Since I started updating the Webb more often, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see an increase in folks visiting my social media sites. I receive 1-2 Twitter requests for new Followers a day, and each time that the folks over at Brazen Careerist are kind enough to feature one of my posts I get at least a couple Fans. I’m always more than happy to follow and fan back, flattered and kind of excited is actually more like it. Making connections across the web, no matter how “weak” they may be, is fun and opens my horizons to people/places/thoughts that I would never have otherwise.

All these connections are great, but there is one place that I still hold out on in the world of cyberspace. On Facebook, I can truly say that I only have two friends out of all 280 that I do not know offline. When I was first starting out, however, I went on a mass hoarding spree, friending anyone who had been kind enough to say “hi” to me or share a cafeteria space with me in the past 15 years.

Facebook is my last place to be a social media snob. I realized this as I was reading rikin on the web and noticed that he links directly to his Facebook page off of his blog. I was tempted to click thru and see his profile, maybe even potentially add him. I like what he has to say, I’m interested in learning more about his hip, urban life working at a huge publishing empire, it seemed like a great “no idea who the hell you are but heck, we should be friends” add.

Here on the Webb I am probably more open about my feelings and thoughts than I am in my own personal interactions, so how is it that I’m so willing to expose myself here but still feel like I need to keep one place to myself?

It’s not even like all my “friends” on Facebook are eternally bound to the closest strings of my heart. With some of them, Facebook serves as an ongoing high school/college reunion where you learn about people’s relationship status, how they look, where they live, what they do, etc. With others, I have been able to reconnect and remember our friendships and re-invent them with our grown-up lives now. There are people I used to be involved with that became “friends” at the time, and I’m now a little too tempted to log on occasionally and see what is happening in their lives. There are people that I work with or came across in business that I’m thrilled to be more than colleagues with and let into pieces of my life. Then there are some that I’d rather not have to associate with daily in my business life (let alone online) but I’m too nice and can’t say no to a friend request.

Sure, I could figure out some crafty Facebook filters to set up, but I learned quickly that those who are Facebook pros know when you have blocked a certain part of your profile. So I opened the floodgates and broke down my “lists.” Yet it is probably the most guarded personally of all my online sites. Still, I feel like it will remain my safe haven, filled with the people I trust, know and love…and some others tossed in who, though their parts may have been small, have helped to make me the person I am today.

How about you, do you have any corners of cyberspace that you keep all your own?