I've got this question that has been in my head lately ever since they did a whole special about facebook on the news. I've been using myspace for like seven years and have always liked it's features. I mean you can blog and pretty much make it look like your little website. I don't use it much any more and find the colective consciousness to be rather dule and lack of coherance or purpose to say the least. But anyway, I can't figure out the fuss over facebook. I'm always hearing people talk about it and my friend and family are always trying to get me to be on there. I started a facebook and find it vary awkward and limited. I like to blog and post videos and music. That is what I like about myspace. But, facebook seems to shove all that aside and just focus on twittering as the center piece feature. I can't stand the twitter BS. I don't care that one of my friends is eating bread. What retard invented this feature? Or maybe it's just misused in a lamo wamo way. I haven't goten over the reality that sometimes I feel like I'm living in a zombie movey. So what is it about facebook? It doesn't seem as cool as myspace. Is it just twitter? Is that what most people like? I don't know if it's just me....i don't know....but it seems like popular tasts swing in strange directions for no aperant reason. I felt like saying to these people I know who were talking about facebook "why the bleep are you talking about that site? It's striped of features, and is all about twitter. What is so cool about telling your friends you have to use the toilet?" Does is there just some law that sais facebook has to have it's moment no matter what it is because it's facebook?
What is so special about facebook?
I can't agree more.
For quiet some time, people tried to talk me into making an account, but I wouldn't do it, because I don't seem to get what it's about. Not too long ago, I made an account to make these people stop asking me to make an account. (My profile name is "Zonder Vrienden" which means 'without friends' in dutch. I have a bunch of friend requests which I leave unanswered, no accepting or declining, just ignoring...).
I can now continue to ignore the whole thing and people have stopped asking me to make an account.
It's about critical mass. Right now, Facebook has hit critical mass. Soccer moms and AARP members are discovering Facebook in droves (in addition to FB's "traditional" audience).
Do users blog/tweet/post about boring stuff? Yes. It's why I have a small circle of friends. There's only so many people who I want to know are taking their kids to a hockey practice. This is the reason that user generated content mediums are often reduced to irrelevance (anyone remember CB radio?).
I shunned both MySpace and FB for a long time and was finally persuaded to sign up for FB after about a zillion old friends asked me to. The UI is decent enough and the locked down pages mean that nobody's pages will resemble the web designer hell that some MySpace pages are.
From a business perspective, I haven't decided. I see lots of restaurants and night clubs on MySpace, but am starting to see more things on Facebook as well. If I were launching a business presence on either right now, I'd probably go with FB because I am more familiar with it. That doesn't mean that I'd limit myself to one or the other, just that I'd start with that and experiment.
In the end, it's going to depend on what audience you want to reach and what you're trying to do with your pages. I already have two blogs and about 3 web sites I maintain, so I'm not that interested in tricking out my presence on Facebook/MySpace. Your mileage may vary. :)
Great points gameprinter! Now, "audience" is something interesting about the subject I think. I am not experienced with facebook, but I have observed over the years with myspace that the collective audience......what can I say not to overgeneralise the audienct, but any group or forum on there that I've participated in well I can't say all groups. A lot of groups don't get activity like they should. Some groups do so I'm having a hard time making that observation.
I have grown tired of those kinds of sites and more interested in website and blogging. Because blogs attract serious inteligent people interested about a subject. Speaking of blogs, can anyone comments or do you have to have an account with that site to comment? I'm going to be using wordpress.
I always set up Wordpress so that only registered users can post. This is largely because I want to limit the amount of spam. You can use Akismet to filter things, but I'm not sure if Akismet works without requiring user registration. (It's been awhile since I fiddled with the settings and am too lazy/busy to check them right now).
As for blog vs. Social Network sites, you are very correct in that the audience is vastly different. Usually, people visit a topical blog because they are interested specifically in that topic (or that point of view, etc.). That means that the quality of commentary and discussions is going to be different than random visitors. Not better, necessarily, but different.
BTW, you can set up Facebook to take a feed from your blog, so you can replicate the content to capture multiple audiences.
How about page views? Can you at least get an idea of how many hits a blog is getting from anybody even if they aren't commenting?
What does Facebook have to do with Board Game Designing? Last time I checked we were on bgdf.com (Board Game Designers Forum).
Yes I don't know if you saw what post was here but please don't take it personally. I have my moments. I don't know you but I just got agitated. It's good when people call me on my stuff but I would not be here if strick adherance to only board game topics was inforced.
I think the forfathers of this forum had some reason to include an off topic forum. That is what this is posted under. I think it's healthy to talk about things off topic to a certain extent because helful conversation gets generated.
I don't know what came over me just then. I think it's the ring. I'l diminish back to my humble abode and my flickering candle and remain The End of Time Games.
I didn't notice that you had posted this under the off topic section.
It depends. I just embed Google Analytics in my page themes and use that. Your hosting service may have other solutions.
As for relevance, I think that while this subject is marginally "off topic" its also relevant to the marketing of games and designs. You need every advantage you can get! :)
I had to stop myself when I was going to say that people twitter about dumb things because people also blog about boring things.