I started this on October 22, 2009, the day after starting the new accounts at FaceBook and MySpace. It’s been a week now and I have over 60 “friends”. I’ll admit to about 40 and the rest are new to me or I’m part of a fan group. So here is the post I couldn’t get on my blog because my webhost’s firewall is just so hair trigger, blocked my IP. Let’s hope it is fixed now.
MySpace, FaceBook, Voila!
I bit the bullet and created pages on three social networking sites. My main motivation for setting up accounts with MySpace and FaceBook was to prevent anyone else from setting up an account in my name and writing untoward things on it. I worked for years to get name recognition in the polymer clay world. For 10 years I’ve been teaching for free online, sharing my polymer clay journey with the group members and the general public, creating a following and building a brand. I wanted to lock down NoraJean and AuntyAlias on the social networking sites to protect my brand.
I had resisted MySpace and FaceBook for a long time. I pay for a domain and a website, web building and computer graphics software, digital camera and wacom tablet. I figured that these social networking sites are for people who didn’t have the resources to create and maintain a web presence. Since 1999 the dozens of volunteers and I have hosted the clay art Yahoo Group and that was my social network where those who wanted to learn how to get a grip on their clay could join and hang out.
I didn’t think I needed to be on those social networking sites. But I have been getting invitations and nudges from friends and family, some of whom do all their social networking on the two major networking sites of MySpace and FaceBook. I saw other artists, people I know had their own websites, had their own blog space, join those sites, and I wondered why.
It was to gather the folks on those sites and pull them to the main websites. Oh, slap me on my forehead. I hadn’t thought of that. If I have an account there I could link that account to my main website. Call me slow, maybe I’ve been so busy creating new content for my site, keeping up with the ClayMates on the Yahoo Group, that angle hadn’t occurred to me.
So I bit the bullet and set up three accounts today. Here are my one day observations:
I like that I could customize the page for MySpace but didn’t like that I couldn’t state that my relationship was “complicated”. The interface with MySpace is easier to learn. You get an actual url with your name or nick name on it. You also get a MySpace email address that filters to the email you signed on with. If you want you can let MySpace search your address book for people to invite. I skipped that. I have a gazillion addresses in my address book from hosting CITY-o-Clay, work and other non-art contacts. That wholesale “invite” is intrusive and not a little lame. You can start a blog. All in all it’s comfortable. Plus you can delete the account when you’re done with it.
FaceBook has always had a problem with not deleting your account but you “deactivate” it. That’s dicey. FaceBook lets you state that your relationship is “complicated” but everyone is stuck with the generic blue and white look. You do not get a recognizable url with your name or nick name for FaceBook, you get a number. Take a number and stand in line. I didn’t get to explore as much as I needed to.
As soon as I verified my FaceBook account my girlfriend, Angela, hits me up with an instant message and we ended up chatting through FaceBook. So that was an interesting blast from the past. Not Angela being a blast from the past, IMing someone. I’ve not chatted with anyone on IM in a long time. There were some bugs. Like I wanted to change the FaceBook page and I ended losing the IM with Angela. I didn’t know where it was although I could hear the “bing bing” of her posting new comments. We tossed message back and forth with one another until, for reasons I have no idea, the IM function came back. I don’t like that I could not keep a record of the IM chat. Doing a “select all” selects the whole page, not just the IM thread. Highlighting and scrolling up or down was spotty and ineffective.
There’s a lot of family and friends on FaceBook. My first reaction wasn’t as good as MySpace. It looks institutional, everyone having the same page colors. What’s with this “wall” business? Everything people write to you gets put on the wall? I still need to poke about and see what is going on with sending messages that are private. There seems to be a lot of games, online computer games, that people can play on FaceBook. I can see how it can become a time sink.
Voila is a EU polymer clay social networking site that I found through one of my polymer clay newsletters. It looked so fresh and new I thought, why not? My website is linked to a lot of overseas sites, I can tell by looking at the incoming traffic stats, so it’s not like I’m totally unknown over there. It’s a nice interface, easy to get around, but different from what I’m used to here in the States. I was able to load up 10 pictures that change on the profile page like a over active slide show. I alternated between sculpted figures and mini food, then some beads. But where did the captions go? There is also a photo gallery, a different space to load up pictures. I loaded up AbaFold Lady and she showed up on the front page of the site.
So that’s the dish from the Left Coast. Everyone who has been nudging me to join MySpace and FaceBook can now add me to their “friends” list, give me a “poke”, write things on my wall. If nothing else I’ve locked down Nora Jean and Aunty Alias at the two behemoths and that was my intent for today.
Second Day:
By the second day I have nearly 30 “friends” on Facebook and only one contact on MySpace. It’s puzzling because I think that MySpace has a nicer look and feel to it. I did a search for news “FaceBook vs MySpace statistics”. The articles I found say that FaceBook is growing in leaps and bounds. That MySpace isn’t growing as much. FaceBook is privately owned in Palo Alto and MySpace is in Beverly Hills. MySpace is owned by Fox, which could piss some folks off who have a beef with Glen Beck.
It is still puzzling how MySpace is getting owned by FaceBook. The FaceBook updates use the belt and suspender approach. You get an email notification and you get a virtual notification when you go to your home page.
What I’m seeing is the way the social network grows. I’m connected to Alice Stroppel through Art-Insights. She’s on FaceBook too. She accepted my request as a friend. Her friends have people who are professional polymer clay people. So I requested a link to Donna Kato and got accepted. Now that brings a bit of status to my list of friends. The more professional clayers accept my request for friendship the higher my status becomes, or so it would seem.
Through a former BossLady, my darling Mz EdyMay, I did find where Allie moved to with her sons, so I sent a request for being a friend to Allie and am waiting for a reply.
Two out of four of my sons are on FaceBook and three of my former husbands. LOL I did join the fan club for Yassir Chadly, Said’s father, because no matter what happened between us I am still a fan of his music. If the father of my older two sons kept on painting I’d have joined him as a fan, but he’s into holistic health and I’m not feeling motivated to contact him for that reason. I found one of my son’s ex-wives. I asked for a link to her and that should be interesting to have contact with my only grand daughter for the first time in three or more years.