"Who Are Those Guys?"

Even if you haven't seen the movie, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, chances are that you'll recognize that line. Well, that's the way I'm feeling lately when I check my Facebook page. For those who've been in an underground cave for the past several years, to participate in Facebook you develop a network of "friends." These are the people who can view your posts. In turn, their posts turn up on your wall (ie, your home page). You get to be friends with someone on Facebook by sending a "friend request." When I started using this social networking site, I figured it would be a way to connect with family and close friends, sort of like sending out and receiving a blanket email. But soon I was getting friend requests from people whose names I didn't really recognize. Since my memory for names and faces is less than perfect, I figured I'd run across them somewhere along the way: medical meetings, courses I'd taught, social events, writers' conferences, etc. And I didn't want to make anyone mad, because by this time I'd been counseled that writers need to get their names "out there" (wherever "out there" is), and this was a way to do it. So I accepted the invitation.

That's why I sometimes look at my home page and wonder, "Who are these guys?" Of course, it's easy enough to create a list of family and close friends, and that's the one I check on a twice-daily basis. The rest of the time it's sort of fun to scroll down and see what various people are doing. It's a way to get to know some folks, and I suspect that when I see a familiar name badge at the forthcoming American Christian Fiction Writers conference I'll be able to place the person wearing it because I've read some of their Facebook posts.

How about you? Do you ever look at the people posting on your Facebook wall and wonder, "Who are these guys?" Do you ignore many friend requests? As you can tell, I still have mixed emotions about social networking. Do you?