Facebookie
Because they appeared at the same time, I’ve always associated Facebook and MySpace. And frankly, the MySpace pages I’ve seen have lacked any kind of design sense, reminding me of the pathetic amateurish old Geocities sites that came out of the mid-90s: filled with gratuitous colors, font size changes, flashing text, animation, and auto-loaded sounds. Haven’t we grown past that phase yet? I can’t stand to see someone humiliating themselves in public, even if they’re too stupid to know they’re doing it.
However, a work project recently required some research into how Facebook works, and I’ve found that-if you exhibit some judicious restraint-you can make a Facebook page that is both useful and reasonably attractive. So I made one, which you can see here.
For me, Facebook is primarily a way to steer readers to my other sites. For that reason, I have it display the last seven photos from my Flickr account, the titles of the last three posts I made to my LiveJournal, and my current and future travel plans from my Dopplr. I also use the “As Seen On” app to provide simple, elegant links to my presence on LinkedIn, Amazon, Google Reader, YouTube, and Twitter.
I’ve supplemented those by using Facebook’s “status update” feature as a surrogate for Twitter’s tweet feature, which I never use. And I added a nicely reserved “places I’ve been” map. Finally, Facebook’s “mini-feed” feature provides a list of my most recent updates.
As a result, my Facebook page has become a really good place to get a real quick snapshot of what’s going on with me, whether it’s my writing, travel, photography, or something else. Although it’s almost entirely made up of content gleaned from other sites, the sum seems to be greater than the individual parts, which makes it worth my effort to maintain, and hopefully your effort to visit.
And I won’t be adding all kinds of distracting noise to that page. I know why I use Facebook, and I know that no one would visit my page if I filled it up with pointless pap.
I was very skeptical at first, but now I’m happy with my page’s content, and hopefully you will find it useful and not unattractive.