My 5,000 Facebook friend: what does it all mean? Where has the time gone?

I’ve never met JF Ponce, but he is now my 5,000 friend on Facebook.

From what I’m told 5,000 is the limit, but I haven’t tried to add another friend for fear of the fact that 5,000 is not the actual limit and I shall spend the rest of my days adding friends on Facebook for three minutes a day or a 1,000 minutes a year. A day of my life a year gone to Facebook.

Thinking about that makes me wonder what we’ve all lost or gained with this time adding friends online. What we’ve lost is clear: time. If that’s the case, then why do I feel like we’ve gain so much time?

Some examples of things we’ve gained thanks to the social graph:

1. We can post something and put it in front of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people for their feedback.
2. We can ask a question and get instant advice without ever picking up the phone or going out for a drink.
3. We can amuse the heck out of each other and get a laugh any time of the day.
4. We are never alone (if we don’t want to be).
5. We are never more than a search and a message away from finding that someone we knew back when.
6. We know many more people on a much deeper level than we were capable of doing before the social graph

I’m sure there are many more but I’ve already convinced myself that the couple of days of my life I’ll give up to create and maintain my social graph.

Then again, something about it feels synthetic doesn’t it?