A lot of chance meetings have turned into an incredible group of acquaintances, especially from my trips outside of the Southeastern U.S. in recent years.

Many of those have turned into friendships thanks in part to the ability to start a conversation with them whenever I wanted to via online tools like Facebook and Twitter.

One thing I’ve noticed recently is how some people tend to remain acquaintances online yet think they know everything going on in my life due to those nearly hourly social network updates. It’s something I think about often – from both sides of the issue.

Now, I even included a lifestream on the redesign of this blog a few months back so that folks who aren’t as addicted to those things but who came by to visit every once in a while could see those even though I know they’re still only getting a glimpse of what’s actually happening.

I decided to post a status update about my feelings after a particular interaction with a Facebook friend offline to Facebook:

The comments (if you’re on Facebook, you get to take a look) were quite varied and it made me happy that I got to have an in depth continuing dialogue about this issue with folks online.

One thing that many people still need to remember though is we’re only getting that glimpse of a person’s life. It appears that we’re OK with being guarded about our lives – unless we’re sharing with our closest friends. Many still feel that there’s not a really good solution to replace actual conversations with folks offline (and I tend to agree).

Those statements normally lead to what can become an extended conversation about what it truly means to be a friend nowadays and if the word has lost some meaning because of how it’s been applied in social networks.

People still friend businesses – and businesses continue to create friend accounts even though Fan Pages exist - and Facebook has become a tool for business even though it was designed to help friends in college stay connected as a way to ensure its long term survival.

We’re still afraid of just how secure our communications are with folks in the system.

The flip side of that argument is just as interesting; I assume that everyone reads every one of my personal blog postsand the articles in b-metro (meaning I still get upset occasionally when someone who I’d hoped read the piece tells me they hadn’t really looked at the site in a while). I’ve learned that its an unfair expectation but one that many people actually have. After all, that approach tends to govern all of our interaction online, doesn’t it?

I did notice that people saw Facebook as a public venue and that some did not necessarily share as much as they would with their friends offline. That was fine by me since that was the point I was trying to get across, but it did finally get me to stop and take the 30,000 square foot view.

It sounds to me like the idea of maintaining this digital outpost is one that still makes sense since I can lock down sections and provide access to those I consider my closest friends whenever I want.

I did find it interesting that we still need to put up guards even though we’re supposed to be talking to our friends. I find it weird but comforting that whether you live in a city of 100,000 or 1 million, there’s still a small group of people that you consider truly close. It’s got me wondering if being a friend in the online world we live in changes things…

I also realized that I don’t talk to Albert Maruggi nearly as much as I need too…

What does it mean to be a friend nowadays?

Photo: The guys at BlogWorld 2007. acnatta/Flickr

How do you wish someone a happy birthday on Facebook?

It’s an interesting thing to think about.

Do you post a birthday greeting, congratulations, or best wishes on someone’s wall or do you try to personalize it and send it as a message?

I was just wondering how people approaching talking with their friends virtually. I’m hoping that some will decide to share their answers below in the comments section.

Photo: Birthday Greetings. Bex.Walton/Flickr

With the exception of a few groups that were on Facebook early on, I’ve adopted a policy that some could say is stubborn.

I haven’t been adding organizations or businesses as my friends – I wait for them to create a group or a page on the popular social networking site (with an emphasis on pages). It’s not that I don’t want to support your group or not be your friend. I still think it’s a little weird anyway, though I should probably let Chris Brogan’s post speak to that aspect. It’s just that, well, pages give you much more flexibility than anything that you were able to get on MySpace and it protects your followers as well while allowing you to provide another way for folks to keep up with what you’re doing. Yes, seriously…

A conversation that I’ve found myself having more and more with people recently involves trying to figure out how to measure the return on investment into using social media. By using pages on Facebook, you’re able to easily glean some pretty valuable information.

The Insights feature,helps you with infromation about how “sticky” the page is (visit totals) and demographic information (age, percentages, sex, etc.). This allows you to get a better understanding of not only who’s following your organization/business but how you can tailor the message for that audience. People like to feel as though they’re being spoken to directly and not being fed a general message. You can blame that on social media I suppose though I think we’ve always been that way. The tools have just changed to allow for that message to be even more personal that it’s ever been before.

For those that have been concerned about losing your ability to make your existence on Facebook unique, the Static FBML application is available for use on pages, meaning that you can use HTML (or their own unique markup – FBML) and insert buttons, video and the like on the page, making the main section of it look any way you want. Probably the best example I’ve been able to find is BBC America, though there are countless others. If you want others example, you should check out Facebook’s page on Pages (pretty cool, huh?).

It also becomes a valuable tool in terms of sending out messages. Sending a message to your friends (if you have a bunch of them) means that you end up having to resend several times due to recipient limits. Sending a message to your fans from a page means that it will end up in their account’s inbox, making it more likely for individuals to read it and not ignore it. While people tend to pay attention to status updates, your ability to get folks to stop, take notice and paying attention to more information becomes much easier using the page application. The limits still exist on sending out invitations to events, but hopefully you can send out a message and encourage folks to sign up for it on their own.

The ability to share and grow a community is also available as pages can favorite other pages (partnerships) and those favorites can be shared in a prominent place on the page. Fans (or whatever you end up calling them) can still share videos and photos with others without necessarily being their friends.

In terms of speaking to the fans individually, you can always have that be the responsibility of the person who serves as the administrator of the page. Most folks like the idea of knowing who they’re speaking with anyway. For those of you that may be ready to ask about how that applies to using an application like Twitter, that sounds like a post topic for another time.

And we didn’t even get into the differences between Facebook groups or Pages…

One thing I’m interested in what your favorite pages on Facebook are right now, if you have any? Which ones stand out? Share the link if possible in the comments.