I remember the first time I heard of fb (I may have mentioned it here). It was when I was part of the Sarsaparilla cblogllective (link to its briefly lived postscript, the actual blog has disappeared in the mists of time I think) and there hadn't been much activity and then someone said, 'we'll be back soon we're all just playing with facebook'. I didn't know what it was, but I found out soon enough, and had one of those slight awarenesses that leaping in was going to change my life, but I couldn't figure out how - the way people probably felt when they got a phone in 1905.
This morning on fb I noticed I had a friend in my Contacts down the right hand side who I had never heard of before. I clicked on them and realised I had last (and first?) had contact with them ten years ago, when we were trying to arrange something about a cross-faculty talk to students. This person, whoever they may be (someone in academe) has been my fb friend ever since, and I don't remember that exchange or anything else about them.
Funnily, this observation had come just after I thought about how it would be great if there was an app that, for instance, every morning showed you two fb friends and said you had to jettison one of them. Presumably the two would be randomly generated, so sometimes you'd keep both of them but roll the dice again until you'd got rid of one. Every day.
I have tended to de-friend friends who have died (even people I actually know), but otherwise I have very rarely snipped people out and of course you accumulate them for all kinds of stupid reasons. I think this is a great app idea, I have a lot of them actually, but I have no capacity to make them work.
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