Earlier this year I finally got Facebook going. I’d had a placeholder for a while. With a common popular name like mine, you can’t afford not to.
But I hesitated to do Facebook. Part of it was time. I’d rather do one or two things well online than spread thin and do nothing adequately.
There was also the fact that social media is an arbitrary framework; it moulds how we are seen, and we’re prisoners to the ‘model’ envisaged by each provider. Twitter, for instance, forces quick-fire messaging, like classified advertisements (which is what a lot of tweets seem to be).
I like WordPress because you can express yourself and interact, through comments, with readers who sometimes become friends in the process. Modern ‘penfriends’ – and that, for me, is one of the great things about blogging.
Facebook? It seems to revolve around transparency and permanency of personal information, coupled with an apparently cavalier attitude to privacy. A curious paradigm, in many ways, and one that’s caused perhaps the most criticism of the service.
Still, with 1.2 billion people apparently on Facebook, there had to be something in it. So I took the plunge, put time into setting it up and am still on a learning curve. I found family members on it, along with people I knew in New Zealand and around the world. And all my blogging friends, people I’d got to know over the years online.
A little later I set up an author page, a useful place to put the latest writing news, what I’m doing, and such. And so I cordially invite all of you to leap across to Facebook now and click ‘like’ on that page…Go on, you know you want to:
https://www.facebook.com/MatthewWrightNZ
See you over on Facebook…and here on this blog…and Twitter…and Pinterest, and Google+, and Tumblr … and don’t forget my main web-page, http://www.matthewwright.net
What was that about spreading too thin again…?
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2014
Matthew Wright 
Welcome to the club. I’m on Facebook but don’t attend it nearly as much as others. I do check it from time to time. All in all, I think I’m enjoying WordPress more. Still, there are many ways to keep in touch with folks and Facebook is just one way to do that. I think if you don’t let it dominate your life, it’s quite acceptable.
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Yes, I’ve found Facebook handy – various members of my family are on it, for a start. As a social network/discussion place? Not so much – like you, I think WordPress is better for that.
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I once read this somewhere and it has stayed in my mind:
Facebook represents people you know from your past
LinkedIn represents people you know in your present
Twitter represents people you’d like to know in the future
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