Contacts in Context

Yesterday my phone of three years, an MDA from T-Mobile, was retired and replaced with a G1 also from T-Mobile. According to one of my new year’s resolutions, I need to learn about any electronic devices purchased and take advantage of most of the bells and whistles available. The G1 has many more nifty bits than my old phone and I’ve spent much of last night and today diving into the new.

A large task that I’ve never actually done before is the integration and updating of my various contact lists. With G1 being a google phone, transferring my main email address from a yahoo account to a gmail account seemes like a good choice. I’ve used the same yahoo account since early 2002 so I don’t make the choice lightly. Even knowing there are ways to keep my yahoo account and get updates and sync my contacts and other various tasks, I’m still going to spend the time and the effort to change over.

Already there have been excellent benefits to the new phone. When I changed to my MDA phone three years ago, we simply took the SIM card from the old phone and put it into the new phone. All this time I’ve had new contacts in alphabetical order on the top of the list and all the old contacts I had from before the MDA were in alphabetical order below that. The folks with numbers I should have had memorized were a pain to scroll down to.

With very little reading or researching on my part, I was able to figure out how to transfer my contacts from the old SIM card in entirety and magically they were all in order and pretty on the G1. Right away I was able to delete several numbers that I haven’t needed in over three years. Shortly after a few brief phone calls I was able to delete more obsolete numbers.

Then the exciting part; logging into my pristine Gmail account I was able to transfer the phone’s contact numbers into my Gmail contacts. I consolidated a few obvious issues where I had a separate contact for cell numbers and home numbers. Excited from the unexpected ease of use I began composing an email and or text to send to my friends and family to further update my info.

That’s when I was chilled by the shadow of the mountain of the task I was undertaking. With over 150 contacts in my yahoo account and 178 facebook contacts, who was I going to request info from and who would I give all of my personal info to? And who the hell were all these people. My OCD kicked in and I spent an hour just going through the facebook contacts.

Instead of labeling each of the “friends” on facebook based on how much I like them or talk to them presently, I decided to categorize based on how I originally met the person. This seemed to work best and I was able to apply relatively broad categories to most with one exception. The results were interesting.

Six people were known to be fake or alterego accounts. I grouped several individuals into a miscellaneous category because they were all spouses or siblings of individuals. Here is a breakdown of my facebook friends:

• 1 Spouse (The one exception to the “how I met them” rule)
• 6 Coworkers, neighbors & roommates
• 6 Alteregos
• 8 Friends through my spouse
• 8 Misc
• 13 Friends through college or high school friends
• 20 Friends met through MMORPG’s or Blogs
• 24 Family or Family of my spouse
• 29 People met specifically for facebook applications
• 63 Friends from college or high school (35.4%)

Although these numbers may only be interesting to me, I did learn some things that might broaden the interest.  I was surprised on a couple of levels. For one thing, I actually know most of the people on my friends list. I could go over the list again and make note of the people I’ve met in person, the people I’ve spoken to via phone or web chat, the people I talk with semi-regularly via chat or some other interpersonal labeling system but I don’t need to.

I know most of these people and a small handful of them that I don’t know won’t be on my friends list tomorrow because I’m sure they won’t notice. Once in a while I would look at the number of people on my friend list or notice a facebook friend that had hundreds more then me and wonder about it. Obviously you can’t have meaningful interaction with 200+ individuals. What’s the point of having that many friends on facebook! Really, what’s the point of facebook at all?!

Which brings me to my second realization from this exercise in self indulgence; I clarified for myself my purpose in having a facebook account at all. As an aspiring writer, I used to think facebook might be constructive for networking. Although it might be good for networking, I have not used it as such and I’m glad that I haven’t. I have a facebook account because I like people. I especially like that I contact people as much as I want and when I want.

Facebook is a way for me to socialize with a wider circle of friends than is available in the purely physical community. My virtual neighborhood is global and it doesn’t matter the price of fuel or how hectic our varied schedules are. The stereotypical aunt who makes you watch her slide shows during your semiannual visit is a thing of the past. I intentionally log in to check out pictures posted by family and friends. I look at each one, sharing in the joy of the captured moments.

The 16.3% of the people on my facebook list that I’ve met purely to participate in facebook applications with have occasionally proven to be interesting and multidimensional people that I’ve enjoyed chatting up. The preexisting common interest in the pleasure of mental masturbation via simple RPG’s and the exchange of themed JPG’s is sometimes more of a connection then working in the same office building or having kids that go to the same school. Although facebook applications are just another time sink in a long list of time eating endeavors I indulge in, I’ve felt fortunate to find a few people that I resonate with.

The final observation I took from compiling this list is a reminder that a year or so ago when I started visiting facebook on a regular basis, I was trying hard to overcome my slight issue with agoraphobia. At the time, I tied a mental red ribbon around my finger to check in on myself to make sure I wasn’t exacerbating my issues by being pseudo-social. The irregularity of my self exams occasionally concerned me. However, I’m sure now that I am much more myself and more comfortable with the world thanks in part to expanding my circle of friends and experiencing life beyond my safe zone. I even answer the phone now.

With more to learn about my new G1 phone and much more work to be done on bringing my various contact lists current and synchronized, a good night’s sleep is in order.  My final thought before posting and shutting down for the night is that I am so fortunate to be living and experiencing the future where miles don’t matter and time can be manipulated.