Like most of you, I thought Facebook worked like a text message where you send, and it goes, and that's that. Au Contraire! The man on the video explained that he had up to about one hundred and eighty thousand "likes." He assumed when he put something on his page that it automatically filtered through to these people who had previously indicated they were interested in what he had to say. Nope! He talked to someone at Facebook, and was informed that only about two thousand or so got to see his posts at any given time. If I had a publisher that did that I would find another publisher!
In addition to that, if the people "liking" you don't comment or share for a period of time, Facebook will conveniently "unlike" them for you. How special is that? I was a bit disturbed. My only reason to be on Facebook is to have a convenient ramp to push my articles, and hopefully sell a few books. Facebook had reduced itself to about the level of those things you find on a boar hog that are of absolutely no use at all. You'd think the biggest website in history would be able to compose a sub routine that would simply pass notes through with no fanfare, but then you must remember it was conceived by a guy inventorying girl's faces, i.e. "Facebook!"
So, what to do? Well, first off we must perceive reality. Facebook is useless as a publishing medium. Remember that girlfriend? Great the night before, gone in the morning! Like her, use Facebook for what it's good for. Stop having dreams of glory, imagining millions of followers hanging on your every word, or pictures of your lunch. Create smaller circles of manageable groups that you can be reasonably sure will read what you write, but don't depend on Facebook to do ANYTHING! The girlfriend will never cook you breakfast. If you are having a discussion in a private group, where the people there are interacting with you BINGO! If you think more than ten people are going to read your next "status" you are spitting in the wind. Learn it, live it, love it! Save your best stuff for private blogs. Wordpress, Google Plus, and others are out there. As you develop as a writer your audience will grow. If you get lucky, and some nice people actually PRINT your words in a physical newspaper and that is great. I get more reads from the Dam Good Times, from intelligent people in one month that I've gotten from two years of posting on Facebook. Write a book! Self publish. Then lead people back to that every chance you get. Books, magazines and newspapers are not dead! Brain dead Lemmings comb Facebook for wisdom. Thinking people read the Dam Good Times! They also read the local paper, and those shock rags you find at the checkout stand in the supermarket, but the very act of picking up something, thumbing through it, reading, and considering puts them hands above someone on an iPad sharing a picture of a cat flipping on Facebook!
Are you swatting them bees yet? Facebook creates the illusion that we "need" it. We begin to dread "Facebook Jail" as if our lives will be put on hold if we can't post some drivel about a crazy cop, or a picture of some girl falling down in the street, and all the while some faceless mime sits out there in cyberspace censoring our every thought over a cup of espresso.
In due time Facebook will be a memory. Even Disney studios saw its better days. How's your MySpace thing doing? Someone, somewhere will come up with something new, something better, and you will see that girlfriend jump on the back of a Harley one day, ride away, and never come back. That is the law of the jungle. IBM laughed at Steve Jobs. Do any of you out there even have an IBM computer? How long has it been since you SAW a typewriter? You saw that woman selling newspapers on the street corner this morning, now didn't you? I hate to cite my years in this game, but I've seen 'em come, and I've seen 'em go. They got one thing in common, they got the fire down below.
No comments:
Post a Comment