Have you heard? There's this great new-fangled thing called Facebook. All the kids are using it, dude. What's that? You've heard of it? Oh. Anyway, as something of summer experiment, Dan's Media Digest is dipping its toe into the crazy world of social networking...
You may have noticed that every post at DMD now comes with a Facebook "Recommend" button in the footer, enabling Facebook users to instantly show they like a particular post by clicking its thumbs-up logo.
DMD also has a presence on Facebook with its own page, which is basically just another place to catch blog updates -- a la RSS feed or Twitter.
I'm not sure if any of this is going to be useful to the type of people who frequent DMD every day (are we all too old for Facebook?), but I thought it would be interesting to see if a Facebook alliance has a positive effect in any way, shape or form. Who knows, maybe there are hundreds of readers out there who are also active "Facebookers" and will appreciate being able to interact with DMD in that medium?
Or maybe not.
I'm certainly not a big user of Facebook myself. I just thought it would be worth experimenting with, as I've noticed other blogs/sites with Facebook plug-ins that appear to be very popular additions. And I must admit it's a cinch for people to interact with – just one click and you can register your recommendation of something to the world, or become a "fan" of DMD via its Facebook page.
Certainly, if you use Facebook most days I hope you'll consider becoming a "fan" and recommending the occasional post when they go up. I'm probably going to keep this Facebook stuff active for 2-3 months over the summer and gauge how popular it is, before deciding whether or not to continue.
So if you think it's a good idea, please make use of it so I know! Oh, and let me know about any problems/suggestions regarding all this, as I'm not really a Facebook expert. Could you tell?
