Have a Facebook Fan Page?

[shootingstar]

Wondering how on earth people find time to update their blog, facebook fan page (or other stuff), pay attention to tweets, group email messages, etc. aaaHHHHHHHHHHH?! :o Especially if it's personal social media, not job-related content for all your social media activities.

If you have a Facebook fan page, is it primarily static content?

[crazycanuck]

TE has a facebook fan page.

[tulip]

I reluctantly got myself a facebook page after several friends and colleagues encouraged me to do so (hounded, me actually). It was my 11-year old nephew who finally put me over the edge. My page static and I look at it maybe once a month. My info is only visible to my "friends" and my "friends" are only people whom I actually know in person. I'll add a photo once in a while; I have only three photos. And I think I've posted two or three things on my Wall.

Some people get really into it, but I don't. I've enjoyed catching up with some old friends. More importantly for me, however, are the connections to current community and current friends. I'm involved in some local groups (Slow Food, Civic Association, a local Botanical Garden) and much of the communication of upcoming events and links are through Facebook.

I've never done twitter, but I'm open to it if it becomes something useful to me. Now it is not, as far as I can tell.

[Crankin]

I'm just a little more active on FB than Tulip. I only have around 25 friends and they are all people I know. I stay connected with people in AZ on FB. I never posted anything on my wall until about a month ago. I only say something every once in awhile, though. No pictures, except for the one in my profile and I didn't put that up until a few weeks ago.
I was glad I joined the group for the x country ski center I go to in NH. They posted lots of good information and pictures that helped me decide whether to make the drive up there.

[Grog]

I wonder how people have the time to start so many threads on online forums. :D just kidding. I think it just depends what kind of online time one spends and what priorities are.

I did use Twitter for professional reasons for a while but I found that it overwhelmed me with information. The information was good (it was mostly a professional/journalistic network of folks) but I just couldn't keep up and still do my work. I wish I had someone working for me full time keeping track of stuff there and reporting back to me on certain pieces. :rolleyes:

I do have lots of Facebook friends, mostly weak links, people I used to hang out with in or former colleagues from other parts of my life. Many, many of my acquaintances are in other parts of the world and it makes me feel good to know that somehow we're keeping in touch. Who is it that wrote "The Strength of Weak Links"?

This being said, I seldom update my status but I do exchange small talk with "friends."

[Crankin]

Oddly, one of the most enjoyable parts of FB for me is seeing who comes up in my list of possible friends. Because I am friends with the kids of a friend in AZ, I keep seeing the names of some of my oldest son's friends from when he was in kindergarten and first grade, before we moved. Today I saw the names of two women who were in my play group, 25 years ago. One had moved away from AZ and came back after I left, and the other now lives in Columbus, Ohio. I didn't "friend" them, but I did look at their pictures. I was not really close with either of them.
I did find a woman on my list of possible friends who I had been close to in college. We communicate on FB once in awhile. I had not heard from her in 30 years!

[OakLeaf]

Getting on FB was one of the things I promised myself before I turned 50. ;) I started to become concerned about the world passing me by and becoming one of those people who's completely disconnected from contemporary life. :eek:

I use it more to keep up with organizations I support, find out what the night's specials are at my favorite restaurant, what the bike club's doing, etc., but I do post a status update or at least a link I want to share every couple of days, sometimes more. I'm rather new to it and only have a handful of friends so far. Only three of them are people I've never met F2F, and none of those three are people I have no other connection with.

I just this week heard from someone on FB that I hadn't been in contact with for 15 years, and that was cool.

I only "friended" one person from high school, and that's mainly because she was wearing a bicycle helmet in her profile picture. :D She wasn't a cyclist when we were in school, so it was cool to see that. But she's very inactive on FB.

[shootingstar]

Well, whenever I get around to it, ie. creating for personal reasons for an FB pg. :o

Actually was thinking about it for dearie's company but already he is overwhelmed by listserve /group email messages for biz and advocacy work. He gets a whole barrage coming in daily.

So whatever social media tool I start up, he has to have time/energy to pick up the slack later on.

The thought of getting onto Twitter for professional reasons makes me wince from being overwhelmed --at this time. Already there are a ton of niche listservs, of which I belong to a few select ones. I know colleagues (librarians) Twitter madly away during major conferences, commenting on speakers, etc. But a 140 (or whatever) character tweet limit doesn't sound like saying too much meaningful without executing yet another weblink click. I'm just happy to read the full conference paper/view slide presentation afterwards. At this time, I focus on quality journal and blog sites by organizations/people with a strong international/diverse following and full fledged articles.

FB does sound like fun..but my friends and I communicate...every few weeks or even less frequent, by email.

I'm not convinced I really feel like reaching out to people from so long ago that I've lost touch and haven't made effort in the past, to reach out.

Life is short. I want my blog post to be at least teeny bit meaningful and has abit more "permanence". My tweets will get lost in the jumble of tweetsphere.

[kjay]

I'm still trying to understand Facebook. When someone I know asks to be my Facebook friend, is that a true and sincere request from that specific person or is it a concocted request from Facebook?

[Mr. Bloom]

I'm still trying to understand Facebook. When someone I know asks to be my Facebook friend, is that a true and sincere request from that specific person or is it a concocted request from Facebook?

Most likely, they sought you out...BUT if you don't know them, it's important to ignore. Also avoid some of the peripherals that look like someone is inviting you to link to with some "this is neat..." quote...those are the FB equivalent of spam or viruses and should be avoided...

[OakLeaf]

Unless their account's been compromised, it comes from them (and by "compromised" I mean the old-fashioned way, as FB security is good enough to protect their advertisers and their profits). Now, when you join, there's a setting to allow FB to invite everyone in your address book who's not already on FB :eek:, but that appears as an invitation to join, not as a friend request (and most people turn that off). "Friending" someone is separate, even if you joined at their invitation.

[Running Mommy]

our shop has a fan page. It's linked to twitter, but I never really go on twitter itself.
I'm working on getting video on our shop page, and I have a bunch of pic's.
If you want to see what we are up to in AZ, check us out.
Estrella Mountain Cyclery

aka, the little shop that could...

[MommyBird]

I have a FB page that I rarely visit.
My husbands office manager raised over $500 for the "Walk for Life" with a FB tool or widget or something. Not sure what to call it.
I activated it on mine a couple of days before the walk and didn't raise a dime! Did I sign up too late or am I just such a big online social looser that no one pays attention to my FB? Or, are my settings too restrictive and nobody could see that I was fund raising? Someday, I may ask one of my sons. In which case I will probably get the eye roll.

[NoNo]

I don't twitter, blog, or visit a ton of forums. But I'm active on Facebook. As well as my personal page, I have a fan page for my business. I don't have to update that as much, only if I've gotten something new in or have some pictures to post, so it's not that much of a time drain. I'm working on a getting a website up for the business, too. Thankfully, a friend is helping design it. I'm hoping that in the future if I need to make updates to it, it won't be a complicated process. And this is just for a side-job aside from my regular full-time job. There are definitely days when I just don't have enough time to do it all or keep up with everyone.

[Catrin]

I started on Facebook last summer, but didn't really start using it until a month ago. I only have 29 friends, but I know each and every one of them :) I tend to limit my status updates to something related to cycling or a little humor, generally only a few times/week.

I also use FB to keep up with certain organizations and groups that I am interested in, though I rarely post there. I DID find the Surly Long Haul Trucker group, which is nice.

[jobob]

Nowadays I keep up with my friends mainly through facebook, I spend very little time on online forums anymore. fb is much more convenient for me.

[mekira]

I have a facebook page. I use it to catch up on old friends. I read more than I write though. I only accept people I know in real life (or knew at one point). I don't play any of the game on there and I the info I give when I update is mainly about training. I guess I'm a bit of a 'voyeur' because I love to read what other people are doing LOL

[Biciclista]

i have a fan page for my art work, and a page for me personally too. I have sold paintings already through that fan page. shooting star, if you get a "friend request" it's real. But if on the right hand corner, it suggests a friend, that was facebook's idea. I LOVE facebook. Today my best buddy from Highschool resurfaced. She has a really common (married) name and I lost track of her. but now she's on FACEBOOK. Yippee!!!

[jobob]

You don't have to accept every fb friend request you receive.

I once accepted a friend request from someone who I thought was on a TNT team I was associated with (come to find out, he wasn't).

He then sent out friend requests to all of the women (afaik, just the women) on my fb friend list -- I knew that because I suddenly received a bunch of fb private messages asking me "who is this So-and-So who just sent me a friend request?".

Turns out he was sending out friend requests to a whole slew of people (mostly women) he didn't know. He was basically a serial friender (I have other names to describe people like him but they'd probably get *'d out here ;) ), just beefing up his friend list, I guess to make himself feel important. :rolleyes:

Harmless I suppose, but pointless and creepy, IMHO - I promptly de-friended the turkey.

Anyhow, nowadays if I get a friend request from someone whose name I don't recognize, I'll write back & ask how I know him/her (could be someone on a forum who I know by their screenname, or someone I've actually ridden with whose last name I simply had forgotten), and if I'm not satisfied with the reply, I simply don't accept the friend request.

[OakLeaf]

Anyhow, nowadays if I get a friend request from someone whose name I don't recognize, I'll write back & ask how I know him/her (could be someone on a forum who I know by their screenname, or someone I've actually ridden with whose last name I simply had forgotten), and if I'm not satisfied with the reply, I simply don't accept the friend request.

Or google them... I did that with one person, didn't want to embarrass myself or them by asking (and making them realize that I didn't recognize their name) if I didn't have to. ;) Might not work if it was a really common name, but this one wasn't.

If I'm friending someone I know from TE or another forum where we don't use real names, I'll identify myself by my screen name in the friend request.

[Tuckervill]

I love Facebook. I check it every day. The things I love most about it:


Catching up with old friends that I'd lost touch with.
Keeping up with my grandchildren (via their parents) because they live far away. They post pictures that I wouldn't see otherwise.
Being able to send out casual invitations to local things at the last minute.
Interesting links to information, youtubes or other funny things I might have missed otherwise, but am glad I didn't.


My favorite part is when my friends post what they cooked for dinner or are planning to cook. That alone has been worth the cost of admission for me, because I hate deciding what to cook for dinner!

You can set it up so it is not obtrusive to your life. I don't check it on my phone, unless I'm really bored and somewhere without my computer, but I can and I like that.

I like Twitter for up-to-the-minute stuff, like whether the college baseball game we're on the way to is about to be rained out. That is priceless.

Karen

[NbyNW]

There is a lot of junk on Facebook, but the fan pages that make it worthwhile provide useful information on a quasi-frequent basis. It's just like subscribing to a mailing list. Too much and I start to ignore.

I don't have a page, but my prof'l association announces events through their fan page. There is a drawing professor at my uni who has a fan page and he posts sketches and writes about the drawing process. And then I have a friend whose company uses it for PR, talking about things in the news that affect the industry or if they've won an award for a project. Another friend is also starting up their company and is using the fan page to help announce/roll out new products.