Facebook and Me

Blasts from the past are becoming commonplace. Thanks to this guy Zuckerberg and his invention. Of course, aided by Sabeer Bhatia who invented the basic concept of free email, the guys who put together the internet, and Google and Yahoo who made it flourish at various times. Thanks to facebook, I have reconnected with so many old friends (please note I have refrained from using the word girlfriends) that would have been lost to me otherwise. I am seriously grateful to all the world's techies, and to my daughters who forced me to use Facebook in spite of my many doubts, and to various people like my IIMB batchmates for starting a yahoogroup early on, that resulted in our meeting up in two or three large meets and several small meets.

We recently reconnected with our engineering batch too, thanks to an enterprising batchmate in Hyderabad who claims he is gainfully unemployed (read 'He is the CEO of his own startup') but started an egroup for us that has already resulted in a Big Bash. Most relatives are also on Facebook now, and we also meet more often now as a group. For example, a cousins group of my age (50 plus mostly) meet regularly because of an egroup that we started a few years ago. Helps to feel involved in the world, and it's a pleasurable experience to meet a known face (or many) wherever you go. In my last three trips to Bangalore alone, I met KIAMS alumni, IMT alumni and my own batchmates from IIMB. Without egroups or Facebook, this would have been impossible.

We are harnessing Facebook to conduct alumni meets of IMT alumni across the country and succeeding too. I think mobile phones have also played a large role in actually making the physical meets happen, after we connected on the net, in most cases. So kudos to whoever invented that, and made it affordable.