Complaints from a dilettante.

I've just been looking, as I often do, at my list of Facebook friends - all 1,177 of them. By anyone's standards, that's a lot of friends.
Why do I have so many 'friends'? It's because I love too many things. I love ballet. I love belly dance.  I love Yoga. I love fantasy. I love history. I love reading, writing, reviewing and editing. I love genealogy. I love music. I love poetry. I love Shakespeare. I love animals. I love environmental and political concerns. (On those and related issues, I'm an armchair activist!)  I love hanging out with friends, solving the world's problems over coffee - and like the rest of Facebook, I love pictures of, and stories about, animals. I reckon there must be more pictures of cats than of humans in the Facebook world. 
Some friends I have only 'met' online, and many I only see at conventions and conferences. Some are old friends from days of yore, many are my relatives. Some I see regularly in meetings, classes and workshops: others I have never met in the flesh and am never likely to do so.
I know that only a very small percentage of my friends will get to read my posts - Facebook only shows each post to a tiny selection of people on our friends lists. I guess they have to keep the octopus that Facebook has become caged somehow! But I can 'drop in' on any of my 1,177 friends and leave a few 'likes' on their timelines. I can do the same on pages devoted to the things I love. I can take side trips to other sites such as Goodreads and that Great Big Firm that sells books, and report back to Facebook if I find a good review or a book I want to read.
Yes, I spend far too much time on Facebook, but why not? It has to be the best means ever devised for keeping people in touch.Whatever did we do before it was invented? Not that Facebook is our only choice: however, I'm sorry, Mr Google, but I've never really taken to Google+, and nor am I very interested in Pinterest and other social media sites. I set up my Facebook status to be tweeted for folks who can cope with thousands of messages an hour, but I seldom actually visit Twitter.
Many thanks to Mr Zuckerberg and his friends for their wonderful invention!