Facebook as a time machine

SAN JOSE, Calif. - It was one of those surprising moments on Facebook - not a blast from the past so much as a voice from what I had feared was oblivion.

I'll call him Curt. Several months ago, he wanted to "friend" me in the Facebook sense. To my mind, we had been friends, though not close, since I was 16 years old, back in the 1970s. We later worked at the same big newspaper but mostly stayed in contact within a circle of volunteers in a journalism education program.

Some years ago, after Curt's career hit the skids, other friends and I started asking each other: Anybody hear from Curt lately? Nobody had.

"Good to see you on FB," I replied. "How's it going?"

His reply: "I'm doing good. Quit doing crystal meth on Sept 3, 2007. Been sober for 19 months. Go to meetings every day and I'm doing a lot of volunteer work. I'm secretary of a meeting and I go to yoga every week. Good to see you're still writing."

Well, that explained a lot.

Curt said it was OK for me to share his story with readers. To me, it is another example of how the Facebook experience, just when it seems to fall into a routine, has a way of delivering a surprise.

As a business reporter who covers Facebook, I am often occupied with such matters as Facebook's path to profitability, its impact on Internet-based business or its ramifications on personal privacy and social mores. But my coverage is also influenced by my experience as a user, which I'll admit has mostly been positive and sometimes poignant.

How do you explain Facebook to the uninitiated? First, think of it as a personal online medium that is free, easy, useful and entertaining - and distinctly your own. That pretty much sums up why the social-networking site that Mark Zuckerberg founded at age 19 in 2004 has grown to more than 250 million users worldwide - one sign of its success in its stated mission in helping people "connect and share with the people in their lives."

Unlike predecessors Friendster and MySpace, Facebook succeeded by creating a culture of authenticity - not a dodgy realm of alter egos, but a place where people feel comfortable showing off photos of their children to their friends.

I enjoy the latest baby photos. I like occasional updates from cherished friends who now live far away. I sometimes add my two cents to the virtual water-cooler banter. I often click on and sometimes share links to interesting articles or cool videos.

I like playing Lexulous, a twist on Scrabble that, in my case, is a continuation of a three-decade, three-way rivalry that began back home with my sister and a pal who now lives in Maryland. And I've also learned to use the handy "hide" feature for perhaps a dozen FB friends who just post too much trivia.

All of this is pretty prosaic - the bread and butter of Facebook. But the site can sometime startle users, inspiring personal journeys and introspection.

Many people tell of reuniting with cherished, long-lost friends, or reviving meaningful social circles that had frayed over the years. I've met a couple who were high school sweethearts but had been out of touch for 23 years. Now they credit Facebook for reconnecting them - and the romance is fully rekindled.

I could relate, sort of. She wasn't an ex-girlfriend (darn it!), but I was delighted when an old high school friend made contact. We've exchanged a few messages, enabling me to make amends for some foolish slight from long ago.

And just to be clear here, in case you're thinking about the perils of Memory Lane: I was proud that she could see the pictures of my wife and kids, and she offered congratulations on the newest addition to the family, a baby due in a couple of weeks.

It's interesting how Facebook has connected a little social network of my high school friends - some close, some not so close. When I couldn't find an address for a friend whose father had died, I contacted one of her classmates through Facebook. She had the e-mail address.

I noticed a surge of former colleagues joining Facebook amid the downsizing of the newspaper industry. (We are, after all, communicators by nature.) When one ex-colleague's name popped up, I quickly connected and mentioned that a group of us were organizing an 80th birthday party for another colleague that coming weekend. She'd escaped our radar - but she made it to the party, which is now memorialized in photos and video on Facebook.

No two Facebook experiences are alike, of course. A few months after we reconnected on Facebook, I asked Curt to tell me a little more about his Facebook experience. In doing so, he helped explain those lost years.

"I also smoked meth and took prescription morphine tablets for four years until I went into my third rehab in October of 2004. I quit the morphine in December of 2004, but then I started slamming speed in the spring of 2005 and three arrests later I surrendered on Sept. 3, 2007."

He had been using Facebook to reconnect with old friends, including a college roommate who is now a doctor in Santa Cruz. When Curt told the doctor he'd been meth-free "for 22 months now," his old friend "took the time from his busy practice to write me back on fb and give me some great nutritional advice for helping me stay off drugs."

Curt wanted to help me with this story. One good angle, he suggested, was The Tweaker's Project, a gay-community support group for recovering meth users.

"The Tweakers Project has a FB page, which I'm a member of, and they send all the members inspiring messages every day."

I took a look. It listed 1,096 members. Where else but Facebook could Curt have found such a support group?

(c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.