Social Networking?

I have been told I am the queen of networking when it comes to job related networks. When I decided to change careers I interviewed 20 - 25 librarians in many different fields - public, corporate, university - none of whom I had known when I started my research. They were friend or colleagues of people I knew, then colleagues of people I interviewd, etc. etc. I enjoy it and I'm pretty good at it and I have to say that I think the face to face contact is incredibly important. So, I'm a little "creeped out" as my daughter would say by this whole social networking thing. Who knows who's reading my profile??? What kind of information about myself do I really want to send out into the universe via the Internet??? On top of that I tried to search for people I might know. I may have been doing it wrong but it looks like you have to know their special name (like I'm SageSusan). I would have to contact them to find out what their user name is, right? I can't look for people I haven't seen in a long time - like a friend from high school - just to try and reconnect.

I'm glad I did this to have a little taste of what it's like. My daughter resisted for quite some time but finally got a Facebook account this fall. I know it's a really big thing among students in her high school. By the way, the school found out about a big drinking party among some of the athletes at the school because someone posted photos on Facebook and the athletes were not allowed to compete for a period of time.