by K.J. Ness

Created on: November 18, 2008   Last Updated: January 10, 2009

Make your old friendships new again! Keeping in touch with old friends has never been easier than it is today. Our fast-paced, interconnected world of high technology gadgets and social networks has become the fountain of youth for friendships. We can chat on a bluetooth with one friend while simultaneously emailing another friend. We can get in touch from practically any location - from our living room couch to an airplane coach, from the desert of Iraq to a beach in Australia. The internet has replaced letter writing and even phone calls as the simplest way to keep in touch with old friends. But to truly keep in touch requires a combination of tools and activities, all of which contribute to renewed connections and friendships with old friends. Here are a few of the best suggestions for how to keep in touch with old friends:

1. Know who your old friends are. That is, find your friends from long ago and far away - your best friend from grade school, your penpal whose pen ran dry, your college roommate, a co-worker from your first job. It may have been a few months since you were last in touch with an old friend or it may have been decades. Regardless of the time since your last correspondence, you must find your old friends and have current contact information (phone, email address, and mailing address) in order to effectively keep in touch with them. If you have current contact information for and have been in touch with an old friend, but you want to do a better job of it, skip to suggestion #3.

2. Locate your (long lost) old friends. Begin by trying to contact each old friend using the last information you have for that friend (even if all you have is a phone number scrawled in a hardcopy, old school address book). Next, try a search engine like Google - type your friend's name (in quotation marks) into the search bar for Google and include (outside of the quotation marks) any additional information that may narrow the search (such as city, occupation, or school name). If those methods fail, join a social networking website such as Facebook or MySpace and search for your friend on one of those sites. Last, if you have not found your old friend using the internet or old contact information, consider contacting a friend or family member of the old friend who may have his/her current contact information. A few tips to keep in mind when searching for an old friend: 1) Female friends may have a different last name if they have been married since you were last

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