I’m sure we have all been there.  You’re checking out your facebook news feed and you see people’s faces scrolling through with their latest update on their crazy coworker, funny thing their kid did, and/or a rant about the weather.

It’s kind of fun to see these updates, and you might even comment or “like” a few of them.  But, if you’re like me, the majority of these updates you just glance at and move on.  You might do that for several months and think nothing of it. I know I have.

So, my question is, at what point do these people, whom at one point you considered yourself a “friend” with, stop being a friend but more of just someone you observe in the virtual world from time to time?  It’s similar to those of us that read blog posts from our friends (which seem to happen with great irregularity these days) and never comment.  You just observe them and keep moving on with your life like nothing really happened.

At what point do these “friends” become “just some guy I know” or “some person I had a class with” and not really a friend?  And, when it reaches that point, is it really fair to have them counted as your “friend” on facebook?  To those that have several hundred, or even thousands, friends I say are you really “friends” with them all? (I’m included in that.)  Or does the term “friend” mean something in the facebook (and virtual) world that is different from that of the real world?