At the present time I am sitting in bed (I live in the coldest flat known to man, as is the wont of recent graduates with no disposable income, dependents or things to burn) and attempting to publicise this here project in the book loving world of the internet. Creating and adding people on the twitter account led to me surfing through 8 million billion book bloggers, which took a large chunk out of my day but was hopefully worth it from a networking standpoint. Facebook, on the other hand, has been making me want to throw things. Hard. At other, softer, living things.
My problem is one-fold.
WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAS HAPPENED TO GROUPS?!
Time was, back in 2005, you made a group, invited thirty or forty people you knew in real life to join it, that was you. Then it got a bit more widespread, and I made and joined a ridiculous number of joke pages just for fun. Who wouldn’t want to echo the sentiment “Disney Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Love”, or admit to being one of those, “People Who Don’t Sleep Enough Because They Stay Up Late For No Reason”, or become an officer of “Tom Baker – The Ultimate Man“. People joined these groups, made a couple of jokes, added a picture or two, then left or stayed at their leisure.
Even as late as about 24 hours ago groups seemed comparatively straightforward. You could have separate tabs across the top for sections with ‘information’, ‘wall’, etc. Now, you’ve just got one page for everything. It’s a sprawling mass of stuff, with no way of highlighting the salient points – ie what 12 Books in 12 Months is and how people can participate.
To add insult to injury, when you attempt to invite people it adds them automatically without asking their permission. I’d be annoyed if I was just randomly put in a group without my say-so, and I suspect it means people are less likely to look at it because it’s not something they’ve been asked or invited to do. This upsets me, as 12 books in 12 months is one of the best terrible ideas I’ve ever had, and I want people to take a minute to look at it.
My question now is, should I make a ‘page’ instead? Then people can just ‘like’ it and be on their merry way… but are there other publicity benefits?
Meanwhile, in the world of Caligula research, I’ve just found a TV show made by the History Channel called ‘Ancients Behaving Badly‘, whose first episode is about the man himself. And I’ve ordered a second hand copy of I, Claudius by Robert Graves online for a bargainous £2.70 so that I may keep it forever and perhaps even read it.
What a productive day.
