I’m faced with some key decisions about how to integrate InsideSpin further into the social networks of my target audience. I did some simple things with LinkedIn a while ago and turned my attention more towards Facebook of late. It seems to be the preferred warehouse of ‘Like’ and ‘Recommend’ — well organized from the outside, but widely immature from the inside from what I can tell. It was trivial to add the appropriate active icons to my pages, it nicely shows mini-profile pictures of anyone who Recommend’s, it even has consolidated reports so I can see the collection of pages where people have Recommend’d. I went one step further and created an InsideSpin page — the wheels fell off there. Between horrible handling of graphics, failed attempts to upload, confusing terminology around what it will do with my contacts — i couldn’t face trying to figure it all out. It reminded me of something that has grown too big for itself and is not taking enough time (or spending enough expertize) to blaze the path correctly.
One thing that has turned my head about Facebook is how many people of the younger generation seem to be tiring of it, including my kids. Lots of complaints about the user interface, confusing functionality, too much noise to sort through — even more than email. Now Facebook is getting into advertising — a direct ploy to get people to say more about what they are doing — i can see the hackers arming themselves with ways to trick the analysis engines to get crazy ads and coupons.
In the end, i am looking for better ways to spread the good word about InsideSpin — to the extent I have readers that like the content and think others should benefit from it, Google organic searching is not enough. I need to be tied into all these other groups where information can be shared based on its value. Can you Recommend this — oh, i also added a button to make it easy to re-tweet!
Writing a book and going on tour would be a great way to spread the word about insidespin. C’mon – it’s been 3 years already 😉
As I published this i thought of one more interesting mental image of what facebook could cause – a new definition of smokers corner. Imagine all the young people out shopping, walking around town and any time they want to buy something they quickly post their status (check in) to facebook and wait for the relevant ‘ad’ coupon to come there way. Every store would have a ‘facebook’ corner where people could hang out waiting for their discount to arrive — it would be a funny scene — does not seem so far fetched actually.