the success - and probably, invention - of social media is owed to socially challenged geeks

I personally have suffered quite a bit of anxiety over impending social interaction in my lifetime. I've learned to deal with it, but I know it's a very common problem for those of us with a turn towards the techie to be a bit shy - and some of us, to the point of losing relationships that are important to us because the thought of calling them on the phone makes us nervous. But hey, wait! Email's great, but what if we could just update some personal status message, and all our friends could login, check it at their convenience, and we can respond or not - again, at our own convenience. That's the key - not forcing us to feel on the spot. We need time to think about how we would best word our thoughts.

So the biggest upside for me personally of Facebook (and to a lesser degree, LinkedIn and MySpace) is the ability to keep up with the lives of some of the people that mean the most to me. A lot of them are friends from high school, college or old jobs who I'd probably have lost touch with long ago if not for social media.