Facebook and NYC

So much of my social calendar this week will have been dictated by the six degrees of Facebook. In less than a week I have already racked up (pardon my French) 5 different meetings with many more friends via Facebook. I feel like a kid on sugar speed wondering which wormhole I will fall into next.

Just last week I met up with Katie K.  one of my best friends from Brown. We walked through the park and to the Met accompanied by her lovely three-month old ball of joy. I had not seen her since her wedding five years ago. At least one divorce or too have transpired since amongst our acquaintances. On Sunday I met up with a theatre compadre also from Brown. We met at Blossom for vegetarian eats and she brought me up to speed on many of the thespians I have not seen in over ten years. Frightening. They included such eccentrics as Becky who now goes by the name of Lavender Diamond. Her story alone on the origin of the name is worth hearing on YouTube, as well as Katie Eastbourne who once sang with indie-rockers Young People and has since struck out on her own and can be heard on myspace.

Tonight I am meeting up with a former boarding schooler to catch a little round robyn of digital culture talks at the first ever Ignite NYC. It starts off with an NYC soldiering championship, but I think we will make it just in time for the talks. We will hopefully be joined by artist-collaborator-at-arms Milena (gmail and not Facebook coordinated), as she just happens to be in NYC tonight, and hopefully my colleague Karin.  Phew. It starts to sound like a towering social pisa delicately orchestrated and held up by the invisible mesh cables of the internet.

My last night will be dinner with another Brunonian and his wife in Brooklyn. The last time I saw them was when I was applying to MBA school in Chicago and they kindly hosted me on their couch. How time flies. The offer eventually came from another windy city, Toronto.

It is worth noting that my need for social speed is also met with some weariness (and the need to focus on work, my real reason (?) for being here) which strikes me as quite normal for any backpacking traveler of the web. Meetings with friends and acquaintances needs to be tempered with time for just myself and conversations with the person I live with on a day to day basis in London.

My question is, does Facebook increase the chances that individuals will meet up with long lost friends? And when I say Facebook, I am really talking about the Twitter feature and the live updates, which seem to capture more attention than any of my emails. There is something about updates which draws attention in such a way to illicit a response. I am just not sure why...