People You May Know

All you Facebook users out there are probably familiar with a new feature that Facebook introduced this fall or so called "People You May Know".  Based on your characteristics (and probably mutual friends and stuff) it presents you with the names and pictures of other Facebook users that you might know, in case you want to become friends with them.

I have to say that I actually have found some Facebook friends through People You May Know.  Often people I actually do know will show up in my People You May Know just after they join Facebook.  But, I have a true confession: there are some people on my People You May Know who I "know", but am not friends with.

I think just about everybody has slightly different criteria for how they choose to "make friends" on Facebook with someone.  Just about all of my Facebook friends are people I have some honest-to-goodness real-life connection to, and I have met all but maybe two in person.  And I'm pretty good at finding friends for myself.  Which means that the people who come up for me in People You May Know generally fall into one of three categories:
1. Friends of my friends that I don't know
2. People that went to the same school as I did
3. Brothers and sisters of my friends

So for me, People You May Know is often more like "People You May Know Of".  I might have seen the guy at church, but never talked to him.  Or I might have waved at my friend's little sister one time as I visited their house back in high school.  For me, these aren't quite enough reason to make Facebook friends with someone.

So no offense, but if I haven't actually talked to you before and stuff, and you come up in People You May Know, I'm probably not going to add you, even if I know who you are.  But feel free to add me if you know who I am... mutual recognition is a good enough reason to add. :)

Why does Facebook have People You May Know?  My theory is that Facebook wants people to have more friends, because that will make them more interested in the site, which will make them want to spend more time on the site, which will make them ultimately view more advertising.  So, in an indirect way, People You May Know is good for Facebook's pocketbook.  You can't begrudge them that.

What?

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=4070673

Why I didn't want a blog

Here's a picture of my eye, illuminated by the eerie blue glow of the computer screen.

I have to admit that I'm not completely sure if this blog thing is the right thing for me. I mean, I wonder if it's a little self-centered to want to put yourself out there online. Isn't it a little attention-seeking? I already know that I'm attention-seeking anyway. But I am encouraged by what Mike wrote about Elder Holland's comments about blogs.

Also, since I'm already quite active on Facebook, I thought that blogging would be kind of redundant, since Facebook has the "Notes" feature that can be easily used as a blog if I feel like it. But I can see how there are some things that I might want to say that don't seem quite right for the Facebook audience, for whatever reason (such as my last post).

So here I am on Blogger. I would actually really love to know if people are reading my blogs (I like attention, remember?) so feel free to leave comments.