How do you keep in touch with people?

Mostly the telephone or email or the actual mail.

facebook, myspace, texting,

E-mail, phone.

All four that you mentioned atharkan…facebook and LinkedIn most frequently for contacts.

E-mail is great for staying in touch and the internet has changed how we find old friends and colleagues.

The most important thing is to stay in touch with the people that are important to you.
I ‘talk” with my best friend from high school at least two times per week.
I e-mail other college friends on occasion, but at least three or four times per year.

Part of keeping up via computer is the fact that I moved 700 miles from the city of my birth in 1993 and it is difficult to stay in touch with only the phone or mailing an actual letter. Ever do that?

SRM

Yes, I do write a couple of real letters every month. I love writing on actual (Crane) paper in (blue) ink. So, yes, I do that. What I am struggling with is how not to let relationships atrophy. To put it in more tangible terms, I know a couple hundred people from school and now that I have moved out of state, I keep in touch with them via email. I was thinking that there ought to be some software out there that can say… “hey, you haven’t emailed bob in a couple of months.”

I no longer seem to have people to keep up with. I never was very good at making friends, and now the few friends I’ve made have dropped completely out of view.

Actually, I’m kind of in awe of other people who have people to keep in touch with. I find relationship other than my marriage to be so ephemeral, they barely deserve to be called relationships.

My advice is for folks to not take these things for granted. Keep on doing what you do. When you walk around texting, or with your cell phone to your ear most of the day, remember there are folks who have 60 minutes a month, and they don’t use half of that.

facebook for me. Best way to keep in touch with people aka stalk peps lol jk

@daloon I agree that it can be rough to find oneself without relationships. That almost happened to me and it takes work to rebuild relationships.

I love this question. It’s important to me too to keep in touch with friends.

I’d say there are three tiers of relationships, and I think it’s a fluid but important distinction. First tier: I have about 10 close friends and family that I keep in touch with regularly. I talk with them on the phone pretty much every week or every other week at most.

Second tier: the old acquaintances from high school and college who I am fond of and enjoy, but am not “in touch” with. I’m across the country from most of them. I speak on the phone maybe once a year with maybe 20 of those friends.

Third tier: these are all the people I’ve built relationships with from all parts of my past. For this, Facebook has been an absolute gold mine for me. I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve got nearly 600 friends on there now (ok, maybe I’m bragging). I mention the # to let you know that I’d say the third tier usually is big – it really is the massive # of relationships we’ve built in our lives.

I check all my friends’ status updates every day. It takes some time. But it’s worth it to me. I enjoy it. I love getting to see what they’re up to day-to-day, and make a quick comment on their status, or a photo, when I’m moved to. It reaffirms to me that we’re still connected, even if it’s my first girlfriend from 6th grade, and I haven’t actually talked with her in 10 years. I love knowing that she’s married now, and that I got to congratulate her. Know what I mean? (Of course, this all depends on having most of my network of friends actually on Facebook. I’m a 20-something, and I know this isn’t true for everyone.)

So I “ping” on Facebook as frequently as I feel moved to. I used to fret about how much I keep in touch with people. Not anymore. I ping when I want to, call when I want to, and leave it at that. Sorry for such a long response!

Hand written letters, gmail, fluther ‘send a question’, googletalk, phone calls, gifts, sharing calendar, sharing picture album, i also leave messages on fluther questions in the form of answers for my S.O. to find.

Email man! Email if there wasn’t email I would just never get around to writing a letter. LOL!

Email, real mail, IM, Google Chat, the phone.

phone, email, cards (at holidays). i also am big on visiting people (of course, calling first).

Email for general keep in touch/contact, but Facebook was a real winner for me. It made me aware of my old friends from my previous school, all because I joined my old school group. It was nice to see where people were and what they were up to a few years on :)

Lurve for all the people who still use snail mail.

@nimis: Thanks, snail mail has its sentimental uses. I sent my parents a few letter from Iraq. I was touched when my mom told me that she recieved my letter and it meant the world to her and she put it in a box where she has kept every letter since I joined the Marine Corps. (16 years ago)

Gosh, there are so many ways to keep in touch now…

I use (usually): email, IM, facebook, and cell phone (calls and texts, I text a lot).

I only use snail mail for holiday/congrats/get well cards. Oh, and my boyfriend. I’ll send him handwritten notes with calligraphy and small gifts ^^

facebook, email, phone-depends on the person. i usually put reminders in my planner.

Business is always by phone or a formally crafted email. There’s just no other appropriate alternative for face-to-face contact than those two options.

For personal communication email and social network messages are useful for quick daily correspondence, while texts/SMS aren’t useful for any meaningful conversation. Email is the only one of those three without a word-limit, which is important for longer thoughts or formal communication. But texts and SN messages are great for quick shout-outs and alerts. However, none of those are a replacement for a well-crafted (handwritten) letter, which – depending on the context – may be more meaningful (and certainly more permanent) than a phone call or conversation in person.

IM services fit somewhere between phone and email, as they can be logged to save the conversation but have more of a personal, and social, feel. I’ve also noticed some people are far more comfortable disclosing over IM where you can’t be seen directly; though the opposite may be true considering IM can make sarcasm, vocal clues, and body language impossible to read. Unfortunately “lol” or ”;)” doesn’t really cut it.

But I sometimes have to remind myself to pick up the phone instead of texting, emailing, or Facebook-ing. It’s really the best method outside of a phone call if permanence isn’t the issue.