My Suicide Girls column, and the problem with social networking
My latest Suicide Girls column is live. This one has some bad words and talks about erotica, so I am lifting my usual “the site isn’t safe for work but the column is” statement.
And I’m very pleased with this one. I planned this for several weeks, thinking about what I’d say, how I’d write it. I think this is one of the best I’ve done for the site. It’s funny, edgy, and talks, tangentially, about sex. Kinda fits with the SG theme, right?
The thing is, the column has gotten three comments. Three very good comments, but still only three. I got more when I talked about prom queens. But I know it resonated with people, because when I posted the column on Twitter, I got a slew of replies, a couple of DMs (direct messages, for you non-twitter-users), and some comments via IM. So people read it and enjoyed it.
But my editors don’t know this. They know it got hits, but they don’t know what people think of it. Because people are talking about it away from the SG site. They’re talking about it on Twitter, where they know for sure I’ll see it. After I post this, you can talk about it here on my blog, and Facebook (where it x-posts). But in my editors’ opinions, they want discussion on their site.
I think this is one of the problems with social networking. Sure, I can use my blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Digg to point lots of people to this column. But that also means people will use my blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Digg to discuss it instead of focusing discussion on the SG site where, some may argue, it belongs. And we have created this - all the better to spread the word, right? I am not complaining; I know I have brought several readers to SG because of my columns. I’m also not going to try to ask people to comment there instead of somewhere else- I know I can’t force that. It’s just an interesting realization.
You can lead a reader to your site, but you can’t make them comment. They’ll talk about it wherever they want.
Originally published at The Murverse. You can comment here or there.