I get to the nursing home, I’m guessing we’ll be playing on our Wii’s and Facebooking everyone.

Have you ever seen the movie Six Degrees of Separation? It was a movie from 1993 and the premise of the story is that each one of us is a mere six personal connections away from everyone else. I wonder how many degrees of separation there are between us all now, now that we’re all getting linked and in community with one another with tools such as Facebook, Linked In, Slicker, Dig, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter? Now more than ever, there are so many ways that we can be in connection with other people.

This social media allows us all to instantly update things about our life, share things, communicate things and be connected with another. Social media isn’t really new but it’s really growing among real estate agents as a way to connect with our clients and also to create professional relationships with other people that aren’t just in our office. The National Association of Realtors said in their 2008 Member Profile that 8 percent of all NAR members now have a blog. Gee, I’m in the 8% group..aren’t I leading edge for a 51 year old? It was 4% last year and they said another 13% plan to start a blog in the future. Even more telling, is the younger folks in real estate. There’s 31 percent of them age 49 or younger who have a blog and another 53% who plan to start one. It sure is hard keeping up with the young ‘ins!

Blogging and social media is a way for all manner of people to broaden the reaches of their business. What’s so interesting about Facebook is I love that a perfect stranger or slightly known connection can “friend” you.

I just got a friend request the other day of somebody I’d never met who is one of our top leaders at Keller Williams. I mean how cool is that? I teased him back and I said “are we FRIENDS now?” What a great guy to be in relationship with. I mean he is running a fabulous, leading edge company like Keller Williams and yet he still gets the importance of networking. I’m sure he has probably learned and failed and achieved more than I have yet had the fortune to do and he cares enough to be in “friend land” with me? What an opportunity and a blessing for me to be able to have access to his brain and his heart and his knowledge? What a great chance I have to learn and grow from someone like that. And frankly, I’m not too shabby either! Ha! So who knows how I can bless and contribute to his life as well?

So I get it. The social networking medium allows me to expand my horizons far beyond my little home computer and my world of St. Louis.

So how do you define a friend in 2008 and how many people do I really want to be “friends” with on Facebook? I guess I’m supposed to let everybody in, so then like back in high school if I have the most friends and now I’m POPULAR AGAIN! Yahoo! See how many friends I have!!!

But then is it watered down? I mean how many people can I really know? How many can I really interact with? If everyone becomes my “friend” isn’t it just like a big phone book of name and faces and then doesn’t it kind of lose its meaning?

And frankly who has time for all this “friending”? Doesn’t everyone have jobs and spouses and family and real friends like I do, not to mention laundry and filling up the car with gas…don’t get me started there. $82 in the tank the other day..agh…

I don’t always have the time to sit here and look through Facebook. So as much as I want to snoop thru your life and your photo album, my real life keeps swirling onward and I must go with the flow or drown. I guess if I were bored and lonely and unconnected, it would be really fun to sit there and go through everybody’s photo albums and have everybody go through mine and I do love the opportunity to do that when I can. It’s just a rare thing to have that time.

So you faithful Facebook people, how do you have the time to update your Facebooks, to make new pithy comments about your life and the world at large, connect with everybody, to talk with everybody and still get any work done? Any life done?

Well, I’d love to talk some more, but I have to go off and get some breakfast, exercise and hopefully sell a house today. Yes, even in this market.

But if you have time, FRIEND ME!