Keeping in touch with friends and family can be difficult, especially as life takes us in different directions. It’s common for people to gradually lose contact with each other after years of being close. Fortunately, social media websites and online tools like reverse phone lookup apps make it easier than ever to reconnect with lost friends.
Here’s a look at four of the best social media sites, plus one reliable method, for tracking down and reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances.
Facebook is the largest and most popular social network on the internet. Since its launch in 2004, the social media giant has amassed over 2 billion registered users, making it the most popular site to search for a former colleague or school acquaintance and your ideal first stop when searching for a lost friend.
With powerful search functions and a comprehensive tracking system, there’s a good chance you’ll find your missing connection on Facebook—especially if they were active online during the mid-2000s. The platform doesn’t just allow you to search by name, school, or city–it can also expand your reach by suggesting friends based on shared connections and your contacts list from your mobile phone and email accounts.
To find someone, input their name in the search bar at the top left of any Facebook Page. Navigate to the People menu to display a list of potential matches and additional filters. Privacy settings allow you to filter which types of results appear in your search and can help you find the correct person without having to scour through an extensive list of search results.
LinkedIn is primarily used as a professional networking site, but its expansive user base (over 500 million) and powerful search features still make it an excellent tool for finding lost contacts.
Its search function allows you to search by profession, company, location, or school to find people you may know. Detailed search filters can also help pinpoint who you are searching for with greater precision than traditional search engines. Similar to Facebook’s People You May Know function, LinkedIn’s Connections feature helps you by suggesting potential matches on the basis of mutual friends or colleagues in their network.
To maximize the chances of connecting with someone from your past, leverage your current contacts to search through alumni networks from universities or organizations like a former employer, which could also provide valuable clues in finding lost friends. Using these features as a starting point will make it easier for users to find who they’re looking for, and reconnecting with lost acquaintances just got a whole lot simpler.
If you’re looking for someone who was active online during the 2010s, then Instagram may be another good place to start. Instagram is an excellent platform for finding lost friends due to its visual nature and hashtags. Photos and videos on Instagram provide a detailed view of someone’s life, making it easier to identify people. As long as the account is public, users will be able to see the posts of anyone they are searching for.
To reconnect with a lost friend on Instagram, you can run a search on their commonly used usernames. You can also try typing their name and reviewing any posts or accounts that appear in your results. Aside from checking names and hashtags, you can connect your device’s contact list to Instagram to expand the scope of your search. This way, you can find any mutual friends you may have with them or any followers they have who could help connect you two together again.
Similar to Instagram, Twitter’s real-time nature and hashtags make it an invaluable resource for finding lost friends. The sheer number of tweets being sent out every day means that if someone is tweeting about their life events, there is a good chance that you can find them on Twitter.
To find friends on Twitter, enter their name or username into the search bar at the top of the page or use the Explore tab in the app. Search results can be further filtered by the latest posts, people, or media. Use Explore to search keywords and hashtags related to their interests or hobbies. Twitter’s Who to Follow feature also suggests accounts based on other Twitter users (and friends) you follow.
Bonus Method: Reverse Phone Lookup Apps
If all else fails, consider using a reverse phone lookup app like numbertrackerpro.com to find lost contacts. Reverse phone lookup services allow you to run a search for a phone number or a name and reference an extensive list of possible matches gathered from updated online databases and public data.
In addition to giving detailed information on a contact’s current address, marital status, job profile, education, and more, Number Tracker Pro also provides a real-time location tracker – a feature that can be especially useful when searching for someone who has recently moved.
Conclusion
Reuniting with old friends can be difficult but not impossible thanks to modern technology like social media websites and reverse phone lookup apps. Whether you use Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or some combination thereof—you should be able to find your long-lost connections in no time.
