pages – Climb to the Stars

[fr] 1er épisode de ma tentative de mettre un peu d'ordre dans mes Pages Facebook.

Facebook “Like” buttons are starting to spread and I think I’m going to add them around here. So, I’m wondering which “Facebook Like” WordPress plugin I should install, and also, trying to sort out the mess between my various pages, groups, and profile on Facebook.

I recently started importing Digital Crumble into my Facebook profile, a move I’m pretty happy about because it seems to be making my online wanderings more readily available to a bunch of personal friends of mine who interact with me online mainly via Facebook, Twitter and IM. But on the other hand, I wonder: am I drowning my Facebook presence in too much Digital Crumble?

I’m now wondering what feeds to import where on Facebook.

I’ve always been wary of sending my Twitter firehose into Facebook: not the same audience, and too much Twitter at times, to be honest.

Let’s start with what’s easy: Bagha. He’s got a Facebook page and a Twitter account (@bagha) which he doesn’t use much, and in his case I have no problem linking them. I’ve installed the Twitter Facebook app to do that. I tried to use MyFlickr to import Flickr photos of him, but it was such a pain in the neck (can’t figure out exactly how to use it, + timeouts) I gave up and am looking for another solution to import Bagha’s Flickr photos into his page. I’ve also imported CTTS posts mentioning Bagha (feed) into his articles (hmmm, maybe I should resurrect his Catster diary…).

Have to say, though, that Facebook is a pain in the neck: getting it to accept a feed takes multiple tries, and connecting apps like Twitter or MyFlickr to their respective external services is no walk in the park either. Be persistent!

Facebook has recently made Pages more like Profiles. I’m frighteningly behind in keeping up with all this new stuff (bad, bad!) and I’ve only now had a chance to go and peek at the revamped Pages.

I was initially really disappointed by Facebook Pages. I remember when I started working on promoting Going Solo, I first created a fan page for Going Solo on Facebook. Not many people registered as fans. A few weeks (months?) later, I created a group, and lo and behold, people joined in droves. I realised that Pages weren’t really that interesting (they were far too static) and they didn’t allow you to invite people to become fans. Groups work well because you can invite people to join them (with the side-effect that we’re all swamped with requests to join all sorts of groups).

Back to the new Pages, the fact that they’re more like profiles has led me to create my own “fan” page. Now, it’s not that I consider myself a famous person or anything, but if I look at things coldly, clearly, more people want to be in touch with me than I can keep up with. I am a bit of a public figure in certain circles.

On Twitter, I have (today) about 2300 followers, but I follow only 500 people. On Facebook, I have about 500 “friends” (see a pattern emerging) and another 200 friend requests from people I barely know, don’t know, or don’t recognize. And that is after I went “overboard” about a year ago and started exercising way less restraint in who I connected to — because there was a business incentive for me to do so.

Initially, I kept my Facebook connections way more restricted than my Twitter ones. Facebook was “people I feel I know”. But that failed.

So I’m wondering: if I use a Page to stay connected to acquaintances, networking contacts, etc… will it change the way I connect to people with my profile? Will I be able to reclaim some “privacy” for my Facebook profile?

It’s way too early to tell. But I’m looking forward to experimenting with this and seeing how it goes.