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Divorcing Facebook

Those of you readers who are "friends" of mine on Facebook have probably noticed that I update there (http://www.facebook.com/marijohnson) quite a bit more than I update here on my blog. Facebook makes it very quick and easy to share videos, pictures and links and so I got into the habit of posting "quick" tango links and updates on my Facebook page, rather than taking the time to do it here. Not only has the Facebook habit been siphoning off my creativity and productivity, but it's come at a higher and higher cost to my privacy (as anyone who has been monitoring Facebook's changes lately can tell you).

To deal with the privacy issues, to the best of my ability, and without actually deleting my account, I've removed almost all personal information from my profile, deleted all of my "Likes" which are really just used for marketing purposes, and went through all of my privacy settings to change from the default "social" settings, to the most private setting available to me.

As far as the huge amount of tango content that I've shared on Facebook, that's been a real challenge. I have over 1,200 links shared on FB - most of them tango-related. I've gone through 50 pages of links so far pulling the best of the bunch and creating pages for them here on the blog to capture as much of the quality links and information as I can. Just below the banner of my blog, you will see additional "Pages" have been added, and will be growing, as I move over content from Facebook to this blog.

It's my hope that moving the content, or at least copying it, will not only make the resources available for my readers here that aren't following me on Facebook, but also provide a permanent, and slightly more organized, home for those links. So far the pages are Quotes, Videos and Favorite Blogs. I'm sure there will be more soon. Hopefully I'll be able to get the links a bit more organized than they are now, as well.

If you would like to be friends on Facebook, let me know by sending a message with the invitation that you're a reader of my blog, and I'll accept the invitation to connect. I will still be updating on Facebook and logging in fairly regularly. However, the time I used to spend sharing links, articles, videos etc. will be more focused back on this blog.

Comments

tangocherie said…
I love FB and depend on it a lot to keep and feel connected. Not "everyone" reads my blog, and so I like another way to communicate.

Of course, it's extra-important for me living as I do so "far" from the rest of the world (at least far from folks above the Equator!)

I hope we can be FB friends and continue to "communicate."
May 5, 2010 at 10:50 AM
Mari said…
Cherie - I'm still going to use Facebook, because the damned thing is so convenient. I just stripped off almost all of the interests/activities/likes and personal info off of it. Giving it up to try to find something else to take its place just seems like far too much of a bother. Plus I love sharing videos and pictures so easily through it.
May 6, 2010 at 8:19 AM
Anonymous said…
What you can do, too, which makes it easier to keep both facebook and blog. Create a page for your tango blogging things. On that page you can use an app like "Graffitti RSS" to pull all your blog posts into facebook, linking them. People can then comment on fb or on the blog.

And it frees your personal facebook account from all those links and shares… and you may have a better chance to actually keep your friend list manageable. Did you know there's a maximum of 1000 friends you can have on facebook?
May 14, 2010 at 3:53 AM
Mari said…
Thx OneStepTango - I'll look into that!
May 14, 2010 at 7:40 AM
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