Apparently they can. But what about the old tricks?

At a dinner out on Friday with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few years, the conversation got around to Facebook. One of the questions we considered was whether it serves to reconnect you with friends you should’ve kept in touch with, or whether we are all in touch with the people we want to be and that Facebook is a good tool to help manage those relationships.

We didn’t reach a consensus on the use of Facebook over dinner, (although we did resolve that none of us is using MySpace anymore, except to look up new music). So, admitting that I had previously considered Facebook the domain of those younger and significantly hipper than myself, and in the fresh knowledge that a whole crop of my peers are on there, I decided it was time to jump in.

Over the weekend I set up my Facebook account and also found some time to try out Twitter properly (more on that later). I did this while alphabetising my vinyl record collection (sad, yes, but true) so as to keep at least one foot in the dusty old analogue world to which I still feel a connection, despite spending every day at work immersed in the web!

As you’d expect, Facebook is a piece of cake to use. If you’ve never tried it, the setup is quick and easy, the interface is streamlined with nice AJAX-ey bits and pieces, and it plugs into other apps you might use, like IM, email and RSS feeds.

Having set up my profile, I made my first friend by inviting my wife to join my network (it’d be a bit rude of her to decline, so I figured I was on safe ground). Of course she accepted, and promptly proceeded to write on my Wall to ask me to make her a Gin and Tonic, even though I was a mere floor away, upstairs in the same house.

Larking about aside, social apps like Facebook are making distance irrelevant for all sorts of interaction, but an interesting side effect is that we are seeing them being used at the expense of other forms of communication. So seduced are we by the simplicity and immediacy of these applications, that they can become the preferred medium for personal contact.

After the initial period where social apps shed their buzz and become web mainstays (for instance, Facebook is 3 years old, but only expanded outside educational networks last year), I’m hopeful for a world where we can mix and match, and that we don’t over-rely on these apps to keep our relationships going, but rather that they enrich them.

Something I have in common with everyone born before the late 80s is that I didn’t grow up with the Internet. We all have a memory of life without computer-centric communication, even though we’re making the most of the web and all it has to offer.

The fear, I guess, is that today’s generation of children, and those who come after, won’t remember a world without the Internet, Google, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MMO games, iTunes, and whatever comes next.  

Of course, there are many generations in modern history that can lay claim to technology innovations that changed their lives compared to their antecedents, from automated industrial machinery through to mobile phones. But no previous technological changes come anywhere near close to the sheer dizzying pace of the last 10 years of online advancements.

I think it’s key then, that whatever technology comes next is geared to enable people to communicate both on and offline.

Twitter is a great example, and one I’m hoping my social groups will catch onto. In case you don’t know, Twitter is an app with only one purpose: to let your friends know what you are up to at any given moment in time.

The main reason I can see this taking off and bringing offline benefits is that not only is it interoperable (you can add Twitter to your Facebook, MySpace, etc.) but also that it’s mobile. Users can text twitters to update their status and receive texts back from their twitter group to let them know what their friends are doing.  

So, ‘Thinking of going for a pint at the King’s Head’ becomes ‘Having a pint at the King’s Head with Bob and Phil’ becomes ‘Sitting having a good chat with Bob, Phil, plus Gary and Dave who have joined us’, and so on…

Overall the benefits of social applications are immense, bridging distance, breaking down barriers, and helping to form and maintain relationships. If we can ensure we retain what was good about the old way of interacting with each other too, then we’ll all be a lot better off in the Web 2.0 and beyond.

Now, when sorting out my records I found out some were missing, and that others on my shelves aren’t mine. I think maybe I need a Wiki so people can let me know what records of mine I’ve lent them but forgotten, and I can list the seven inches people have left round my house. But I think I’ll arrange to meet up in real life to exchange them back again.