Rainy holidays are a very good time to do things like this: I have analyllsed my Facebook network and I have some interesting conclusions.

• I have 512 «friends»; 40 are organizations and 472 are persons.
• 2 of that persons are from my own family (0,5%)
• 39 are really friends (8,5%) , I mean, that kind of people who I could ask them a favour, something important, not a trivial thing, and I’m sure they will do it for me.
• 57 are people I know personally  (12%), I could go with them to a party, or I could work with them, but I haven’t enough confidence to call them friends.
• 84 are people I know basically through Internet (18%), I follow their blogs, or their twitters, and I know personally to some of them through bloggers gatherings, or similar meetings.
• 13 are politicians or personages (3%), they are people in which I’m interested, and thats why I follow them through Facebook, but I don’t know them personally.
• And finally, 277 are complete strangers (58%) for me. About 40 of them are distant relatives or people all over the world whose surname is Aretxabala, like mine. In the rest, I suppose there must be people I have known sometime but now I don’t remember, people who knows to me but I don’t know them, and a lot of people that are really strangers.

Till now the pure facts, but what conclusions could we take from them?

• First of all, I think I’m a fortunate man: I have a lot of good friends, and I can be in contact with some of them through Facebook, that is an easy and funny way of comunication.
• With Facebook I can keep the contact with a lot of people who I meet sporadically and I can know more things about them and perhaps make a new friendship.
• I don’t accumulate «friends», I only look for people that I really know, but I don’t refuse any request of anybody even if I don’t know him.

I think Facebook is a funny comunication tool, and is very interesting you’ll be there because if not, probably it’s going to be much more difficult for you to take the followings evolutions of the net, and you can be sure they will arrive sooner than later.