My Facebook Fail
Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 9:34AM So here’s my worry.
It’s probably linked to the Facebook IPO and the experience that for the first time since the early 1990’s I feel utterly out of touch with a profound shift that’s taking place in the media.
I just don’t use Facebook, not for any weird big-brother-control-freak-privacy-paranoia weirdness, I just don’t use it.
I’ve tried, I’ve got a Facebook page but it just doesn’t ‘engage‘ me. I probably got there once a month at the most.
Sure, it’s a great way of keeping in touch with my friends but I find when I re-meet an old friend I haven’t seen in a while, we catch up by gossiping, laughing and generally interacting in meat-space.
I personally find the internet is a great place to communicate with people I don’t know and will generally never meet.
I understand that I may have a hangover from old school media thinking, in some ways seeing these tools as a broadcast or publishing medium rather than a true form of social media where no one individual is a broadcaster, but making a show like Fully Charged is a very different experience from making a traditional TV show, broadcasting it and moving on.
I am still getting comments and interactions generated by Carpool and Fully Charged episodes I made two and three years ago. I am super aware of the audience reaction, of which particular shows are more popular, which are generally ignored.
But none of this happens of Facebook and obviously if I had any sense, it should. That, lets face it, is where the vast majority of the worlds net connected mobile using population go, every day, all the time.
the people I know, particularly of my generation have adopted Facebook with ease, they are all nattering away to each other all the time.
Not only that, but every company I’ve ever heard of has a Facebook page, even the BBC uses Facebook as the online presence of their long running radio and TV series.
Indeed there is both a Carpool and Fully Charged Facebook page, you’ll be able to find it easier than me. It makes no sense that I don’t use them, they’ve been set up for me by people who know how to use Facebook, I’ve seen the pages and know I should update them, feed stuff into them.
I never do.
So does this mean I’m a massive fail at Facebook and I’m being left behind like a tragic, befuddled old bloke outside the massive party that everyone’s attending.
Or could it mean that due to its overarching power, ubiquity and corporate bulk, it will become annoying, slow moving and dull and I will be proved less wrong?
Reader Comments (5)
Rob, I think you're both outside the party AND it will become slow-moving and annoying. Can't you set it up so that you can hashtag your tweets so that they're automatically posted on those Facebook pages? You'll then be updating Facebook via your preferred Twitter medium. That may, in the long run, create stuff happening on the Facebook side of things which might drag you into the party... before it gets annoying and moves on to some other platform.
I use Facebook as the most likely way I can engage with issues with my children who don't live near me. I feel a smug "gotcha" when I catch them on there! Unlike the phone they can't pretend as easily they are doing something else "I've got to go mum, I'm meeting Cara in three hours and I've got to get ready". They are on the Internet and they are compelled to chat back! The other reason is to find out about Irish music sessions from people I know in real life. I don't find it engaging for anything else and gain way more information from Twitter, following many links and getting its instant snapshot of our concerns. Twitter is much more intuitive and with Facebook I'm still not sure of the forever changing privacy settings and don't find the layout pleasing or its desire to link me to everything else. Yes, it is dull. We are older and wiser and Will be proved Right!
I agree that it would probably help to connect with your Facebook pages as well as G+ and Twitter. It is certainly possible to have tweets automatically post to Facebook, if you can't get quite what you want directly or via Selective Tweets, you will be able to do something with ifttt.
Facebook is different to Twitter, however, and the quantity of tweets, being more ephemeral in nature than Facebook posts, may become annoying to subscribers.
I suggest using a method (either built-in to your blog backend provider or using ifttt.com) to link every new blog entry on the relevant Facebook page.
That solves the first, simple problem of getting content into another network. But this is a place for conversation, just like G+ and Twitter. Just posting is only a small part of the picture; you will need to log in and take part in any discussion that happens around your posts just like you do elsewhere. That is the tougher nut to crack.
I find two different social networks manageable (Twitter and Facebook) but I struggle to make time for a third (Google+) which simply seems to be an amalgam of the other two anyway. It's all about finding the time.
Good luck.
"Meat-space"
Love it!
And it is kinda hard to share a pint on t'internet.
I've never seen the value of Facebook for anything I do. I prefer to talk (not text or email) with my friends face to face if possible or by phone if we're too far apart. I have always been leary about handing any organization everything about me in a nice tidy package. Paranoid? maybe. Paranoid enough? Maybe not. Why do companies find themselves needing to have a Facebook page? My former employer has one and I could never figure out why. The types of customers the company is pursuing are not going to be swayed by a swank Facebook page. The company already had a nice web site. It appeared to me that certain employees wanted to get paid to service a Facebook page instead of doing real work. You're not alone, Robert. Your message is getting out just fine without your wasting time keep up a Facebook page. I would rather you get on with some more Carpool episodes! Cheers, Ken