In the past few months I have been a little more involved in online community sites like Facebook, MySpace and Copains d’Avant.

It turns out that MySpace really turns me off. The layouts are messy, and even if it’s great for some people and even some artists, there’s just too much noise on that site for me.
However, Facebook and Copains d’Avant really have been working for me because I ended up finding a bunch of people in France I used to go to school with. From 2nd grade to college. It’s so cool!

I got into Facebook because of work. We were running ads I needed to check on a couple of applications (man what a burden!). But I wouldn’t have signed up unless I had a real purpose, like the work one. Anyhow, one day, out of the blue, one of my good high school friends writes something on my wall. And I was floored! I was jumping up and down thinking how crazy this is and how happy I am to see this girl’s face after so many years. Turns out, she hasn’t changed much.

So, I thought to myself, if she found me, there probably are many other people I know out there! It actually never occurred to me before that French people could be using Facebook. Well, they are!
I found 10 people so far… That’s 5 from elementary school, 4 from middle school and 1 from high school.

The other online community I got into is Copains d’Avant. A French site meant to link up “friends from before” or “friends of the past”. You can say which schools you went to during what years and it pulls a list of all other members with the same criteria. So cool! The interface isn’t quite as nice as Facebook (which is not that great itself), but sure enough, I found people… 9 of them.
3 from elementary school, 2 from middle school, 3 from high school and 1 from college.

Let’s do the math here. Number of people I haven’t heard from in 10 years or more and just appeared on my screen lately and who I know from:
ElementarySchool — 8
Middle School — 6
High School — 4
College — 1   Update 2/3/08: 2

All these people have played a significant role in my younger years and just the thought of perhaps seeing some of them next time we go to France, just gives me shivers and happy chills.