Facebook Fandom: One Portentite’s Evolving Experience
Mike Fitterer Aug 15 2011
The internet is my homeboy. It keeps me warm during the harshest of winter days, and makes the best of times even better. I love Twitter, Google Analytics, news sites, joke sites, sports blogs, nerd blogs, and blogs about blogs.
So it’s safe to assume I’ve always had 23,343 fans on Facebook, right? Negative Ghostrider. I got my first invite to Facebook back when it was college students only (suddenly I’m feeling old), and I’ve had a Facebook page for a long time.
The catch? It sat dormant for said long time.
Why would such an internet enthusiast openly reject Facebook privately? Out of fear. I’ve had a long-standing fear that Facebook would become just another cog in my internet vice. Rather than spending 11 or 12 hours a day on the Internet, my new allotment would be 14 hours. Take that non-internet activities!!!
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had plenty of Facebook interaction and experience from a professional perspective – I know the quirks and features of company pages. It’s just that, well, I have enough addictions to contend with.
But last month my Facebook world changed in a heartbeat. A friend on my rec soccer team miraculously found my dummy account. Until that point I had 4 friends (all coworkers) and basically no profile information filled out. For once actually ignoring my no-touch policy, I accepted his request.
Several minutes later another soccer companion sent me a request. A few minutes later another one came through. The flood gates had been opened. At this time I had a choice. Either I would start ignoring requests, and pile up a group of Facebook haters, or I would FINALLY give in and become a Facebook regular.
Naturally I became a Facebook fiend. I put up a sweet profile pic, filled in my profile, added some status updates, and started rolling. If you’ve ever doubted the central role Facebook plays in many of our lives you’re wrong. By the end of the weekend I had 80 friends, and a week later I had cracked 100.
Many people check Facebook more often than email. I’m luckily not in that boat….yet. So far I’ve been posting about once a day, and limiting myself to a breakfast, lunch, and dinner peek at what’s going on in the Facebook world. I think that qualifies as moderate addiction. Who’s with me?
Only time will tell how Facebook plays out for me on a personal level. For now, please stay tuned for my post on best practices for your business’ Facebook presence. I promise to offer good and tangible advice rather than spilling my mind on personal experiences like I did here.
Mike Fitterer
PPC Team Lead
Mike began his career as an International Sales & Marketing Manager living and working in Germany, focusing on product placement, marketing, and sales. For the past 9 years he's worked at Portent. Mike manages Portent's PPC Team and also works on strategy development and relationship management for Portent's top-tier PPC clients. He enjoys spending time with his wife and 2 young sons, travel, learning new languages, soccer, and supporting Seattle sports teams. Read More
2 Comments
Comments are closed.
I moved over from MySpace to Facebook awhile ago and found that like you feared it does seem to add more time to your time on the Internet. What I have found though is if you have a phone app, I atleast spend less overall time and instead mainly do checkups to see what’s going on instead of sitting for periods of dedicated time. Can’t wait to see your next post as I’m creating my business Facebook page.
Mike, I can see how you can easily multiply the number of friends on Facebook exponentially, but how do those contacts play out in the real world in terms of creating more sales on an e-commerce site. The reason I ask the question is because the friends that are added to your Facebook page are not the people who will become your customers on your web site. Granted, the increased traffic to your site can’t hurt, but tell me how my business benefits directly from the Facebook experience. Thanks