Fewer surprises at reunions thanks to Facebook

<p>Matt Brady was voted biggest partyer as a Piner High School senior two decades ago, so social situations and small talk are no problem for him.</p><p>But even the gregarious Brady said connecting with classmates on Facebook and other online social networking sites before attending last weekend’s 20-year reunion wiped out some of the nerves that can mark such get-togethers.</p><p>“You see someone you haven’t seen in forever, now instead of that initial shock of seeing them, you have seen them, now you can get to it,” he said. “A lot of the small talk is out of the way and now you can get down to the real stuff.”</p><p>Facebook, established in 2004, is rapidly transforming the landscape of reunion organizing as it allows people to find friends, create groups and generate excitement through posted photos old and new. But it also is altering the dynamic of reunion night — as old classmates already have seen photos, been updated on current employment and know where users went on vacation.</p><p>Among Facebook’s 250 million active users, the fastest growing demographic are those more than 35 years old. And many of them are using the site as a way to show off children, spouses, new jobs, recreational accomplishments — topics that tend to dominate reunion chatter.</p><p>Classmates can even bone up on the five cities in which their senior-year crush has lived or what member of the cast of “Friends” they are most like.</p><p>“I think people’s curiosity is piqued by Facebook rather than that ‘Oh, I already caught up with them,’” said Hanh Pham, Piner High’s 1989 student body president and organizer of last weekend’s festivities.</p><p>Locals charged with organizing this summer’s lineup of high school reunions say Facebook and other similar Web sites have fueled interest in adding a human connection to what has been established in virtual reality.</p><p>“If they have hooked up on social networking, then it has just spurred people to want to get together,” said Skip Welch, an organizer of Montgomery High’s 20th reunion this weekend. </p><p>Getting a glimpse of a long-ago classmate’s life from the safety of a home computer can help ease tension on a night when jitters can outweigh excitement for some, said Danielle Hollander, an owner of Class Encounters, a Sacramento-based reunion hosting company.</p><p>“With these networking sites, it’s easier for people. There are no big surprises at the reunion,” she said. “I ... still see nerves but maybe they are not as nervous as they used to be.”</p><p>Hollander countered the argument that such Web sites as Facebook steal some magic from reunions by eliminating some of the surprise of seeing an old flame, a long lost friend or even the kid who sat in front of you in geometry.</p><p>“You can’t hug people online,” she said. “You hug people in real time. Yes, you see them on the computer screen, but you aren’t seeing them live.”</p><p>Reunion organizers said they established Facebook pages where classmates could message back and forth, post old photos and even ask what to wear to the big get-together.</p><p>Networking sites, such as Classmates.com, offer school-by-school registries with updates from active members.</p><p>The community-feel of online chats can give participants a greater stake in the actual event by allowing a broader spectrum of input, said Anne Livingston, née McGloin, Casa Grande High’s senior class president in 1989.</p><p>“The buzz is there for sure and those social networking sites have been really beneficial in stirring up excitement and finding people,” she said of last weekend’s party.</p><p>“Facebook kind of broke the ice,” said Piner’s Rolando Unciano. “For some people that I have known but haven’t seen in 20 years, it was just like we had never been apart because you saw their family pictures. It wasn’t a shock like ‘Oh, my God, I didn’t recognize you. Or, you lost all your hair’”</p><p>Santa Rosa High’s Tais Tillman used Facebook to rattle the cages of some particularly slow to excite classmates before Saturday’s 20-year reunion. She used “status updates” on her personal page to urge people to pay for their tickets, to rally friends, to get excited in general.</p><p>“I’d get comments like, ‘Thanks for the stalking, it made me feel wanted,’” she said.</p><p>But Tillman, who was student body secretary, also warned against relying totally on technology to reach classmates. Santa Rosa’s graduating class of 1989 was about 550 strong, about 100 of whom Tillman reached on Facebook. </p><p>The rest she found the old-fashioned way: Primarily via snail mail and word of mouth.</p><p>“People want something in their hand,” she said. “There are a majority who are not dialed into social networking so if you rely on that you are going to miss a huge bunch of people. That’s the trade-off.”</p><p>El Molino’s Nancy Giovannini didn’t use Facebook to organize the Class of 1983’s 20-year reunion six years ago, but she has established a group page to help track people in advance of the next reunion.</p><p>“Once I got on Facebook, it was really easy to find other classmates because you could search for El Molino 83 and all these people would pop up,” she said. “Then you start connecting to some and you start getting friend suggestions.”</p><p>Even though Facebook is wildly popular with people a few years — or decades — removed from high school, Giovannini said there is a difference in the way the site is used by 38-year-olds compared with those decades younger.</p><p>“I don’t think we Facebook the way kids Facebook. There is a filter,” she said. “It’s just kind of a cool way to keep in touch ... It doesn’t take any time, and time is usually the thing that keeps us from being as social as we want to be.”</p><p>And the site is proving a boon for classmates to share photos from the big weekend of get-togethers and picnics.</p><p>Photos can be uploaded and marked to share among entire groups, making it easy to keep connections going even after the reunion buzz has ebbed, said Josh Woodlander, El Molino’s student body president in 1989.</p><p>“It was very fun to see the wall photos. People were tagging people back and forth,” he said of his class’s June 27 event in Sebastopol.</p><p>“The practical problem with phone and even email is we just don’t have time in our lives to get on the phone and call someone you haven’t seen in 20 years. So I think prior to Facebook there was no mechanism to stay in contact with people in any meaningful way,” he said. “It does make you feel a little closer to them.”</p>Staff Writer Kerry Benefield writes an education blog at <a href="http://extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com"> Extra Credit</a>. She can be reached at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com.