On Facebook Is Candy: Don't put this on your blog
Facebook is candy for my mind. I go there to get the latest update on the Baha'is in Iran, click on link to protest this, endorse that, like, dislike, ROTFLMAO and to online chat with a brother in Japan, a friend in Haifa, family in DR. Its my Zen garden.
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Facebook has its place. But just as blogging cannot take the place of a personal journal, FB cannot take the place of a blog. When is the last time anyone scrolled back to see what Ricky said last week? Never. When have I scrolled back to see what my Rusty guy or *G* said a month or a year ago? More often than never!
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Blogging takes courage, especially when you don't delete archives and right there in front of everyone you have to eat crow. You allow people watch your thoughts change over the passage of time. You share as you become passionate about something, how it waxes and wanes until it suddenly is no longer a part of your life. You try to be ever so careful of not impinging on the lives of loved ones, all the while they are the fodder for the grist mill. Your fingers itching to scratch the words just spoken out on the smooth, empty, blog blotter. How many movies and sitcoms, at the end of a marital spat, have used the line, "Don't put this in your blog!" ala Julie & Julia?
Facebook takes a hit on Walluski Babble. My own take is that Facebook has a powerful role to play in community building. It certainly appears to do that here inCluster 19. I have my wife's recent experience of joining Facebook to reflect on. She reports that Facebook has made her feel much closer to members of our community than before. More connected.
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I remember when blogger friend Tanya encouraged me to join Facebook several years ago. I then sent out an inviation via an email list that seems like it was a 100 names long of Baha'is in the cluster. I'd be curious to see just how many on that list are not on Facebook now, but I'll bet it is a very short list.
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I'm a blogger. I prefer the blog to Facebook. I feel it connects me to people I haven't met. People, in most cases, who may never let me know that they are even reading. I don't need them to. Google Analytics or Sitemeter will tell you if people are visiting, and even how long, and just what posts they are reading. So there is plenty of feedback to tell you if you are on the right track or not with your blog.
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Blogging is less personal than Facebook. It's less focused on the relationship, and more on content. And I like that. But it does lead to connections made and all across the globe. I prefer reading other people's blogs to going down my Facebook newsfeed, as rich as that newsfeed can feel sometimes.
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Want to have an effect on the world? A blog post can do that in a way that a Facebook entry cannot, because blog content is keyword searchable, whereas your Facebook content is not. It's fun to do a search for something and see a result come up for a post you forgot your wrote.
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For me the best way to find blog content is through a Google blog search., although I actually found Walluski's post through another avenue, the Google Alert I have set up for "Baha'i." I feel connected. -gw
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