Anyone who has ever observed people arriving at an airport, has seen how they react to seeing familiar faces. There's something reassuring about the sight of a familiar face - especially when you haven't seen it for a while. You can see people's faces brightening when they see the countenance of a loved one or a friend.

And nowadays we can have such experiences online as well. Social networking sites, classmates meeting sites, chatrooms - the Internet is full of opportunities to see and interact with our acquaintances, friends and relatives without leaving our house or workplace. We can even make new acquaintances this way. The experience is not the same as meeting someone in person, but it's definitely an addition to, and an enhancement of, the social possibilities we already had.

And I think addyourface.com is an interesting addition to the list of sites in this Internet segment. It's unusual in that it focuses on something that is only a small and less important part of people's profiles on other sites: their faces!

Since I joined addyourface.com in its pre-release stage, most of the very few faces that were on the site then, were familiar ones. But despite the site still being in its beta stage (at least, that's what it still says above the logo), more and more unfamiliar faces are being added. (Unfamiliar to me, that is. They have to be familiar to someone....) It often makes me wonder what can be found behind the facade that we call a face.

Having just been to a get-together with members of ePHOTOzine, I had that strange experience one has when mingling with both familiar and unfamiliar people. A few I didn't know did have familiar faces - I'd seen them on ePHOTOzine. But I often find that you can't judge people by their facial features - which is why I called a face a facade.

When you get to know someone, his or her face gets a whole different meaning to you. And that happened to me at that meet as well. I found that people whom I had seen on the web site, made a completely different impression on me in real life than online. I knew their face, but I didn't know them. And now their face means something entirely different to me than before.

Here's hoping that interacting with the people behind the faces on this site somehow becomes a meaningful experience to us all, and that we can add some people to our list of acquaintances and friends!