Internet chat and message board systems have been around for well over a decade, but it’s obvious that within the past five years the social networking “industry” has exploded.

The immediate impact can be assessed without really even trying to look. Everyone has heard of the pedophiles and other social degenerates which stalk “impressionable youth” on their MySpace profiles. Spammers and advertisers “tricking” people into following them on Twitter. Even having someone on your Facebook friend list only talk to you when they’re inviting you to their latest party where they try to peddle their scam-y product on you… no, I don’t want to buy your magical juice/miracle cleaner/Shamwow/overpriced candles.

But what about the millions of other people who use these services for networking and to get reconnected with people from their past?

I have an account on many of the web 2.0/social networking sites. Initially an account was created to check the system out. As a web junkie, it’s damn near impossible for me to resist the urge to test out a new web start up – so long as it doesn’t involve me forking out money for anything up front. I signed up for a MySpace profile about 5 years ago, before it became the annoying teen virtual hangout it has turned into. I only log into that account about once a week and that’s to trade messages with people I haven’t seen in years.

I look at the people I know now and wish I had gotten to know better when we were all in high school and charging full speed towards our graduation. While we know more about each other than we did in school, many of them are people I still have not seen since we collectively grabbed a hold of our diploma.

I talk to a girl I had a wicked crush on from third grade up until we hit high school – when I finally got the hint – on a pretty regular basis. Many of the jocks who wouldn’t give a nerd like me the time of day? That’s right: I’ve found we have more in common than we realized and have shared more than a few pitchers of beer hanging out and talking.

For me, social networking has let me keep in touch with people I would have definitely lost all contact with and it lets us carry out these textual conversations on our terms. No longer relying on the delayed postal mail system or racking up phone bills calling a former exchange student in Germany, only to find out that you just woke them up in the middle of the night.

I don’t recall exactly when that shift happened, either. I remember being, what at the time felt like, a love-struck middle schooler sitting on the phone talking to “just a friend” for hours on end. Then the next day it seemed I was staying up into the wee hours of the morning chatting with my then future wife on ICQ (that’s right, my ICQ number only has six digits, yo!).

So when my wife was kind enough to remind me about my impending reunion, it got me thinking: Would we even have a class reunion? From talking with former classmates and fellow Montgomery High School class of 2000-ers, it seems that regardless of which direction we each took after graduation, such as joining the military, starting a family or going right off to college, we have all pretty much kept in touch because of the opportunities given to us by using online services.

Do you think that social networking – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, instant messaging, and so forth – will or have replaced the time-honored traditional horror show of high school reunions?