Facebook--Another Marketing Tool Or A Quick Way To Make A Fool Of Myself?

Getting back to my day out with the writers, which I found so incredibly stimulating:

I got into a brief discussion of Facebook with a writer who had just joined a month or so back. She said she was connecting with librarians. I wondered if joining Facebook wouldn't be an easier marketing effort than, say, driving around the state to visit booksellers who might not be that eager to see me. I was concerned about having to maintain another site, since I'm already blogging nearly daily and updating a website every few months, but she said I could just flip my blog posts over there. So I thought about it.

I've had two reservations about Facebook in the past:

1. I first heard about writers joining Facebook a few years back. Some close to middle-aged women YA writers were joining Facebook to try to connect with their teen readers. I found that mildly disturbing. You know, adults going where the kids are...marketing to young souls...kids figuring out you're old enough to be their mother and telling you to get lost...

In the intervening years, adults have been moving into Facebook in significant numbers (or so I understand), so I don't feel that kind of concern anymore. As my friend said (and I call her a friend because she said that if I join Facebook I can invite her to be a friend) on Saturday, she's connecting with other adults, not kids.

2. I don't like the way any of those social networking pages look. I'm all about communication. And I want quick communication. I don't even like those high-class websites with arty intros that take a long time to load. I don't have time to sit around waiting for that garbage. I want to see author websites with a coherent homepage that tells me who the author is right away and then clearly directs me directly to specific categories of information.

I don't see that happening at the social networking sites I've visited. I find them incredibly chaotic. I want to know what authors have written, when the next book is coming out, what led them to write what they wrote, how they got where they are. I find the social network sites' user interface, as my computer guy would call it, disorderly. What does the term "Posted Items" mean? And "The Wall?" What's that supposed to be?

Forgive me for being misanthropic but, quite honestly, I don't care who their friends are!

So, as you can probably tell, the beginning of this week, I was still on the fence about joining Facebook. Then I stumbled upon Old People Facebook Disasters at Salon, and the contest was over.

I'm not saying I'll never join FaceBook. But I'm definitely not joining it right now.