Yet Another Big Fat Marketing Blog Post About Facebook
Hey, are you guys talking about Facebook? I LOVE Facebook! I love how marketers are taking advantage of it, and I love how Facebook causes personal relationships to crumble!
Seriously though, Brian Quinton and Erik Hauser both posted about Facebook in the past 48 or so hours, and I wanted to chime in. Why? Because if these were Facebook posts, I’d probably leave comments!
I agree with Erik that your social media network can have legions of fans and followers and still fail. I started on MySpace as a lurker and made maybe 5 human friends and 20 friends with celebrities and sports leagues. It didn’t seem like there was a lot of way of interacting with these people unless you sent a private message.
Facebook offered that Interactivity. What’s more, I could actually search for friends by their names and not some sort of crazy handle or lines from a bubble gum pop song. And now I’m one of those people Brian points out in his post:
Personally I’m amazed by friends who manage to hold down responsible jobs and bring up healthy families while still managing to update, post and tweets several times a day. Unconsciously, I think, we feel there may be a price to pay for that addiction, and suddenly having your love for “Glee” and cow bingo exposed to the nation seems like a harbinger of more harmful revelations.
I’ve been told to my face that I post too much on Facebook. Heck, I write about social media. I’m smart enough to have figured out how to add the “Share on Facebook” tab to my FireFox browser, so I can post an article as I’m reading it or a video as I’m viewing it. I’ve ratted out my nephew to my brother because he was tagged in photos at parties that took place in his house without him knowing it. I’ve been unfriended by friends who did not appreciate my political views or my loathing of the New York Yankees.
But that’s what being social is all about, and life goes on.
Will Facebook die? It’s bound to become pop culture history at some time. Remember the 8-Track Tapes? The Kodak Disc cameras? 5 1/4 inch floppy discs? Colecovision? The next big thing is always right around the corner.
Does it mean marketers should stop reaching out to consumers through Facebook and Twitter? Not at all. As long as your audience is there, you need to be there, too. Just don’t look desperate for attention out there.
