Social networking eases reunion planning

What's the easiest way to find out which high school friend just got married, who had their third baby, and which classmate recently moved back after three years in Germany?

If you answered "attend your high school reunion," move to the back of the class.

The correct answer: Facebook.

With more than 140 million users, the wildly popular social-networking site has been proving a huge boon to reunions this season, doing everything from promoting better communication among long-lost classmates to calming jitters and paving the way for deeper connections pre-party.

"Facebook was fantastic for our reunion," said Megan Cogan, one of the planners of November's 20th reunion of the Great Valley High School class of 1988. She and the other organizers used the site to plan the whole event - from save-the-dates, to requests for pictures and R.S.V.P.s, and even post-reunion musings of classmates. "We started with about eight of us on Facebook, and before you knew it, there was an official 'group.' There were pictures from high school, there was this incredible buzz going back and forth about who was going and 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe the band is getting back together.' "

Yes, the band from the class's high school days, Factory Direct, which had not played since graduation, dusted off the drum set and tuned its guitars to play Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot." And, really, what high school reunion would be complete without someone belting Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" at the Great Valley Sheraton?

Greg Hoy, bass guitarist and back-up singer for the band, runs a Web design firm in Center City and jumped in to help the online planning in its early stages.

Of the 250 in the graduating class, the event drew nearly 75 classmates, far more than had attended the class's previous reunions. "Somebody sees someone else is a member of the group, and they tell somebody and they tell somebody," Hoy said.

Hoy also used the site to collect more than 200 photos from classmates, which he turned into an MTV-style video montage that looped while the alums danced to the band's renditions of "Voices Carry" and "Heartbreaker."

The Internet, Google and Facebook in particular, is changing not only the way people plan reunions, but also the way in which people attend them. Certainly, the anxiety experienced before a high-school reunion is not much different than what people felt at all their other high school gatherings: Who's going to be there? What will they look like? Who will I hang with? Now, part of the uneasiness can be alleviated before you even send in your $75 fee for the night.

Brad Sivert of Wilmington was considering not going to his 10-year reunion of Sanford High School in Hockessin, Del. "I wasn't going to go because I didn't know who else would be there, and I wasn't going to put in the effort to ask around and see who was going," he said. "But because of Facebook, I knew that people were coming in from Bermuda, New York, D.C. - people were really making an effort to come, so I decided to go."

Of course, Facebook not only lets you know who the attendees are, it also lets you see their pictures, if they have a family, what they do for work, where they live, and perhaps what they plan to watch on television. All of the profiles and personal information available before the event might raise a question: Why attend a reunion at all?

"I think the site has just enhanced the way people reconnect and has really helped reunions," says Brandee Barker, spokesperson for Palo Alto, Calif.,-based Facebook, and a reunion attendee herself. "Back at my 10-year, we spent at least half the time just catching up. Now with my 20, because of Facebook, I had a much deeper and more enriching experience at the reunion having had that information beforehand."

Indeed, others agree that it takes the "re" part out of the night and puts the emphasis on the "union-ing." Sure, many reunioners say they used the site to find out what an old boyfriend or girlfriend looks like, but the groups and profiles have helped others start new friendships with classmates they hardly knew in high school.

"Facebook allowed you to reconnect with people prior to the event, and it let you decide whether you wanted to have more conversation with them when you got there or not," said Dean Rowley, who attended his 20th reunion this Thanksgiving for Freedom High School in Bethlehem.

"High school is a very challenging time for a lot of people - certain cliques, stereotypes and groups of friends are always going to exist in that setting," said Hoy. "But Facebook is a kind of level playing field, so 20 years later it was that same group of people but with none of those barriers. Everyone had grown up, and they are all just 'friends' on Facebook."

For others it eased the burden of spending the evening answering very personal questions. "One girlfriend of mine is having trouble having a child and she put up a blog with the whole story on her Facebook account," explained Cogan, planner of the Great Valley reunion. "It had to make the night a lot easier for her than having everyone asking, 'Oh, why don't you have any kids yet?' "

On the flip side, Facebook's high profile also can mean high maintenance. With all the other resolutions you've got on your list (lose 10 pounds, color hair, get a great job) do you now have to add "Buff up Facebook profile"?

"Your online profile serves as your proxy because you're not out there in person," says Vivek Sodera, co-founder of Rapleaf, a San Francisco-based company that collects and analyzes data from more than 3 million users of social-networking sites. "Certainly, when relaying information about what you want people to know and think about you, there can be the temptation to beef up your profile." Sodera says one of the most common ploys is men posting pictures of themselves with attractive women - the more pictures with more different women, the more effective.

So, do chick pics work? No, says Eliza Gowen of Berwyn, who recently attended a reunion for her New England boarding school. "This guy had posted pictures of all of these beautiful women, but it was so out of character for him that none of us believed it."

"That seems to be some of the appeal of Facebook," Gowen said. "You can make yourself look great or happy with your picture-perfect family - but nobody sees you when you're in your car, bawling at your kids."