I'm hoping that some of the more internet savy folks here will have an answer to this perplexing question for me, though I have come to my own possible conclusions, true or not.
Anybody who is on Facebook is aware that whenever you log on, you get one or two suggestions of people you might like to add to your friend list. It's how my list got to close to 700 people...just willy nilly adding suggestions from Facebook.
Lately, I've been more selective. Unless I actuallyknow the person or know their affiliations which I share, I generally just choose to ignore the suggestions.
Until recently the suggestions made sense. They were friends of friends of mine. Maybe really distant friends of friends, but still the suggested names appeared on the friend list of somebody on my friend list.
But a couple have turned up recently that really confuse me. One is a woman who performed with the Davis Comic Opera Company many, many years ago. I never knew her -- I don't even know if I saw her perform -- but her name is familiar. The thing is, though, that she apparently has no Facebook friends yet. You can check out the friend list of the suggested new friend and this woman's friend list is blank.
So how did Facebook pick this person, whose name I know and who was associated with a theatre I was associated with a long time ago, as a possible new friend for me?
It could be that we are in the same "network" and this was just a coincidence, though they are pretty insistent that I really should make this woman my friend.
But then the one that really confused me. They suggest I might like to be friends with Gene Oh. Gene is the guy who sold me my very first bike. He lives in Alameda (so is not in my "network") and I am sure he doesn't have a clue who I am. He has only 3 friends, all young, all Oriental, and all in the San Francisco area.
Now how did Gene Oh get suggested as my friend?? There is zero cross over in our lives anywhere, but for the past couple of weeks, about every third time I log into Facebook, it suggests that I might like Gene Oh for a friend.
Then I came up with a thought that is, quite frankly, a little too much "Big Brother is Watching you" for my tastes.
Gene appears one time, by name, in my journal. After Olivia and I bought our bikes, I wrote an entry on March 17, 2002, the day we bought our bikes, which mentions him by name.
My question: Is Facebook's search engine going through all the blogs of people who list their blogs on their profile information and picking out people who appear in those blogs as friend suggestions??? It's the only reason I can come up with why a guy I bought a bike from seven years ago, with whom I have never communicated and who lives 80 miles away from me, keeps turning up as a suggestion for being my new friend.
Even if that's true, though, it still doesn't explain the woman from the theatre company, who has NEVER appeared in my journal simply because I never had anything to do with her.
"Big Dog coming for a visit," said Jeri's e-mail. She and Phil are coming out here at the end of the month, to be here for my mother's 90th birthday party. The plan was to find a dog sitter for Lester and they have been looking for some time now, but they can't find one that they trust to watch her, so they've decided to drive out. Jeri will have to fly home right after the party because she has classes to teach, but Phil will drive home with Lester, and Walt will go along for the ride.
It's going to be so good to see "our baby" again.
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