Anniversaire

n. – anniversary or birthday
Ami(e)
n – friend

While I try not to name names in my posts, it will be inevitable for everyone to know what I’m talking about when I refer to a wildly popular social networking site. I have used it since before we moved to Paris, but find it even more convenient – comforting even – now that I’m that much further away from family and friends.

Only now though on my most recent birthday did I decide to update my profile to show my date of birth (month and date only of course!) I think the only reason I hadn’t done this before was because I didn’t realize you could opt for that vs. including the year as well. All of this being rather silly anyway since most of my “friends” know how old I am!

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I was overwhelmed with the amount of comments I received. Based on the number of “friends” I have, over 30% posted something, impressive as anyone in the direct response business knows. And I put quotes around friends because let’s face it, no pun intended, not everyone we’re connected to is a true friend – some are barely acquaintances and some total strangers with just one six degree of separation between us. You see I’m the kind of person who can’t really not accept a friend request. I also have never accepted and then un-friended someone as I know people do. So taking that into account and if I eliminated the people who I’m really not that close with from the overall total, my percentage rate would grow even higher.

I had comments from people I am in touch with regularly as well as comments from people I haven’t seen in almost 30 years! I asked my husband what the protocol was for responding since almost all the comments were posted to my wall and he said it wasn’t necessary – just that I should be sure to do the same for each of their birthdays.

I know we can all become cynical over time and social networking sites can at times be a strange phenomenon, even bordering on voyeuristic and intrusive, but I still found myself moved by an outpouring only made possible by such technology.

So, thank you internet super highway as you were first called, and thank you creators of social networks whoever you all may be, but most of all, thank you dear friends who reached out, for while the time and space between us may or may not have grown, your sentiments reached me and touched my heart.