My first experience with social networking happened when MySpace was king. While promoting the Joey and Jet series, my publicist at Simon and Schuster came up with the idea that we should make a MySpace page with Joey who would interact with children. This would make us rich, RICH beyond our wildest dreams. Being a newbie, I eagerly started building a MySpace page.
What a nightmare.
MySpace was an eyesore. The instructions were baffling to even a computer geek like myself. The templates made it MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to create a page that did not make your eyes throw up. If you wanted a nice page, you had to learn coding which was out of my league. Fortunately after frustrating days of getting nowhere, it dawned on me that creating a Joey page and corresponding with children under a false name seemed CREEPY. My horrified publicist agreed and Joey's MySpace page was killed.
When Facebook appeared on the scene, it was a breath of fresh air. Its simpler, unified look across the entire site was soothing compared to the visual vomit party that was MySpace. It was easy to set up. I created a profile just in case things got interesting. For a few months nothing happened
Then they came.
First it was Abby's friends who were performers. This made sense since they were the main users of MySpace. Then came designers and illustrators. This created a tipping point where Facebook came alive and soon I was flooded with requests from every part of my life. Facebook was great. It was easy.
Then Facebook got cocky and started screwing things up.
Your privacy became a pain in the ass to protect. With each update, the page got busier. Facebook started telling you how to interact. They came up with the brilliant idea that others could add you to groups so you could receive endless streams of bullshit that was difficult to stop. It started becoming complex. They now have a constantly updating feed forced into an already crammed space. It is tiring to look at Facebook.
A couple of months ago I got an invite for Google + and checked it out. The experience was a serious case of deja vu. The design is pleasingly unobtrusive and the type is elegant compared to the clunkiness of Facebook. In other words, using Google compared to Facebook was similar to using Facebook from MySpace. I set up a profile and nothing happened.
Until this week.
Suddenly, art directors and illustrators are adding me on Google+. I've had more conversations on Google+ in the last two days than I've had in the last two months. Most conversations are about how relaxing and soothing it is to visit Google +.
Congratulations Facebook.
It's not everyone who gets a chance to relive the MySpace story.
0 comments:
Post a Comment