[bdamm]

I suspect that people who avoid social networks will start to form increasingly independent social circles from people who generally engage in social networks. Furthermore, these circles will change over the lifetime of individuals.

For example, I was an avid user of IRC back in the late '90s. That medium formed my social experience and those people became many of my life-long friends. These days many of my friends from that time (including myself) don't use social networks much at all; Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter included. We've been there, done that, and are finding human engagement without social networks to be more satisfying. Consequently, my contemporary relationships are not significantly maintained through social networks and whether someone is or is not on Facebook or Instagram has no bearing on whether my relationships are maintained.

A wise friend of mine once said "Facebook is for people you don't know!"

[j45]

IRC is a successful form of social media that centered around communication and enriched our physical lives. It's nice to hear others have also held onto the friendships from that time.

When I hear people excited about slack, I see it as the modern day irc client, also focused around communication.

ICQ/AIM took a big chunk out of irc, but it still didn't allow people to connect in channels.

Now we have networks where people aren't communicating as much as sharing and interacting with moments.

[noir_lord]

Not only held on to them but still making new ones, I hang around in an offtopic channel for a framework I don't even use any more because I made friends with a bunch of the people in there, hell I'd say half the channel doesn't use that framework anymore but a lot of us are solo devs in companies that aren't software companies so it's become our de facto water cooler.

[j45]

It's interesting, I have the same few spots as well. Dont' make it back often as I should (installed Adium to help with this), but it's interesting to see where we all met as teenagers, now talking about other things that have happened, whether it's marriage, family, business, etc.

The uncompromising and unquestioned loyalty that exists from having a buddy in another city is something social media (and maybe even dating sites) could learn a thing or ten from.

I'd say online message boards (phpbb, etc) in from 99 to 2007 or so were similar networks. There is something about semi long form communication that can't be liked, tweeted, shared, etc to be improved.