Network

Facebook might have a few issues, but social networking as a medium for restoring acquaintances I can’t argue with.

I admit freely I’m uncertain why I feel the need to restore connections… guilt, possibly. I feel that I, as a person, have never done enough to maintain the colleagues and friends I made in the past. At the time, I spent hours, days, weeks, months in their company, working, joking, drinking, gossiping. And yet, when I have moved on – leaving university or moving on from one job to another, I never seem to make the effort to take down contact details, an address, e-mail or a phone number.

Facebook provides a good start – but, I have struggled especially with old colleagues from work. Here I have found a savior in the LinkedIn website, which provides social networking with a far more business orientated spin, where Facebook seems to help more with recent work coleagues, friends and old school mates.

Guilt might have kicked the process off – but now it relies on me to do something about it. If I want to keep contact with these people who I once considered friends, I need to conscientiously rebuild these relationships. I need to build bridges and restore lines of contact, making more of the social network I have built over time to both benefit myself and perhaps do something in return. For some reason, each phase of my working life has become unnecessarily siloed – and I need to go back and do something about it.