Something is happening. In the last two months I’ve noticed a creeping trend in my Facebook Friend Requests – more and more people from High School are adding me as friends. For some that might not be a creepy trend but here’s the thing – it’s happening to everyone I know – literally. In the past two weeks alone I’ve had seven people all say to me, unprompted, something like “You won’t believe this but all these old friends that I haven’t talked to in years, friends from High School and College, are adding me as friends on Facebook. What’s really weird is that it’s happening to everyone else I know.” Sure enough, just this morning I, myself, received yet another friend request from someone whom I immediately identified by her hyphenated last name and, I’m guessing, that of her High School sweetheart turned husband. Ten minutes later and my wife yells from the kitchen – “No way – it just happened again!”. This can’t be coincidence and in fact, I’m sure it is not.
What’s happening is that Facebook has become a raging success and has, in Geoffrey Moore speak, Crossed the Chasm. They’ve moved past the early innovators and are now plowing into the rest of society which is where, for many of us, our ‘old friends’ have been hiding. Think of it this way – in the past 5 years social networks have taken off. First there was Friendster, then Tribe, then MySpace and now Facebook. Every time we signed up, invited friends, posted photos and built up a social graph only to abandon it as the next network came along (or did you forget to close those accounts?). For each network we built up a peripheral social graph representing those people either in front of us or just at the edge of our social visibility. Never did these graphs grow very large – but then along came Facebook.
Like the other networks we spent time building profiles, adding friends and experimenting with the site. Unlike the others, though, Facebook sticks. They opened up the API and 3rd party applications rolled in to make the site uber-sticky. These apps are creative, spread virally and their quality is much higher and broader than anything Facebook could have put out on their own. It’s a social marketplace where you can talk, share and play in any fashion you want all the while staying inside Facebook. With all that time being spent here it’s inevitable that our social graphs will keep growing beyond our peripheral vision – they have to – it’s too fun finding and adding friends. This is where the old ones come back to haunt us.
First you start thinking about the past. Then you Google it – it’s just like ego surfing. What ever happened to that girl you wanted to ask to the prom? So in love, so out of your league – type her name and bam – there she is, right in front of you and only a click away from being friends. A few hours later and you are not only friends again but you have unlocked Pandora’s box – their social graph. One more click and you’re browsing pages of Friends – most of whom you know. There they are – memory after memory, some good, some bad, most married and quite a few who have children for their profile picture. Yes, their children. Suddenly you are on a precipice – standing on the edge of a social cliff. Should you jump you won’t be falling but instead soaring across the chasm – bridging your current life back into the past, into a network of ghosts. Transitive Closure of your social graph is staring you in the face – jump far enough and you just might visit everyone you’ve ever known. Will you do it?
Yes, the real question is when, and what will happen. I can’t wait to find out.
