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Thursday, October 11, 2012

Facebook

I've been thinking about this for a while and I think it's time to talk about Facebook. I don't spend much time there any longer. I used to. In fact I'd check it first thing in the morning and the last thing at night and everywhere in between. I don't now.

There are a couple of reasons. The first is the amount of authors I friended.

I'm sorry, but too many authors are plain obnoxious on Facebook. Maybe if someone follows only a few, it's not too bad, but I made the mistake of "networking" with my fellow writers and I have hundreds and hundreds of them bombarding me with promo crap. Keep in mind that they sent me the friend request; I've rarely friended another author with the exception of a few.

Because of other authors, I've had to lock down my FB wall and ban posting of anything except replies. I got tired of having people coming on my page and pimping their book/FB page/website on my page. That's like going to someone's home and putting graffiti on their walls. This should be a no-brainer.

Doing this, though, didn't stop those determined to be obnoxious. They would comment on my posts on my wall pimping their book/FB page/website.

The next thing I did was stop reading my FB messages. Yes, not to be deterred, the obnoxious would send me (and many, many others) FB mail pimping their book/FB page/website/book signing. There are no words for how much I hate this because every reply is also sent to my inbox. Ugh! You don't even want to know how much of this I get. Not every message gets lost. If someone sends a legitimate FB note on a day where I don't have much promo crap, I probably will see it.

But my fellow authors weren't done finding obnoxious things to do on Facebook. There are event requests. Every single day I have to wade through event invitations. FB doesn't give me a way to disable this feature across the board. I have to go in and block event invites on a person by person basis. And I do. I don't even read what the event is about anymore. FB makes me click decline before it gives me the option of blocking invitations from someone, so I do it over and over again. Decline and block.

It's so frustrating to have to waste time doing this, but if someone is inviting me to a book signing a thousand miles away from my home, they'll no doubt bug me again. And again. And again. If they'd use lists and some common sense... Unfortunately, most writers aren't tech savvy enough to use lists. They might not even know they exist and so event invites roll in by the dozens every week.

The obnoxious authors aren't done yet. FB introduced a new kind of hell a while back called Groups. Now, anyone I've friended can add me to a group without my permission and I will get an email for every post in that group. When I was up in MN this last time--without internet access--I opened my email to discover I'd been added to three or four new groups and I had hundreds of notes from each one to delete. It was ridiculous! And the thing is this was an improvement. When I was up in MN in April without internet access, I logged on to find I'd been added to almost a dozen groups.

A dozen!

WTH is wrong with people? Why would you ever think that it's okay to mass add people to any group?

I want to tell these authors that 1) I don't know them 2) I only accepted their friend request because of networking 3) I've never read them and 4) after being added to their group, I never will read them. I don't. Instead, I unfriend anyone who does this to me. I used to give them a second chance, but this became far too prevalent to not go to one strike and you're out.

I know that I could switch to a page and then I wouldn't have to deal with this stuff, but when I first got on FB, pages weren't an option. By the time they were, I had too many friends to get everyone to move, so I didn't.

So reason one why I'm not on FB much anymore is other authors. Reason number two is Facebook itself.

When I first signed up, I liked it, but with every technical/feature upgrade they did, I liked it a little less. It wasn't a matter of getting used to it. I got used to it and I still didn't like the new version most of the time. This kept adding up and I kept spending less and less time on FB.

And then FB went to Timeline.

There are no words for how much I hate this. I tried getting used to it--heck, I am used to it by now since I was forced over in an early wave--but I still loathe it. My FB use went from decline to flat line. There are days I totally forget to check in...until someone tags me in a promotional post for their book. Grrr.

Where do I hangout online? Twitter. I love Twitter. I don't auto-follow--and thank goodness I didn't or authors and "SEO experts" would have ruined this platform for me, too--but I love chatting on Twitter. Send me an @reply and I'll respond. Sometimes it might not be immediately because I have a day job, but I will answer when I see your tweet.

You can also find me on Pinterest. I love pictures when I write and this allows me to save images I see online without putting them on my hard drive. I have quite a collection of clothes, shoes, and men. Lots of hot men. :-) Come visit me and see.