theNoosphere.com

In a past life I was part of an online gaming clan called horiZons. We played Age of Empires I,II, and III, Age of Mythology and it now continues on playing World of Warcraft although it does so without me. I had many good friends from those days from all over the world - North America, Australia, Europe and a couple of guys from Asia.

Now why do I bring this up?

Today, Facebook dropped a bomb on me by putting two guys from that part of my life into my suggested friends list. Sort of blew me away. Here I was staring at Simon's face with no clue how FB connected the two of us. He lives in London, we have never met in person, have no mutual friends on FB and have no information about the clan or the game in our respective profiles, yet here he was. Turns out he was in my Yahoo contact list which I gave FB access to back in December when I opened the account.

However, that does not explain Tim showing up too. He isn't even in a my contact list. Yet, there he is. I am sure there is a connection somewhere that FB is finding that I am not which scares me just a bit.

This is not your father's world anymore and, good or bad, never will be again.

Neo, I do know that Facebook sometimes adds friends of Facebook friends you already have as suggested friends, I've run across that myself. I'm thinking-the online gaming community is fairly large and it isn't unknown for people to be in multiple MMORPG's so it may be a possibility that the second person you mentioned is a friend-of-a-friend at some point you haven't thought of or discovered yet.

A second thing I discovered, I started digging around online as soon as I read your post, is this. If that person lets Facebook use their contact list-and you're on their list then Facebook may be using that to suggest them as a friend to you. This means that anyone you've emailed who puts you on their contact list even without your knowledge now becomes a potential "suggested" friend. A corollary, then, would be that you have probably shown up as a suggested friend somewhere and confused someone else as to how you showed up there. The connectivity isn't always under our control, dude.

Serv, had not considered that my e-mail might be on Tim's contact list. That's a good call there. We have never exchanged e-mail (all our contact was in game, on the gaming forum we co-moderated or through IM) but my e-mail is likely in his MSN contact list, because of IM communication, which he may have given Facebook access too.

I thought of the first idea though and right now he and I do not have any mutual friends.

Still, the point is that I am being reconnected with people at a dizzying pace and from all over the globe too. It will shortly be impossible to lose track of people you know or knew, even you might want to do so.

I think that that is pretty cool, for now. I'm a pretty sentimental guy and spent a lot of time retracing my steps as a younger person, places I've lived and visited. What I've come to realize or feel is that the place doesn't create the sentiment, probably it's the people who you shared that space in time with. I also relate that even when we revisit a geographical place (or building) that we haven't been to in many years, it's feels totally different, despite the accounting for progress. After thinking about it for awhile I considered that even though I may have been standing in the same spot on earth, the earth was now billions (or trillions) of miles away from where it was the last time, as our solar system spins through the milky way and so on. Relative, I think so.

when you signed up you had to use an email account. I have had my email account for 10 + years. Facebook will go thru your contact list/address book and look for those email addresses and if they find them will suggest them to you.

The first time I saw my friend who I hadnt spoken to in years I thought Facebook was like Hal from 2001. And honestly I could be wrong but that's the only logical thing I came up with in my head.

What the hell is Facebook?

SG, trust me, unless you're joking you probably don't want to know.

Serv, I wish I didn't know.