Over the weekend I received a couple notices from friends who are leaving Facebook and other social networking sites for “real” relationships. They’re asking that people “write” them — snail mail … not even e-mail — if they want to keep in touch.

Buh-bye.

Look, I have a hard enough time MAILING my two bills a month that I can’t pay on-line … I just don’t see myself writing LETTERS to K.I.T.

As Bob “I’m almost 70-years old now” Dylan once sang, “The Times, They are a Changin’.”

The cell-phone is so 2008, and you are so 2-thousand late; it’s all about text messaging today. And, I don’t know about you, but I get more e-mail messages via my Facebook in-box and Wall than directly to my e-mail, for both personal and professional communications.

And while we’re dumping technology “trends,”  let’s just give up the cell-phone/Bluetooth combo for calling mom each week while driving into work (you really should go visit her). Dump those satellite channels and the DVR (hey, if you can’t make time to watch the show live, with commercials intact, why watch it at all??). And dump that RSS news feeder and start subscribing to Time Magazine again for your weekly news.

Wake up people. The way we communicate and receive information has changed, and it’s continuing to evolve. Who knows what it will look like next year, let alone five years from now.

If social networking and social media aren’t for you, if you receive no value from the tools, either personally or professionally, that’s fine. But don’t try and shove the genie (or me) back into the bottle.

Yes, my friends will leave social networking, and then they’ll wonder how we all knew about the new baby our mutual friends just had, the party that they missed, and the prayers we’re all saying for a friend’s niece.

I’ll miss the photos they post, hearing about their adventures in travel, and learning more about them, which enrich our personal exchanges when we see one another.

No, social networking shouldn’t replace “face-time” with friends, colleagues and loved ones. We all need to “log-off and meet-up” more than we probably do. But, in the harried and transient lives we live, how wonderful that when someone moves far away it’s no longer “good-bye” forever … just, “we’ll catch up later on Facebook.”