Facebook is an amazing social networking platform that makes it easy to keep up with lots of people. Since I’ve started using Facebook, the number of people I’ve been able to connect with has been amazing – the list is at 633 right now.  I’ve generally tried to keep this list of friends to people who are actually my friends and whom I know, or have known in real life, but do I really really know all of them still? The goal of this project is to reconnect on a personal level with every single one of my Facebook friends, bring my community closer, and find out what people are up to.

My minimum benchmark for a “reconnection” is a meaningful phone conversation, however reconnecting personally is optimal. The primary work for this project is going to be in making nightly phone calls to my contacts, and hopefully getting around to calling everyone. If people don’t have their phone numbers listed, I’m going to send them a message on Facebook asking for their number. Also, I think in the interest of organization and sanity, I’m going to start going down my list alphabetically.

This project is going to take some serious time – which I seriously don’t have right now. However, there’s always a way of fitting a few more things into each day, so I’ve decided to use the time I spend walking home from work each day to make these calls. My office is in Chelsea, and I live about a 35 minute brisk walk away from the office. I normally do try to make calls during this time, so it’s not a major stretch to start making Facebook calls. Also, hopefully other friends of mine will be getting out of work while I’m making calls, making my likelihood of connecting much better.

I’ve heard from a few people I’ve discussed this project with that they use Facebook for both personal and professional connections, and that it might be weird for me to start calling professional connections out of the blue. First of all, yes, I do use Facebook for both personal and professional purposes. And second, I don’t think it will be weird at all to call professional connections just to catch up. I think the more communication with your connections you can have the better – even, and maybe even especially, if it is just to check in and say hello, with no hidden motives or pitches. I am going to try to keep track of who I have talked to, but am definitely not going to post anything personal on the web – privacy is important.

The goal of this project is to bring my communities of friends together, reconnect with people, strengthen relationships, and see what people are up to! Online social networking  is such a powerful communication tool – I want to see how powerful it can really be.

So, if you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, expect a call sometime soon. If you want to talk sooner rather than later, or there’s a good time to get you, please let me know and I’d be happy to work with you to get in touch!

Let’s talk!