As if trying to get you all to read this humble website daily wasn’t enough, now I’m trying to get you to be friends with me. Well, Facebook friends. And I’d like to invite you to join the A Parent in Silver Spring Facebook Blog Network.

I know this reveals an ocean of neediness, insecurity and ache for external validation. But this girl can’t help it. In addition to digging everything about blogging, I love social networking websites. I used to dabble on Friendster, which seemed a total grad school thing and is now sooooo 2003, and on MySpace, which seemed a great place to listen to bands but a scary land if you ventured off the paths of family members and musical groups. [Sidenote: I actually went to college with MySpace Tom.] But other than being able to communicate with all my siblings at once or share a good joke with a group of friends or just something legal to do when insomnia hit, I never really saw the point.

Facebook is a different matter. What started as a tool for students’ socializing has become a completely new mode of communication for everyone, no matter your age. Facebook is now for so many people their homepage, key portal to the Internet and online communities. Its scope and uses and new applications grow daily. It’s also a way for websites and blogs to promote their content in a non-intrusive manner to readers and relative audiences. As a former PR professional, I’m entranced by this customized and relevant approach to outreach. I cannot stand spam and frankly, I haven’t achieved a revenue stream that provides an advertising budget. Facebook bypasses those traditional online channels and in a mellow yet viral fashion promotes a message, whether global or intensely personal. Awesome.

Some of you are avid Facebookers, others merely once in a whilers. But no matter how you use it, I would so appreciate it if you joined the APISS blog network. Your friends on Facebook will be able to see that you are a reader, and then they might read too. And then they might e-mail me about a cool new resource for families and then I’ll write about it and link to it and then their resource will achieve some online press and then they’ll get a huge grant and win a major award and worldwide fame and fortune and then they’ll owe it all to you and you’ll receive accolades and love and success and guarantee your place in heaven…just because you clicked for me.

Thanks, my friend.