face to facebook stats 3.0–missing persons

this year, i will visit 327 facebook friends.  i will visit them in their home countries of italy, india, korea, burkina faso, canada, taiwan, mexico, nicaragua, russia, the united arab emirates, and england.  i will visit them in states as far west as hawaii, north to alaska, east to providence rhode island.

i’m missing some friends and while i’ve already sent messages to them,  if you know anything about where these friends are, please tell me.  aawagdy hakim, azanthiel moon, claudia close, janet mccauley, jeffrey jon smith, karl thelen, kristan schmidt, lisa menzel, liza roche, lori ray, lynn nguyen, mark bjerknes, rodger gerberding, samuel scruggs, and tamme perdue.

how often does this happen?  you meet a neighbor or a friend of a friend at a party and a day or two later you have a facebook request?  most of the times, when this happens, i click confirm and that’s sort of the last i ever hear of the person, except in news feeds about what they ate for dinner and links to articles in the wall street journal online edition.

i met kenny at a holiday party and we exchanged business cards.  and i got a facebook request from him soon after.  when i realized i didn’t have the hostess’ email address to send her a thank you note, i used facebook to email him and get her address.  when he heard about this face to facebook project, he stopped by to say hi before i hit the road.  i asked him to do a short video about pesticides because he is a sales representative for black flag pesticides.

but we sat down to chat and then three hours went by.  it was three hours unimpeded (nor aided) by the distractions of a menu, waiters, other people, atmosphere, calls, emails or texts.  we gossiped a bit, to be fair, but i learned about a man who has weathered some personal turmoil in a courageous fashion.

kenny says that friendship, whever it is found–on facebook, in the workplace, at a party–is like a box you choose to open.  i think i have to get another recycling bin because i’m going to have a lot of boxes when i open up all these friendships.  here’s face to facebook friend #5: