My friend, Scott, is dead. I think I could have prevented it. But thanks to Facebook, I’ll never know.

Scott and I met at Oracle in 2008. We started on the same day, both as copywriters. We sat next to each other. We ate lunch together. He mentored me. He made me a better writer. And we became great friends.

We met each others’ families, shared Thanksgiving together, and I even gave him one of my guitars so he could learn how to play.

He was funny. Devastatingly funny. And he could argue. We used to have heated, but helpful, debates about all kinds of things: politics, vegetarianism, music. But our most tumultuous tête-à-têtes centered around the importance of social media.

He didn’t see the value of things like Twitter and Facebook, but as my role at Oracle changed, and social became more of a day-to-day emphasis for me, we would go round-and-round about how to implement it—or if it even mattered. It seemed like every week I was trying to convince him to try Twitter or share some photos on Flickr or go out with Gowalla. Reluctantly, he would try most of my suggestions, but in the end it was a high school reunion that convinced him that Facebook was where he would be most comfortable.

Scott got to reconnect with many old faces there, and began regaling everyone with his wit and insight. And photos of his kids. Those were always the best. He was an unbelievably great headline writer, and what more is Facebook than a series of headlines?

His love of Waylon and Willie and Dwight and Hank helped forge his story-telling steel. But Buck was king. In those songs is where I think Scott learned to turn a phrase better than most—he would’ve been the envy of any of Don Draper’s clients.

After we left Oracle, we made a point to keep in touch, but in reality, Facebook was where we saw each other the most. It’s like that with most of our relationships today, isn’t it? In our world of hyper connectivity, we think that we can create and sustain friendships in these virtual spaces: texts, email, Facebook. But what I’ve learned today is that we are living in a friendship façade.

Facebook isn’t real. And even though I love it, neither is Twitter. It’s what you do in real life with the connections you have on these services that really matters. The personas we create online are not the people we are. Sure, they are pieces of our identities, but there’s no way to create an entire human being out of vacation pictures and updates about our favorite sports teams.