I’m closing in on 100 friends on Facebook.
Not sure why; I’m not one of those people who friends everyone in sight including total strangers to rack up points. My latest ‘acquisition’ is a guy who’s even more of a Canadiens fan than I am. It’s interesting to read all his posts. Hope he doesn’t mind that I haven’t joined the group calling for him to become the next Prime Minister of Canada. Being an American and all, I can’t imagine that I’d have much impact anyway!
I never hear from some of my ‘friends’. I would guess they’re not as active on FB as I am. FB is the one place all of my life intersects. Some of my friends are from high school, some from church, some from Lakeland, some from work, some from the Combat! groups, some are relatively well-known people who have accepted my friending requests — writers, mostly, and Josh Groban; a few sports figures. And then there are those who drifted in (or who I drifted to) from points unknown: my two Quebecois who are apparently quite tolerant of my learner’s French, a handful of Welsh people who have grounded me a little better in the culture I was born of but not in, and other and sundry ‘strangers’. It was because of these last that I took some chances and requested friending from other strangers who I found interesting.
The important thing (for me, anyway) is not to let any of this be more than it is. There are only a handful of these people who I know well enough on a day to day basis to be really connected to outside of the virtual universe. Getting the occasional acknowledgement from my non-connected FB friends does not mean that I have suddenly moved to the center of their universe. And it would be a bad idea to move them to the center of mine without more than a line item on my news feed.
Way off the grid 
Sigh. I never visit FB anymore unless someone orders me to. I’ve been tempted to delete my account on quite a few occasions. My problems are mostly ones of time and lack of understanding on how to best use it without getting frustrated. And just when I start to get the hang of it, they change it again.
I think you do a lot of what Facebook is for a lot of people (including me) with your blogging and LiveJournal stuff.
As I mentioned in the post, it’s cool that I’ve gotten to meet some Welsh people and have help with learning the language — as hard as I am finding French verbs, French is a piece of cake compared to Welsh. I even learned some Irish without all the hassle I get from Welsh.