I have a fan page in Facebook, its called Gazali's Thoughts. Its about giving free tips on the internet and popular applications, with a regular news feed about information technology. At times, I use the Notes apps in Facebook as a sort of a mini blog. Whenever I write something it gets twittered. For the past few days, my "Fans" have simply become "Like". Now I have two boxes on the left of my screen.
The top one shows "93 friends like this" and the bottom shows "130 people like this". What does it mean? Does it mean I have 223 "people or friends liking the fan page? On closer inspection, it is a duplicated list. How did they end up there? Was it after the change, they clicked on the "Like" button again?
When I click on the "93 friends like this" a window pops out with the heading "Related Pages". Related to what? My blog? When I clicked on "130 people like this" it shows "View Fans".
Since it is theorized that users click "Like", almost twice as much as they click "Become a Fan"; would that mean I would have double the number of fans, if I invited my friends that are not "Fans" or "Like" the page?
Yet the numbers stayed the same for now. Could it mean, other users are confused, or simply more cautious?
According to The Free Dictionary,:
v. liked, lik·ing, likes
v.tr.
1. To find pleasant or attractive; enjoy.
2. To want to have: would like some coffee.
3. To feel about; regard: How do you like her nerve!
4. Archaic To be pleasing to.
v.intr.
1. To have an inclination or a preference: If you like, we can meet you there.
2. Scots To be pleased.
n.
Something that is liked; a preference: made a list of his likes and dislikes.
fan 2 (fn)
n.
An ardent devotee; an enthusiast.
[Short for fanatic.]
Example in a sentence:
I LIKE the F1 races. I LIKE the teams and I LIKE to know about the technology of the cars. I would LIKE to drive one of those F1 cars around the circuit. I am a FAN of the Mclaren team and I'm a FAN of Lewis Hamilton.
According to Facebook, the above sentence would be:
I LIKE the F1 races. I LIKE the teams and I LIKE to know about the technology of the cars. I would LIKE to drive one of those F1 cars around the circuit. Iam a FAN of LIKE the Mclaren team and I am a FAN of LIKE Lewis Hamilton.
What do you think?
Anyway that's the cost of free. The operator can change anything, according to his whims and desires. Will the era of free services comes to an end? How much would you pay for it? Your Yahoo or Gmail account? Your online photo storage, your online docs? Would you pay $50 a month for a google account that gives you online docs, photo, blog, email, rss reader, sites, social networking?
Facebook has 400 million active users. What if they charged everyone $1 a month to use their services? That's an easy $400 million every month. Or would they go in the way of Ning, a blogging platform? Stop the FREE service and become a SUBSCRIPTION service? Would you pay $25 a month for the service?
Or would you tolerate advertisements on your wall, after every other updates from you friends?
Will the take up rate slow down? Imagine a service like Facebook charging monthly fees at day one. Would their user base grow to more than 400 million like now?
Why is it important to have your own blog/website.
As you can plainly see, things can always change. The interface can change, the TOS can change, and it can even be changed to a paid service. It is important that everyone learns how to have his own blog or website. It is actually easy and not that difficult. The web host itself cost less than $10 a month.
The initial difficulty is getting the blog up and running, choosing the right template, and the right format. Once its done, all you need to do is provide the content. It is not as difficult as it seemed. Posterous is a good place to start. Just email your content, pictures, or videos and it will be automatically be posted into your blog and formatted correctly.
Does your content need to be ground-breaking, or long? Not really. See Seth Godin's blog, he writes regularly. His articles are short and simple. Not much pics nor any videos, yet his posts are always re-tweeted hundreds of times.
Once you write or post regularly, the people will come and it will build up. Initially, when I started there was only about 10 readers or so. When it reach 30, I'm over the moon. Now its in the hundreds. Don't worry, you'll get there.
When you become more technically competent, you can control the ads. Isn't that nice? You can even get paid for it. And the best part, all your articles that you wrote, are yours.
So remember, you are YOU and not Facebook or any other social media service.
I LIKE the F1 races. I LIKE the teams and I LIKE to know about the technology of the cars. I would LIKE to drive one of those F1 cars around the circuit. I am a FAN of the Mclaren team and I'm a FAN of Lewis Hamilton.
According to Facebook, the above sentence would be:
I LIKE the F1 races. I LIKE the teams and I LIKE to know about the technology of the cars. I would LIKE to drive one of those F1 cars around the circuit. I
What do you think?
Anyway that's the cost of free. The operator can change anything, according to his whims and desires. Will the era of free services comes to an end? How much would you pay for it? Your Yahoo or Gmail account? Your online photo storage, your online docs? Would you pay $50 a month for a google account that gives you online docs, photo, blog, email, rss reader, sites, social networking?
Facebook has 400 million active users. What if they charged everyone $1 a month to use their services? That's an easy $400 million every month. Or would they go in the way of Ning, a blogging platform? Stop the FREE service and become a SUBSCRIPTION service? Would you pay $25 a month for the service?
Or would you tolerate advertisements on your wall, after every other updates from you friends?
Will the take up rate slow down? Imagine a service like Facebook charging monthly fees at day one. Would their user base grow to more than 400 million like now?
Why is it important to have your own blog/website.
As you can plainly see, things can always change. The interface can change, the TOS can change, and it can even be changed to a paid service. It is important that everyone learns how to have his own blog or website. It is actually easy and not that difficult. The web host itself cost less than $10 a month.
The initial difficulty is getting the blog up and running, choosing the right template, and the right format. Once its done, all you need to do is provide the content. It is not as difficult as it seemed. Posterous is a good place to start. Just email your content, pictures, or videos and it will be automatically be posted into your blog and formatted correctly.
Does your content need to be ground-breaking, or long? Not really. See Seth Godin's blog, he writes regularly. His articles are short and simple. Not much pics nor any videos, yet his posts are always re-tweeted hundreds of times.
Once you write or post regularly, the people will come and it will build up. Initially, when I started there was only about 10 readers or so. When it reach 30, I'm over the moon. Now its in the hundreds. Don't worry, you'll get there.
When you become more technically competent, you can control the ads. Isn't that nice? You can even get paid for it. And the best part, all your articles that you wrote, are yours.
So remember, you are YOU and not Facebook or any other social media service.
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