Facebook

I like Facebook. It has helped me get back in touch with many old friends. Working from home can be quite isolating too. Facebook is like a virtual office to me, of people I can chat to before I begin the day's editing, or whatever. It allows me to chat on a daily basis with friends and family who live all over the world. These are people I would never get round to ringing on a daily basis but who are important to me so we remain in each others' lives. I see photos of foreign family members I haven't seen in a while and get to watch their kids grow. They get to see mine. It is invaluable in that way.

For example, at university six of us formed an inseparable group and although we have found ourselves living in different countries we know everything going on in each others' lives because we bump into each other every other day on Facebook - that never happened before we joined - we'd meet up once or twice a year for a catch-up and that wasn't nearly as satisfactory. In fact of that group only one stubbornly remains on the outside (you know who you are!!!!) and we frustratingly only get to see her two or three times a year. These meet-ups are now often spent trying to get her on board. I hope we manage one day because we miss her!

I imagine that the team behind Facebook's invention and implementation however are late twenties or early thirties. They belong to that idyllic era of one's life before friends and family of your own generation begin to die of natural causes. I say that because they have not found a way to deal with death on Facebook. I have four dead friends and family members now in my friends group. You don't unfriend them because they are your friend, still in your thoughts and heart daily. Sometimes you can even draw comfort from clicking onto their page, looking at old photos and seeing things they wrote. You don't want their account closed down because that would be a bit like tossing their letters to you and their diary into the bin. But Facebook generates suggestions that are inappropriate because the people are not marked in any way differently from those who are alive. Last week I was asked if I wanted to ask Sheina to play 'Bejeweled Blitz' (a facebook game) against me, this week I was asked to send her friend suggestions as she had fewer contacts than many of my friends. I think as time goes on and more and more users die, they will be forced to come up with a more satisfactory model, but I'm not sure what form that will or should take...