What are you doing right now? That’s what they ask. And people respond. Really. I thought that was a little solipsistic, you know? (A lot solipsistic, actually.) And then I wrote one in for Hale. Then later another one for Hale (with his permission, of course). That broke the ice.
Now I find myself having to resist answering the question. What would my answer be, anyway? Avoiding work; wasting time; preparing to work; not working…duh. But how interesting is the truth: Taking a break from researching geothermal energy? Or procrastinating the cooking of a meal?
Then there’s the really addictive part: logging onto your page to see what your friends are posting. This business of “friends” is a chastening experience. My grandniece has 917. Her brother has about the same number. Amazing. We won’t speak about mine, but I just started.
Actually, it’s amazing I have any. I wouldn’t if, the moment you sign on, the app didn’t pop up all your email associates who are on Facebook already. Then, if you agree, it sends out requests for them to be your “friends”. You can choose, of course. No reason for your business contacts to be able to read your most meaningless trivia.
My son’s response was: why? Why would you want to do this? But I noticed he has 150 friends, so there you go.
Of course, you can search for friends. I turned up a very old friend I’d lost contact with. Very nice. And you can troll your high school class, or college classmates. There are a lot of networking groups. Hale got a number of friends from the Chronicle and Texas Institute of Letters networks.
Then what? Well, not much. Friends will post photos, or weird things happening to them, or funny things. For instance, Justin Cronin sent out a link to William Shakespeare’s “25 things.” Pretty funny in the boy-humor department. And people comment on that. The way you find out is that there’s a feed where anything that your “friends” post on their personal page pops up on yours, so you can just stay in touch. It’s really kind of nice. (I took a series of workshops with Justin, hence the contact.)
I’m in the process of setting up a professional page for Hale, which gives his book purchasing information and links to his blog, etc. I don’t know how that works, yet, but it’s a way to bring your “brand” and its details to the attention of the giant Facebook community. More to come about whether it works.
Photos today are random ones, taken recently before the clouds and rain began:
3 comments:
Now I have to look at Facebook? Oh, shoot. Blogging has taken over my life, but I do love it. Now I'll have to see Facebook. ~PJ
Thanks for this. I was thinking Face Book was just for the kiddies. But, I also think parents should be aware of how myspace, facebook and others work, so they know what is going on with their children. But, you say we adults can use it too. Cool! Do you twitter?
Thanks for posting about Facebook. I got onto it only to keep in touch with my nephew who lives now in Thailand... and I almost never hear from him, but everyone in creation I ever knew has found me. Not so sure that's the best thing. And I have thought to myself it's another time waster... like I need ANOTHER, since I can be easily sucked into the votrex of the computer, lol), but I like your point of view on it. It helps me to take a different look at it. A nice one. So thanks for that.
And certainly, it is a great thing when you have a book, or a cause, or a restaurant (as in my nephew's case).
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