Well, it’s the year of responsibility. So, it was time.
It’s been said time and time again on this blog that I really dislike Facebook. I mean, really, I dislike it SO much.
Granted, I’ve also given the caveat that it has led to some great things. I got one of the best jobs I ever had when someone posted it to my Facebook wall. I’ve had some friendships blossom a bit mainly because of Facebook chat…
You know, those people where you meet them once or twice and you think they’re really cool and all. But you’re not totally sure you know them well enough to call/email/whatever.
(I mean, I’m pretty sure emailing is almost always okay…) But there is nothing less intrusive than Facebook chat.
If they’re on FB chat, they’re obviously wasting their time just like you are. And they’ve set it to show they’re available for chatting. So, I get how that’s pretty much the easiest thing ever.
(I think that’s also sort of made us as a society possibly worse at really trying to form new connections, but you know, whatever. It worked. So, that’s fine.)
I’d been teetering on the edge of basically abandoning my personal profile in favor of my page for months now. It’s so hard! With a page, usually Facebook has fewer people see your stuff (unless people specifically subscribe to your notifications). As a page, they want you to spend money on advertising and boosting posts.
So, not only is my audience SO much smaller already because I only have 1/10th of the likes on my page as I do friends on my profile… but it’s even smaller still since Facebook only lets an even smaller fraction of people than normal see my stuff. Eesh.
Part of the reason it’s been so hard to transition is because if I put up a picture from something cool on my profile, there was a big chance I’d get at least 30 likes… I know 30 out of 2,500 is a very small number. But it still felt like a big enough number (when you didn’t think about it in the grand scheme of number of friends) to say, “I’m cool.”
But on my page, I might get one or two… possibly even none! And who doesn’t like to feel liked? I know I do! I think that’s one of the biggest points of Facebook – to scream out, “Hey world! Like me, like me!”
So, sometimes I’d post on my page, but then share it on my profile. This is not the best idea unless it’s something wildly important. If you do that too often, you’re not really rewarding the awesome people who’ve liked your page, because you’re sharing the same stuff with the people who haven’t (quite possibly making them see it twice).
But you are rewarding the behavior of your super lame friends who can’t even hit the like button (you know who you are), because they’re now thinking, “Oh, I’ll still see everything from her page. So why even like it now?”
So, I’ve tried to get out of that habit. I’ll admit I still do it once in a while so that any people who haven’t transitioned yet can remember “oh, I should do that.” But I’ve tried to way settle down on that.
I’ll continue with this subject tomorrow.