"Wow. You're getting married? Congratulations. That's funny that your only status update on facebook was that you had become a fan of 'Big Bang Theory.'"
--New Adventures of Old Christine (which I am watching because AMY SEDARIS IS ON IT; she just told Julia Louis Dreyfus "you smell ...poor.")
I haaaaaate the term "fan page" on facebook. There's probably a place for them, but that place should be reserved for 12-year-old girls and Taylor Swift.
Everytime I click on "become a fan," I cringe. Then I cringe more when facebook sends out that feed to everyone I know. (And sometimes, I become a fan of things for purely work-related reasons -- for example, I had to "become a fan" of the Today Show, in order to tag them in posts whenever they do a segment that's local-eque. Now, typically, I do have the Today Show on while I'm getting ready for work in the morning, but I most definitely would not characterize myself a "fan" -- that is a strong word. It's a commitment -- one I am certainly reluctant to ask friends to make.
But once I started the whole blog-a-day commitment, they started complaining that they would like to keep up, but that they would like for me to make it easier and more convenient. I use the "follow" feature here on my blogger dashboard, but I definitely don't think it's convenient. I miss stuff all the time, and the more prolific bloggers drown out the ones who post less frequently.
Plenty of people use Twitter to auto-post their blogs, and I find it terribly masturbatory (yeah, I'm lookin' at you Seth Godin) -- akin to the people who just use it to post micro-press releases. The one thing I know about my facebook is that the feeds are pretty non-disruptive and non-intrusive -- follow what you want; leave the rest. Click, don't click. Nobody minds. Nobody knows. Nobody cares.So there's now a Facebook Fan Page for the blog. Yeah, I'm sorry that's kinda asshole-ish/douchebaggy. But I'll try to keep up with posting the daily links there. Feel free to follow it if you like, but by no means should you feel obligated.
I "become a fan" of many pages for work related reasons, too. People read too much into it. People make the assumption that you are a fan of every single one, and it's not worth it to specify. What's the use?
ReplyDeleteWhat's got me annoyed about FB fan pages now is that information is publicly available (along with every single one of your friends and other stuff) now that FB changed its privacy policy. You can't not share that information. So now I don't just have friends wondering why I added such&such fan page, but anyone who views my FB profile.
Fan-flipping-tastic. :)
Two words: Google Reader.
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