Facebook for what?

Since the invention of the internet, what sub-invention that attracts me to engage in an online activity is one and only: blogging. The reason is clear: (a) it offers tremendous chance and opportunity for everyone to spread out one’s idea through writing to a lot wider audience without any need to sweat it out. (b) It offers a level-playing field for everyone to publish one’s idea without any barrier of, say, cost and patron. Like what happens in conventional publishing tools.[1]

Blogging i.e. writing, both in free blog providers or in self-hosted blog, is therefore the most important online activity for me. Other internet invention such social networking as Friendster and Facebook and many others are ok so far as these tools support my blogging activities in terms of traffic and blog visibility.

I have Facebook account which main purpose is to drive traffic to my blog by using “imported note” and “feed aggregator” application and some other apps available. Once the applications installed in my Facebook, I’ll let it run its own course. I barely login to my Facebook account eversince. So, if you talk to me through my Facebook’s wall, forgive me if I hardly respond.

I also join almost all free online services such as Mybloglog, Blogcatalog, Twitter, any blog aggregators, you name it I’ve been there. The purpose: to drive more blog traffic. No more no less.

What’s your joining Facebook for?

But many people are joining Facebook for many different reasons some are (could be) as follows:

1. Obamania: many western analysts attribute Obama’s stunning victory to Facebook. Some even call him the Facebook president. Naturally, any success story will reap fans who will faithfully follow suit. As far as Indonesian is concerned, Obamania in facebook are those would be politicians (caleg or MP candidate) who think they can follow Obama’s path.
2. Friendster diehard alumni: as Facebook widely regarded as more sophisticated a social networking tools than Friendster it’s natural if Friendster users feel they have graduated from Friendster and needs to go to another level, say PhD level, that is Facebook.
3. Pure trend followers: Many people do something because it’s done by many others. Many making Facebook account simply because they dont want to be lagged behind. They just dont want to be called outdated. These people just don’t have a clue what they are doing at least the first time they did it.
4. Just to drive traffic to their blog. I am in this category.
5. To keep in touch with friends and families (Anita, see her comment below).
6. To find long lost friend (Edia Permata, see her comment below).
7. Or you tell me (in the comment box) if you’re not among these four.

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Note:

[1] You need a good relation, apart from a good content, with publisher to publish a book. You need to have a patron inside a print media in order to make your op-ed piece easily get published. This is not always the case, but your piece will have a bigger chance to get published if you have a personal relation with editors of a particular conventional media, both newspapers and magazines.