Social Media

We maintain a couple of Facebook fan pages for Unreality TV and its sister site, Unreality Shout.

Now, I knew that it was possible to set up a vanity URL for your own account on Facebook (mine's facebook.com/gerardmcgarry - don't stalk me, I won't follow you), but I just discovered today that it's quite simple to set up a vanity URL or username for your Facebook fan pages. If you're a publisher this is a godsend, because it makes the URL more concise and easy to share.

What to do about Twitter? Do I want more followers? Do I need more followers? Everybody says you need loads of followers?

The truth is, I'm an old-timer in terms of social media. I've witnessed the rise and fall of MySpace, and countless other services being launched and failing to gain traction. I dread to think how many dormant accounts I have littering the web.

So, do I want to get into another social media site, playing the numbers game yet again, clamouring for friends and contacts because friends and contacts equal influence.

The thing is, Facebook and Twitter seem to be more genuine social media sites. They're more about people than connections and gaming the system. That's why I get quite defensive when I read sites like TwiTip, which seem to endlessly repeat the message that you need to accumulate as many followers as humanly possible.