But What Now?

So, you’re retired now. All of your co-workers who you have been friends with are still working and your interests are beginning to diverge. Or you’ve been retired so long that you no longer know many of the people you used to work with. You’ve made new friends and moved on.

Or maybe you haven’t. Here’s where we can take a cue from the younger generation.

MySpace is a phenomenon that began in 1999, believe it or not. I got this from Wikipedia. It started out as eUniverse in 1998. In internet terms, that was almost the dark ages. According to Wikipedia, as of February 3, 2008 there are over 300 million members. Never before in history has any media attracted that many people in that short amount of time.

Facebook was founded in early 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and was restricted to students of Harvard University where Zuckerberg had been a student. Not long after, membership was opened to other ivy league colleges in the Northeast. As time went on, membership was opened further and in September, 2006, anyone over age 13 could become a member.

Since then, Facebook membership has increased tremendously to where the number of people joining monthly is on par with MySpace and if the trends continue as they are, may outpace MySpace in 2008 in new membership signups.

The reasons for this are that Facebook, for the most part, attracts an older and more educated crowd than MySpace, so if you are joining in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond, you are more likely to find friends. And Facebook doesn’t bombard you with banner ads the way MySpace does.

My purpose for writing this wasn’t to compare Facebook to MySpace, though. You can join either one you choose. The purpose is to inform you that Facebook is a great place to meet people.

You might find long lost friends, people you went to high school or college with or past co-workers. Another way to meet people is in groups. There are groups for just about anything you can think of and if the group you are looking for doesn’t exist, you can easily create it.

Joining and creating a member profile is easy. I recommend you create one with your real name and a good recent picture of yourself. This way people who are looking for you can find you and if you have a common name, which so many of my old friends seem to have, people may be able to recognize you by your picture.

Go to www.facebook.com and click the signup button to get started. Please comment if you have anything to add or have any questions about joining Facebook and being a member of the Facebook community.