Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Updating facebook

I spent some time today updating my social media sites. LinkedIn is in good shape and as a site is pretty responsive to edits; facebook, on the other hand ...

Popular as it is, fb has always seemed to me an opaque mess. I never really know how my own entry appears to anyone else and I get confused between wall posts (on your own page), wall posts (on someone else's page), messages, chat, emails and comments. Some are private, others are displayed for all to see - I never really know which.

My other beef is that the fb server often seems asleep at its post. I edit my profile and press the send button ... and it hangs ... for a long, long time ... and then fails. Horrible.

The etiquette of self-description on facebook is strange. Unlike LinkedIn, where you list all the high-powered jobs you've had and the qualifications you've managed to amass, on facebook a certain informal modesty seems de rigeur. At any rate, that's the vibe I get.

My broader feeling about facebook is that it's really oriented to ephemera. I want to write longer and more considered pieces (well, I try!) and the blog format seems somehow more appropriate. So on my fb profile I try to steer people here.

I have plans to get some writing 'out there' in 2013 so the social media angle can't possibly be ignored.