When the ‘Social’ Drops Out of Social Media

“The more followers and friends you have, the more awesome and important you are.”
–Clive Thompson (In Praise of Obscurity WIRED Magazine, Feb 2010, page 30.)

This begs the question: Is it true? (Sure!) Or more importantly, what is the impact of being that Pied Piper of Social Networking Awesomeness?

According to Thompson (quoted above), somewhere beyond having a few hundred/few thousand (depends on various factors) Twitter followers the social aspect of social networking breaks down. When you have a small gathering, like any social event, conversations happen and the group becomes a bit of a community with regulars throwing out ‘crazy’ ideas, bantering, and the building upon the thoughts of others. But once the event reaches a certain size, it becomes difficult for conversations to happen over the din and for those who know each other to meet up and converse. The example he uses in his article involves a Twitter maven who lost her small town feel around 13,000 followers (which is quite impressive actually–how she managed to keep that feel among so many followers makes her a rock star!). For her Twitterverse things went from a social event to dead silence.

To bring it down to a more personal level, when you see a blog with a ton of comments, are you likely to leave a comment? Or do you feel as I do–there is nothing left to comment upon and that you will simply get lost in the shuffle? As Thompson says of big audiences, “Not only do audiences feel estranged, the participants also start self-censoring. People who suddenly find themselves with really huge audiences often start writing more cautiously, like politicians.”

I’m not saying that amassing followers, friends, or blog commenters is a bad thing, however it is an interesting idea that the social aspect can reach its limits and fade away. I suppose there are limits to everything.

Back to Balance… and Marketing

A few weeks ago I mentioned that one of my current goals is to balance things in my life in order to rejuvenate and celebrate the joy in what I do every day. (That’s not to say I’ve been miserable, simply that it’s incredibly easy to get swept up in the myriad of ‘shoulds’ and forget to have a complete and utter blast.)

As if hearing the cries of aspiring (and published) writers, literary agent Nathan Bransford posted his ideas on marketing and balance. The long and the short of it is that writers should have some sort of Googleable web presence, but that trying to do ‘everything’ in terms of promotion–and there are a zillion ways to do this these days–you are going to dilute yourself and not do anything well.

Here, here.

It all comes back to balance. (I love it when things come full circle.)

Jean Oram

Create Your Badge

Lately, I’ve been reading here and there little somethings that reflect my own thoughts on Twitter and Facebook and all those ‘follow/friend’ social networking opportunities. That is: Don’t follow everyone just to count coup. (There is an actual term for those who do this, but my brain is letting me down.) Their advice (and mine too): Follow those you are genuinely interested in.

In other words: So what if you have 1200 followers? If you are following 1200 people we know exactly how you obtained those 1200 followers. You can’t possibly read all those tweets and create a true relationships with those followers. My warning is: Don’t kid yourself into believing all those followers are a true platform and that they are all going to run out and buy your book if you ask them to (if you are an unknown).

Interesting fact that I can’t back up (it’s in a book around here somewhere–Later note: Here’s an article on Dunbar’s Number): People bottom out around 150 relationships. After they reach that threshold, they are unable to maintain and sustain more relationships. True relationships take time, energy and memory making them genuine and rewarding for all involved.

Now, a little clarification on my rant–there is nothing wrong with using social networks and gaining a following. You don’t have to know someone’s favourite colour or know their lineage to have a relationship that will result in them supporting your endeavours. In fact, I recommend building online platforms and using social networking sites. I guess what I am trying to say is: keep it genuine. As Nathan says, if you don’t ‘feel’ it (blogging, tweeting, etc), your audience is going to know. So, do what you are good at. Do what feels genuine and it will get you a whole heck of a lot farther in your promotion or platform building.

Nobody can do everything. And nobody can do everything well.

Jean’s book montage

Jean Oram’s favorite books »

So, another tough question for you blog readers–where is the balance between writing and promotion? How do you keep it fresh when you are blogging and tweeting and facebooking? Or do you?

Interesting News Stories and Harry Potter 7

Went to the movie store with dandelion’s in my hair. Forgot about it until I was in the car on the way home and caught a flash of yellow in the rear view mirror while navigating their poorly planned out parking lot.

I’ve heard some interesting things on the news lately–and I’m not a news junkie. I pretty much avoid listening to the news when I can, but here are two weird things I’ve come across in the last twenty-four hours:

A Man in the States drove 5000 miles to go burn another guy’s house down after the guy called him ‘stupid’ or some such thing over the Internet. So, anyway…never heard of turn the other cheek…

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) are taking Facebook to task. Evidently some users of Facebook are encouraging/promoting drinking and driving. According to the RCMP, encouraging someone to commit a crime, is well, bad. And you can get in trouble for that. So, sounds like MADD is going to contact Facebook so those users can be warned. It should be interesting to hear what happens…unless of course I don’t bother to follow up on the story…which is likely. It gets into the whole Freedom of Speech and all that…so it sounds tricky and interesting.

On a totally different, yet similar note…

I’ve finished reading ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. And can I just say this, this is not a kids book. It pains me to say it, but it isn’t. It is a SCARY book. It is FABULOUS too. Made me laugh and cry and all that. I guess what I am saying, is that there is some imagery in the book that is well…disturbing. It is incredibly well-written and everything ties in beautifully. I must say that JK Rowling’s brain must be very good at details. Yet…if they make this book straight into a movie, it would not get a ‘general’ rating, it might get a ‘PG’ rating, but if they took all the spooky stuff and fight scenes and deaths galore, it could come out more like an adventure/horror and therefore be ‘R’? I don’t know…but any kid with a great, visual imagination…well, this book could definitely scare their pants off. At the same time, it is aimed at 10-12 year old boys who LOVE having their pants scared off.

As a parent, would I restrict my daughter from reading this book? Possibly. It depends on how much she takes to heart and imagination from books once she is near an age that she would enjoy this story. This book is definitely worth reading and is valuable in that it draws parallels to things like racism and the holocaust. So, I suppose my answer is, that when my daughter is ‘ready’ maybe I’ll read it with her and we’ll talk through the story. Or maybe she won’t be interested in it.

Now as for elementary school librarians…this is going to be hard for them. It is a kids book. And a very popular author and series. But what do you do? Do you stock it? Do you restrict it to certain grades? Do they need parental permission to sign it out? It’s tough, because you don’t want to restrict the freedoms of others…yet, you also have a job to ‘protect’ kids. As a former librarian, my heart goes out to those librarians wrestling with this decision right now. There are no right answers and definitely no answers that fit like an umbrella over all circumstances.

Twilight Zone, Serendipity and what’s that other word…

To bring the eight pound laptop or not…<sigh>…I probably will since I am hoping to hear from some agents. Anyway…

On Facebook, I just found two more people from high school. And they remember me. I always figure people won’t remember me or that they won’t want to get in touch. Not that I was awful or anything…just a minor complex, I suppose. I did find another cousin on there today too. It’s been a big day on Facebook. I’ve taken all my photos and personal info off (or at least the stuff I actually put on there). I think it makes it hard for people to know if they have the real ‘me’ though.

I wonder how big Facebook is growing. I mean, per day. Those would be interesting figures. I mean, I haven’t been on there for that long and people I looked up a few weeks ago are now on. I have a friend who is being pressured to join up and another who actually had some friends create a fan club for him where his friends post pictures and stories about him, trying to get him to sign up. I assume someone must be showing him the club. So far, he is holding out. I guess he just isn’t that cool. Or our peer pressure just isn’t measuring up.

Cool, cool, cool. My hubby just came home from a class and his prof showed him graphs on Facebook’s growth. Apparently there are 8.9 or 89 million (he can’t recall which) people blogging. That is 18 million more than a couple of months ago. Anyway, that is a bit freaky, since I was blogging about Facebook and its growth and he comes home and talks about that first thing. [Insert twilight zone music here.]

More on Facebook

So, pretty much everyone is on Facebook. Apparently even Jack Layton is on Facebook. (NDP leader up here in Canada.)

Interesting tidbit though. I was listening to DNTO (Definitely Not the Opera) on CBC this morning and they were yakking about Facebook. Interesting thing is that Facebook (aka Crackbook and Fbook) holds the status of being the worst for its privacy policy on the worldwide web. Not exactly something that you strive to achieve. How exactly they came up with that ‘fact’ I am unsure.

If you do a search on the Internet, you find lots of rants and accusations against Facebook. And that makes me wonder, is it simply because Facebook has gotten incredibly popular and is growing exponentially every day? Or is it for real? When I signed up, I was very hesitant. There are very few ads on the site and there are lots of places to put in piles of personal information. Some of it is theoretically only accessible to your ‘friends’, but still. People can print your photos that you put up there (again only your ‘friends’). But, still. There is a part of me that doesn’t trust the whole thing. How are they making their money? Everything is for sale on the Internet these days and nothing is truly for free.

And Facebook prompts you all the time to scan through your email for friends. Basically, you let Facebook into your email account–you give them the password (for a one-time shot)–and they index your address book and pester all your contacts to join Facebook.

So what is the truth about Facebook? Maybe I’ll go see if Jack will be my friend. Maybe he has some answers.
Facebook Update:

This is weird. I went looking for Jack Layton on Facebook and who the heck knows? There are a bunch of global groups that you can pop into that are about Jack Layton, but I don’t know if any of them are really Jack’s. Do you know what I mean? Like is he on there himself? Or is he just pretending to be hip and cool? I looked on his website and the youth area doesn’t scream out, ‘hey I’m on Facebook, look me up’. So what is the deal? I don’t know. I thought it would be cool to be ‘friends’ with Jack Layton. I thought maybe he’d do a little blog thing on his wall and so I could get to know a bit more about him and his political platform. So, I guess I am a little disappointed. Maybe I missed something. I’m still new to this Facebook thing and all its little nuances.