My thoughts exactly. I know some young people are hesitant when contacted by people they do not want to add as 'friends' and feel almost obliged to add them. And having your name on a friend list is very like people who don't know how to 'hide' your name on email lists. I just got an email a couple days ago by someone who saw my name on one of those with my email route evident. In this case I really didn't mind. In fact I was glad to get back in email contact with her. But, it could have been very much a different story. It is again, whatever the user is comfortable with and with what discretion they wish to use a service. It may suit your needs, but not my cuppa tea. What bothers me about it, is that your contacts ..........who and how many.......are any business of a prospective employer? I think a lot of computer users feel protected by anonymity of the number of posts on the web. IOW so much data floating around in cyberspace, who would take the time to search for or find you? The odds being so slim. Sort of like what are the odds someone would find your credit card number in real life and pick on you to steal it? Well, don't we all know somebody who lost using that system?

Where are pathwords and farm? I am lost, I think I need to reread some posts. I joined facebook to see if anyone in my high school class was on it, but there was only one person. I think she was part of my school that another school had consolidated with. Then I tried my college, and found 33 people I have never heard of. After all of that I realized that nobody would know me by my married name, and needed to change my name to include my maiden name. This is too much. Smart Board. Yikes. It is run through the computer with an overhead projector in the ceiling. I teach all second year Spanish, and the class was taught by a kindergarten teacher and a high school calculus teacher. Jumping frogs and filling in large letters does not excite me or teach me anything. Calculus numbers or whatever they have are not amazing. The good thing is that I did find foods in power point, and will be able to put something together for my presentation in a week. It is rather overwhelming to try to think of visuals to put on a board to help explain something to 36 kids - 16 year old kids. They understand this stuff more than I ever will. Now I find out that the speakers don't work - I didn't know we needed sound. This is very involved. IT is hard to learn in 2 hour presentations. I need a purpose and use for something, then develop the program myself. Are there games on Facebook? I think I like simple. To me it was a great achievement to have my own web site for my kids to go to for make up work. Now so many people have such involved sites, it is just silly. Thanks for the responses and I will reread them soon. Sammy

Well, the easiest way Linda is to start your own game. Go to one of the rooms that are dark green, and click on Play. Then play the computer until somebody enters your room to play with you. To play each other, we would have to arrange in advance. I could call you and say I am going to room 9, or whatever, and you could go there. Truly, this Scrabble game is not as easy to do as Literati on Yahoo games. There, you can invite people to your room, you can boot people who are offensive. It has more control. However, there are thousands more people playing Literati, so you run into some very mean and offensive ones. I haven't played it in almost a year, but it is a lot of fun. A little different setup on the board as to where the triple words are.

I joined Facebook a few months ago and like it a lot. I've re-connected with a lot of people who used to be in our church, and a bunch more from college and law school. These are people I always liked, but we grew apart over time, as people do. I probably wouldn't sit down and write them an email or a letter or call them, but Facebook provides just a bit of contact. I'm interested to see their kids and hear a little about their jobs, and I like the odd comment about something interesting in their lives. This is about the right amount of contact for a number of my cousins, too. I am fond of them, but we really only see one another at funerals. I like seeing a little more of them on FB. I don't send food or hugs, I take lots of quizzes but post few of them, and I block posts from anyone who plays "Mafia Wars." I have things set to be pretty private, too. I also love the "Six Degrees of Separation" aspect, where you discover that an acquaintance from work knows your kid's friend's mom.:)