"He's got something to say, " notes one White House aide, and "he's so manipulatively suggestive about his contacts with us" that he may just be turning the appearance of influence into some measure of the real thing.

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Facebook allows us to renew contacts with people thousands of miles away, an extraordinary resource for those of us who have lived and worked around the world, and have cherished friends thousands of miles away.

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We made eye contacts with the audience, and they smiled back at us.

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It gave us reach to west coast contacts and created balance with our east coast-heavy relationships and partners.

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It just did not make sense to us, so we checked in with a number of our industry contacts over the Holiday period for their perspective.

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Since these distant contacts tend to be different from us, the bulk of information we consume and share comes from people with different perspectives.

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