Livre d'Or

I think you're really good at this sort of thing; I always love getting postcards and greeting cards from you, and I keep thinking I should try something like that. Setting aside specific times for email, and keeping mails short, sounds like a really good idea. If I can manage to fit 3 X 45 minutes of running into my life, I can probably do about as much of writing short, keeping-in-touch emails.

And you're right about FB, it gives me news about the lives of people I care about on the level of wanting to know if they get married or get a new job, but I'm not especially close to them or need to keep up with their daily lives. It's also true that the low barrier to clicking "Like" or writing a short mostly phatic comment means that pretty much any old random status update on FB gets a dozen signs of attention, whereas my carefully crafted DW posts might only get one or two. Though the best reactions on DW are much better than anything I get on FB, a dozen thinky chewy comments like on this post is really satisfying!

Twitter makes little sense if you don't have a smartphone and don't spend casual time hanging out online. Though apparently the majority of users basically have accounts just for following other people's streams, so maybe that would work for you.