300 Million Friends

Today the overuse of the word "Friend" has never been more evident. On Facebook "Friend" is the name of someone linked to your profile. These so called friends can see your information and you can see theirs. All this has very little bearing on real friendship. Real friends are people you actually spend time with not the people you cyber stalk. Don't confuse the two!
The meaning of the word "friend" changed when everybody started going online. First we began communicating by email more than we did by phone. Next instant messaging turned the phone into nothing more than a tin can and string. Then we started texting, using our thumbs for friendship. Last but not least tweeting for friendship, 140 characters or less. I know there are such things as love birds who profess their friendship for one another by tweeting their whole life away but couldn't the latest Internet gurue come up with a better name for the latest rat trap, Oh I mean friendship trap.
All of a sudden 300 million friends appeared on Facebook causing the word "friend" to become even more diluted. This social circle won't last forever. Someday Facebook will be nothing more than an avenue to find someone just like the old phone book was used for. We will find new ways to find and converse with our so called friends. Hopefully our communications will express a little body language, voice inflection, creativity and not be delegated to the trophies we post to our web page.