What are friends? Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

I got an email from Macy’s today.  It was actually from my "friends" at Macy’s wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving.  Now, it so happens that I actually DO have a couple of friends who work at Macy’s, but I’m pretty sure they had nothing to do with that email, and none of the people in online marketing or ecommerce or whatever else at Macy’s responsible for that email are actually my friend.  Neither are the people at Yahoo, GoDaddy, my insurance companies, my credit card companies, various casinos, or countless other "friends" wishing me well.

This doesn’t really bother me, but it does make me think about a broader topic related to the word friend. The meaning (or at least connotation) of that word seems to keep getting more and more diluted, and in recent times it’s Facebook that is leading the charge to genericize (hmm, apparently that is not really a word) that word.  When it comes to online communications, the word friend is largely becoming synonymous with the term contact.

What’s the point?  None, really, just a random observation.  Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends reading this blog – and to the rest of you, too!

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