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You may recall that back in January I deleted my Facebook account. The main reason for doing so was to free up more time. To be honest with you, haven’t found that I have had that much spare time in the months that followed. I didn’t miss Facebook at all and most people didn’t even realise I had deleted my account. So that was nice.

Unfortunately, what I hadn’t reckoned on was that Kirsty would become a Pete Proxy for many people’s words and pictures and that was a bit of a pain. Neither had I counted on the fact that some people would discontinue their blogs and opt for Facebook notes instead. And I like to nosey into my friends’ lives in my RSS reader!

Despite the plethora of ways to contact me electronically (listed here), it transpired that I was an e-outcast, a social e-leper without a Facebook account.

While I was off work sick on Monday, I did the unthinkable and signed up for a new account, the main reason being so that Kirsty is no longer the Proxy Pete.

So now that I am "back" what does this mean? Well, hopefully it’ll mean that I’m a bit easier to keep in touch with for those of you who don’t "do" email or Twitter or Skype or blogs or whatever.

There are a couple of RSS feeds to which I can subscribe to see my friends notes and any notifications that may concern me. Direct messages come straight to my inbox, so I can reply to those as a normal email, which will continue to be my preference for such things. Adium, my instant messaging application of choice, "talks" directly to Facebook, so I can use the inbuilt messaging without having to visit the webpage, which is, frankly, brilliant. My status updates will come from Twitter integration, my photographs directly from Flickr and my "notes" are just my long-running blog delivered to Facebook via RSS. If only I could still view your status updates in my RSS reader!

So the workflow of using Facebook shouldn’t take up as much time as it did with my previous account. That’s the theory anyway. You can help minimise the time I waste on Facebook by not sending me applications or group requests. That would be great! Thank you so much.

It’s nice to be back in touch, it really is. I just wish there was another way. Perhaps I should open a pub…