I'm Booking My Face

It is with great reluctance and with a heavy heart, that after an eight and a half month hiatus, I have reactivated my Book of Face account. Thus, I will once again be a conformist in a small part of my online life.

I really didn't want to do it, but a few certainu factors have nudged at my conscience with a ball peen hammer and said to me once they had gotten my attention, "It's time to face the inevitable."

"But I don't want to conform."
"You have to do this."
"But I don't like the changes that they've done."
"Book of Face is the lesser of two evils. Imagine what would happen if you'd decided to do Twitter instead."
"I lose my job?"
"Exactly."
"Maaaaaaannnnnnn."

Now I know you're dying from curiousity about what those two factors are exactly which are forcing my to make this radical move.

Factor #1: Declining blog readership.

Over the past several months, I've noticed a gradual decline in the amount of visitors to my blog. And while I do know that the usual factors of life, reading habits and online presence apply here, so does the factor of simnply being out of sight and out of mind apply as well.

For better or worse, if you're not a constant presence in some people's lives, they really do forget about you. Once I'd left Book of Face almost everyone in my circle of friends, and to a lesser degree, casual blog readers, stopped acknowledging my existence. Period. End of discussion. Became the living equivalent of what 1984 called "an unperson".

Factor #2: Publisher is heavily involved with social media, be it blogging, Book of Face or Twitter, and would like its stable of authors to be active as well. As you can plainly see I got blogging nailed down, so that left other social media sites like Space of Mine, Book of Face and Twitter to expirement with.

Space of Mine was immediately stricken from the list as I really don't know anyone on Space of Mine and I don't do music. Twitter wasn't even given a nano-second of consideration, since I really value my day job at the moment and the last thing I really wanted to do was get fired for speaking my mind.

Which leaves Book of Face as my second media social of choice.

Unfortunately, things will be different.

1} People will be able to find me under either a modified version of my name, under my pen name or under my e-mail. Since I wasn't able to change my name to my pen name (silly little rule about not being able to use any initials for a first name they have), I did the next best thing: added my pen name to my real name. I'll still have some random verification variables involved as well when it comes to people friending me, so hopefully things will balance out in the long run.

2} I will do almost no commenting on other people's posts. Too much drama and minutia involved and if I need to get a point clarified, I will send a private message. Also took way too much time the first time around, so it should be easier this time around. Lurking will be the operative word of the day, so be prepared to see a lot of "Likes" from my neck of the woods.

3} Since I've had more than my fill of posting semi-personal stuff on Book of Face, the less personal stuff I post on there, the less that their silly little Timeline thingy can plunge. So that leaves me with posting with my blog. Since I don't want to go through the aggravation of putting a widget up in order to get my blog feed sent through my wall (plus, from what I've read, there are some issues intergrating Blogger with Book of Face), my posts will be basically made up of my blog posts. That way, I can easily control what I tell people about myself.

Yay.

Sometimes we have to do things we don't really like in order to get the end result that we truly desire, which for me is publicity about my upcoming book, but done in a way that doesn't turn people off.