this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
503 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37750 readers
373 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Facebook Messenger is probably the closest thing to a modern Yellow Pages as we have. Not everybody is on there, but most people are - even if they haven't checked their profile in years. With the fall of landlines, it can be the easiest (or only) way to find/contact someone - especially if you're a GenX or early Millennial because we have all dropped out landlines, but we created most of our social connections before any other messaging service existed. Heck, almost none of the people I knew from college in the 90s even had an email address that they stuck with (assuming I actually had email logs going back thirty years). It's nice that so many message services exist, but most have no way to "look someone up" the way it's possible to do on something like messenger/fb. (admittedly - it's both good and bad)
I suppose there's a chance that LinkedIn is the other major database of real names out there; I've never tried it for locating people.