I originally wrote this post in March of 2011, over 4½ years later, a life time in WWW years, I decided to revisit this article. My November 2015 updates are in blue
Facebook became available to the general public on September 26, 2006. Other than Google I would argue Facebook has had the most significant impact on how we use the Internet than any other website. Yep, still true.
I created my Facebook account on October 21st 2007. The 4th post on my wall came almost a year later, in September of 2008. The message was my from my friend and business associate Ron Kavanaugh who wrote: “post something!” I post something on my AALBC.com page almost everyday. Everything I post on my personal page is related to my business. I suspect my “Facebook friends” who are paying attention, must find me very boring.
In response, I commented on a photo he tagged me on. However it took another 6 months before I began to actively use Facebook. That was two years ago and I’ve been an active user ever since. Today I spend about an hour a day on Facebook; it is part of my daily routine and an integral part of my business. Today I try to keep all social media activity down to less than 10 minutes a day.
As a result, of this experience I decided to share some random thoughts about Facebook. Hopefully you’ll find a few interesting. Please share your own insights in the comments.
- My aunt calls Facebook, “Myfacespace”
She knows it is Facebook now, but she also does not use it; all of her posts, over the last few years, promote games–I’m sure that resulted from clicking the wrong link years ago. - MySpace has actually gotten a lot better, but no one has noticed.
It is astonishing how little MySpace is mentioned, outside of conversations about what could happen to Facebook. - More than 50% of Americans over 12 years of age are users of Facebook. However, most of my family and friends don’t have Facebook accounts.
Increasing numbers of my family and friends, that are on Facebook, don’t use it very much. - I never believed Facebook user counts. There are Facebook profiles for pets, characters from novels, people with multiple profiles even Big Foot has one.
Big Foot still has an account, but the Yeti is not very active. - I have almost 4,900 “friends”. I’m now suspicious of friend request from someone with whom I share no friends.
Still have almost 4,900 “friends.” Many of my friend requests come from hot looking young women with no friends.
- I’m surprised when I get a friend request from someone I actually know.
I still rarely get friend requests from actual friends. - My teenage children and I are not Facebook friends, and we love each other.
One of my kids friended me, but we never engage each other on Facebook, that would feel kinda weird 🙂 - I hate the Facebook feature where a “friend” can add you to a group without your permission. Your only notice is the rash of emails from the group.
I guess I could figure out how to change my permissions to stop this, but then Facebook will change the rules and I have to figure it out all over again. - I spent about an hour a day on Facebook. If I were not running a web based business I suspect it would be about an hour a week.
I’ve essentially stopped using Facebook for personal reasons and got my business usage down to 10 minutes a day (for all social media). - I love to play games, but I never play games on Facebook – In fact I block all game applications.
I still block or ignore all games. - When removing that spam post for the “free iPad” on my wall, I accidentally clicked it. The associated application proceeded to spam by friends with the same message. It took an hour to remove those spam messages from my friend’s walls.
I rarely clicks on Facebook, which is odd, because my sole purpose on Facebook today is to get others to click links leading back to my website. - It is astonishing how many people use their websites to drive traffic to Facebook rather than the other way around.
This is a remarkable trend, which hurts websites more than it helps. But Facebook can be a useful tool if we, collectively, choose to use it that way. - Too many people take the activities of others, on Facebook, way too seriously.
Too many of us take ourselves way too seriously on Facebook. - I can’t reply to all of my Facebook messages — especially if I don’t log in for a day or two. If I don’t reply, don’t assume I hate you, just try again.
Facebook allows to you save canned replies, so I reply to everyone–it take about 1 or 2 seconds to reply to each person. - The best thing about a Facebook Fan Page is the visitor statistics they provide.
The worst thing about Facebook Fan Page is the visitor statistics they provide–some of the visitors stats are very misleading, generated by fake accounts. Lean more about Facebook fraud. - Through Facebook I’ve reconnected with people I have not seen in over 30 years.
While it is cools to see images of people you have not seen in 30 years. None of these reconnections on Facebook have translated into reconnections in the real world. I guess people become disconnected for a reason, reasons that Facebook is not about to change. - I thoroughly enjoyed the film Social Network
- Facebook is great. Some think it will “become the Internet”. I think that would be a disaster.
Facebook is great for Facebook, but not it is not so hot for the rest of the web, because Facebook is indeed becoming the internet. Many businesses no longer have websites; their facebook page is now their main web presence. While it is not quite a “disaster,” at this point, the Internet is a less rich place today, than it was before Facebook.
Troy Johnson’s Facebook Profile Page: http://www.facebook.com/aalbc
Facebook began to beat my website in search results, so I ripped out all of my personal content on Facebook. If you want to learn more about me please visit my website
Please like AALBC.com’s Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/aalbcfanpage
Liking my Facebook page does not help me very much. I spent a lot of time building my Facebook fan base to over 20,000 people, but Facebook will simply not show my posts to these fans without me paying for it. Others on the Web have called this unfortunately policy, by Facebook, Facebook Zero.