Write an article based on this "Brainstorm a list of information that you know about the person. Conduct a simple web search. Add information to your search. Search on Facebook. Make contact."
The more information you have, the easier it will be to locate your friend. Think about when and where you knew the person, and who else you knew at the same time. Write down as many of the following pieces of information about the person as you can recall. It is not necessary to have all of this information, but the more you have to work with, the better your chances are of finding your friend. First and last name. Middle name. This can be helpful if the person has a common name, or if your friend later switched to using their middle name. Approximate age and date of birth. Place of birth Schools attended, and years in attendance. Known employers, and years of employment. Military service information: unit served in, dates/locations of service, years active. Last known area of residence. The names of your friend's parents, siblings, and/or other close relations. The names of other people who also knew your friend. Over the years, many different search engines have appeared that were dedicated to searching for people online; however few have stood the test of time, and many once popular people-finder sites no longer maintain up-to-date records. That's where trusty old Google comes in. Google searches include all sorts of news entries, the registries of many social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, phone directory information, etc., and is the best place to start, and usually end your search. Go to Google, or your search engine of choice. (Not all search engines do as well accessing various social media sites, so if the first search engine you try doesn't give you the kinds of results you would like, try another.) Enter in the person's first and last name and click the "Search" button, or hit the enter key. Scroll through the results and see if anything about your friend comes up. A lot of times, simply entering a person's first name and last name won't be enough to locate the person you are looking for. This is especially likely if the person has a very common name, like "Mary Smith", so try adding in additional information to narrow down your search. Place quotation marks around the person's first and last name to keep them together as a search term, and then try various searches that include additional information. You might add a geographical location, and search for: "Mary Smith" Evergreen, WA. Try adding a school name, such as "John Jones" Remington High School Colorado. Try adding an employer name, such as "Rachel Roberts" Boeing. Keep experimenting like this for a while, chances are you will eventually hit on the right person. The next easiest way to track a person down is to use the social media site Facebook. Facebook is especially useful because it allows people to record (and you to search for!) information about former schools, employers, etc. If you do not already have a Facebook account, it is best to set one up so that you will be able to contact your friend when you do find her. Be sure to include a photo so that your friend might recognize your message. Then enter the person's name into the "Search Facebook" bar at the top of the screen, and begin scrolling through the list of names that pop up. Facebook provides a lot of automated assistance in locating people and will take the information you have entered about your other friends, as well as your own employment and educational history to narrow down the list. Remember that Facebook gives its users the opportunity to keep their names from appearing in public searches, so often you can find people within Facebook that you could not find using a Google search. New social networking sites are always appearing, and you never know which one your friend might be using. If Facebook doesn't turn anything up, try searching other sites like Google+, Ello, etc. At this point, you will have hopefully found some contact information for your friend, or someone who you believe is likely to be your old friend. It may be an email address, a phone number, a social media account, etc. Now it's time to make that initial contact. It's natural to feel nervous at this stage, but don't be! It has become increasingly common to locate old friends online, and chances are, if your friend has social media accounts set up, this is exactly the kind of thing she is hoping for! Make your initial message brief and to the point. There is still a chance you have the wrong person, and it's best to clarify first. An example contact message might be: "Hi, this is Jenny Smith from Arlington. I was just wondering if this is the same Melissa Jones who went to Smith Elementary in the early 1980s. If so, message me back, I would love to catch up!" If you have a potential phone number for the person, call it and be prepared to deliver a similar message. Remember not to be too cryptic about who you are or why you are calling/writing. Make it clear that you are trying to track down an old friend, and are not working for a collections agency or something similarly unpleasant.