On New Year’s Eve, I found myself in the ultra far east end of Toronto spending the last moments of 2007 with the kids I went to kindergarten with! While my rapidly receding hair was turning its shades of gray, the faces of my oldest friends were filling in with the adult flesh accumulated through our forty or so years of living. The physical changes that happened to the children I grew up with made the moment infinitely more interesting. Would I know which one was Ian and which was Thomas? I can’t believe I even remember their names given I often have a hard time remembering the simplest things. It wasn’t so hard to spot the old childhood friends behind their new adult faces. To be honest, I did have some high-tech help.

Though I live 4500 km (3000mi) away and haven’t seen these people in almost twenty five years I can still recognize each of them. I have a Facebook account and have trolled the images of former classmates in my unending quest to get half-a-grasp on the curious and surreal process of growing into middle age. I know what they look like, what they’ve done, where they went to school, who they married and what their kids are doing. They know the same about me. We all come to the party with a foreknowledge that makes conversation run smoother, faster and deeper. I can now keep touch with my deepest roots in cyberspace. Personal contact would be better but half a loaf is still a fair sized chunk bread.

By moving through the lists of friends of my friends, I have found dozens of former classmates and re-established contact with many of them. Facebook has provided an unanticipated but much welcome lifeline with a life I left behind long ago when I moved across the continent. Being a transplant Torontonian is made much easier when over 1/4 of all people living in the city are Facebook members. Earlier today, the Toronto Star reported that the number of Facebook users in Greater Toronto passed the 1 million mark last year, making it the largest regional-network in North America.

Torontonians are not alone in their sudden and mass adoption of Facebook. A study put out by ZINC Research and Dufferin Research says that over 1/2 of Canadian Internet users have Facebook accounts. The majority of that growth happened in the last three months of 2007. With over 58 million subscribers around the world, Facebook continues to gain popularity. In a national (Canadian) telephone survey conducted by ZINC Research, 93% of respondents reported having heard of Facebook, even if they themselves did not have an account.

Let’s take the beneifts social networking a step further. Because my childhood friends are extremely intelligent, matured at the dawn of the Internet age, and have benefited from university educations, they now work in their own niche areas of the tech industry. Walking into the party, I already knew about a number of professional opportunities available if I wanted to pursue them. Undoubtedly something in the way of business for Metamend will come from these connections, though it might come from an unexpected or unanticipated direction. Mike is one of the business developers for Wikinomics. Robin is head of inside sales for one of the major software vendors in the Greater Toronto Area. Thomas’ wife worked with some the pioneers of email marketing and knows many of the same marketers I do.

As I wrote in my Predict This! post last week, 2007 was the breakthrough year for Facebook but 2008 will be the year digital marketers learn if there is sustaining value in direct, targeted marketing through Facebook. Though Facebook I know it has enhanced my own personal and professional life in more ways than I can mention.