Jill Duman's column "My View: We need more than Facebook 'friendship'" in The Sacramento Bee today is scary. However, the online comments below the story are encouraging. Link here.

I am having trouble actually putting together a proper response, but I will try.

The thrust of the column is that Facebook cannot replace real friendships and community. That could have made for a fine column. Unfortunately, she uses most of her column to demean those who participate in social networks while dismissing the community these networks foster. Hint: facebook does not replace friendship, it supplements. Facebook is a tool.

Here are a few choice cuts with some of my responses:

"[Facebook] apparently is the grown-up equivalent of asking everyone you know to sign your yearbook. It's Facebook, and it gives people with too little to do (or a lot of work to avoid) a way of creating a personal billboard in cyberspace."

Nice way to start the discussion, demean the people who use online social networking services. Oh, by the way, Jill has a profile on linkedin.com.

The notion that a service like facebook is the equivalent of yearbook signing makes me a little sick. Hundreds of software engineers toil to build something special just so that she can spit on their work. I guess newspapers are just like toilet paper that you can read?

"I suppose there are advantages to using Facebook. It's certainly a good networking tool for the thousands of us who are unemployed or underemployed. It's a way to keep track of family bloodlines and avoid inadvertent intermarrying."

More of the same demeaning. Thanks for the solid insights. She goes on:

"It allows us all to quickly check in and skim headlines from the lives of people wanting to maintain us as friends – here a great job; there a wonderful apartment in the big city; across the country, a new baby."

This is where I find the column takes a turn for the scary. She clearly realizes, through her sarcasm, that Facebook is delivering important news people care about. This is the kind of thing newspapers should stand up and notice! This is the kind of thing newspapers ought to emulate! Instead of celebrating personal and local news, Jill dismisses it. I honestly fear that this kind of thinking is rattling around inside The Bee.

I want our local newspaper to survive and thrive. This is my plea to stop this kind of madness. Facebook is a tool. It is not a community, it is a tool for community building. It is a way to deliver news and information. It is a way to allow for responsiveness and multi-dimensional conversation. Facebook is not your enemy, it is a tool.

Please use it to drive readership and inform young people about local news. Please use it to get feedback from your readers and create rich conversations. Do not print things that demean 95% of young people who graduated college in the last few years. Please stop putting down the readers and writers of the next century. Make an honest effort at this and fight back. Do not fade into the sunset and then blame fantastic services like facebook while you willingly disconnect with the future contributors who want to make Sacramento better.

"I guess what is troubling about all this cybercontact is that it creates the illusion of community without the commitment. Facebook will allow two dozen former friends to reconnect, but will they really do more than exchange e-mail addresses? Will they watch each other's children grow up? Could you really call a long-lost Facebook friend with a dissolving marriage, a positive biopsy or an imploding mortgage?"

I have to say, the answer to all those questions is: YES! I do not want to get into personal details, but reconnecting with someone from high school on MySapce led me to a wonderful and fulfilling relationship with my girlfriend. When someone gets sick or is getting divorced, Facebook can bring so much love from friends. Then those people can go meet up in person.

I suppose if by using Facebook I abdicated my right to actually go see people in person then the column would make some sense, but that is hogwash. Facebook friending is not about relieving you of your duties as a friend, family member, or community member. All it does is allow for a richer relationship with more communication. It is a supplement, not a substitute. People love real community. Online social networking is built on the idea that people love community.

"In a real community, you meet over common ground – the bike path, the dog park, the PTA meeting. You share interests and concerns. And most important, you respond. You're the back-up baby-sitter or kid pick-up. You have the needed hammer, wrench or phone number.

"You'll pick up your neighbor's newspaper when they're on vacation. You'll buy Girl Scout cookies or Boy Scout popcorn. And when someone dies, you'll bring a casserole, go to the funeral and hug the bereaved."

Real communities can benefit using tools like Facebook:

• create support for the bike path and organize an event on Facebook to keep it clean once a month.
• create a dog park group to pressure local government to add the second gate that is so sorely needed
• take the PTA online so that parents who cannot attend can watch a video uploaded to facebook of the meeting and respond with comments below
• ask your friends for a recommendation of a baby sitter or see who has time to help watch the little ones (same with pick-up, hammer, or wrench)
• The Girl Scouts would make a killing selling their cookies using a facebook application
• these days when someone young dies many times their MySpace page becomes a living memorial to that person

Whew! You all get the idea.

One final time: Facebook is a tool. Real communities and real friends communicate and interact in absolutely vital, engaging ways using social networks. You don't have to use them or like them, but please do not attack those of us who do. And if you work for The Bee please ask your editor to respond and distance yourselves from this kind of mentality.

By the way, I have a feeling the column will make it onto The Sacramento Press facebook page.