April 7, 2014

F Is For Facebook

I find Facebook to be a necessary evil these days. For me, Facebook is the pesky little brother to the big brother that are the chat rooms. Except that the pesky little brother is smart enough to learn from the mistakes of the lumbering Neanderthal that is big brother in order to become one of the major players in social media.

This is actually my second go-around on Facebook, as I'd previously deactivated my account back in 2011 when they were busy unleashing the new (at the time) Timeline feature. The deactivation lasted until after I had signed with Solstice. They were (and still are) big with social media, so I decided it would be in my best interests to reactivate my account, which I did in the spring of 2012.

I slowly expanded my circle of friends (no family in my circle), with the bulk of the circle being comprised of writers, with the remainder evenly split between friends from the real world and friends from the cyberworld. For the next year or so, I had a decent time mostly trolling (in a good way) my friend's newsfeeds while posting infrequent status updates. The main reason for the infrequency was that because I spent most of my cyber time blogging, it made little sense for me to add insult to injury.

Nevertheless, in the summer of 2013, I decided to follow every other writer in my circle by creating an author's page. While on paper it seemed like a good idea, the execution left much to be desired. I originally envisioned it to become a place where I would do writing updates and what not, but since I was already heavily involved with blogging as well as with my normal profile, I really didn't have the time needed to properly build it up. While I had over 180 likes for the page, I really wasn't able to properly capitalize on those likes. So on January 1st, I unpublished the page*.

So now, the only way you can follow me on Facebook is at my personal page. Forewarned, I'm very picky about accepting friend requests as the person making the request has to meet one of three criteria: 1) I have to know you in the real world; 2) I have to know you from the blog world; 3) I have to know you from else where in the cyberworld. Because of that pickiness, I utilize the "follow" button on my personal page {which is as public as you can get as everything I post is for public consumption}, so feel free to follow me on Facebook. Hope to see you there.

*I decided to take another crack at maintaining my author's page, so if your twisted little heart has the desire or the gumption, please give some thought to liking my author's page, GB Miller. I promise that this time around, in addition to writing about my writing, I will also do mini blog posts that cannot be had elsewhere.

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

13 comments:

  1. I have a love/hate relationship with facebook. I love it for keeping up with extending family and old friends, but hate it when people use it for political forums or "hate" forums. I see that sometimes. (And it's usually someone I can't 86 as a "friend" because I'm related to them.) :)

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  2. Would you believe I'm not on Facebook? No way I could keep up with it alongside blogging and Twitter.

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  3. Facebook definitely has good and bad points. I follow your 3 rules as well and never add anyone I don't at least know from blogging or elsewhere. I ignore random friend requests from complete strangers. I'm also pretty careful about my privacy settings so that I'm not sharing private information with acquaintances, only my close friends or family. I have a page set up too, but I don't use it much-except I've linked my blog to it so that it posts automatically to Facebook. I find Facebook more useful for answering questions or finding out information quickly and inviting people to events etc.

    ~Tizzy @Creative Therapy

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  4. Lynn: I have that issue with a few friends in regards to using it to showcase their personal/political beliefs. For the most part I tolerate it and even try to interject a comment or two, but there are a few friends who I have stopped following (not unfriended though) because of their rigidness.

    Alex: I'm the reverse with Twitter. I couldn't keep up with all three things plus hang onto my job as well.

    Tizzy: Thanks for stopping by.

    My basic rules has served me well. I used to have my old blog feed into my Faceboook, but when I deactivated my account my blog vanished as well. I may try it again with the new one, but privacy issues with the last one will probably prevent me from doing it this time.

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  5. I still haven't quite mastered getting Facebook off the ground for myself as a writer. I've had more success with my blog and twitter. Twitter still amazes me, I've grown to love it, but before December, I had a deep hatred for it.

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  6. Mad_Cat: I'm in the same boat, so to speak. I started my writing platform with my blogging and it has done me good over the years. Twitter I can't do, simply because of the nature of my employer.

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  7. I love it when someone visits my blog and also my facebook page.

    Blog: www.volatilespirits.com

    FB: www.facebook.com/VolatileSpirits

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  8. Anunpama: Well, I will be sure to check both out later today. Thanks for stopping by.

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  9. I have similar problems to you. I find FB a lumbering beast, but at least I can have some sort of conversation within it, unlike Twitter - where a brief 'hello' and a disjointed 'how are you' seem to be its limit. Not that I don't tweet things - extensively! I find interesting stuff that way - far more so than within FB. Horses for courses, as they say.
    BTW I'm adding my favourite AtoZ's to my Pinterest wall - now that to me seems a good use of Pinterest!
    Jemima
    #TeamDamyanti
    Blogging from Alpha to Zulu in April

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  10. I gave up Facebook for Lent. It has actually been kind of nice. Not sure I will return. Don't miss the religious and political rants and raves of persons I love. There are some things we just don't want to know about people.

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  11. Jemima: Thanks for stopping by.

    Yeah, I would have to agree with you on FB being a lumbering beast. A pleasant beast, but lumbering just the same.

    G.A.: I have a friend on FB that is doing the exact same thing, and for her, it's been really tough.

    And yes, there are some things that are better left unexplored.

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  12. I think those are very good criteria. I don't have it at home, as you know, but it's a necessary evil for work - we can connect there with people we wouldn't connect with otherwise.

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  13. M: I've seem some of the posts from your job and they are MOR, informative yet not in your face.

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