I’ve been on Facebook for a long time - pretty much since it first started - and it’s been interesting to observe the evolution of my “friends” list.

The first wave were people I met in college because that’s who Facebook was originally available to.

Then they opened it up to high schools, but that didn’t affect me since I no longer knew anyone in high school at that point. However, around the same time came the second wave, which were people I met in school, mostly high school.

Not too long after, Facebook was opened up to everyone. This created the third wave of people I met at or through work.

Now, I am seeing the fourth wave of Facebook friends - family. I’m not sure what caused this particular wave, but it’s probably just a snowball effect. One person adds some family members, those family members add others based on the friends list of the person who added them, and it continues expanding until every family member is connected to every other one.

It makes me wonder what, if anything, the fifth wave will be. It seems like all groups of people I know have been covered, but then, if you asked me a year ago, I’d tell you that Facebook was just for college and school friends. I would never have thought that my boss, his boss, and his boss’s boss would be my Facebook friends or that my cousin in Israel would get in touch through Facebook after not having seen her for 10 years.

I look forward to seeing how this evolves or devolves in the future.