Facebook: As a medium for networking, Facebook didn’t appeal to me at first since I found its setup to be a little weird, but I soon got over it when I learned that a number of my friends had set up accounts of their own after moving on from MySpace. The main difference is that the profile I first set up was a personal one as opposed to a site one but eventually it was suggested to me to set up either a Fan Page or a Group Page. I gave this idea a go with the Fan Page but at this point in Facebook Time is was really difficult to do anything with it. It also would not let me list the presence as a website and that sucked. I had to run with “Writer” and that was okay at the end of the day since that was the core of what I was doing.
I then created a Group page which in many cases seemed to do the same thing but had some idiosyncrasies that I did not like as well. Despite my reservation, the Group page grew to over 1000 members while the Fan Page slowly had a dozen or two adding to it every other month. That was my own fault since I did not broadcast it and had been favoring the easier to use Group when it came to PiercingMetal.
Eventually one of Facebook’s many changes found the Fan Pages to be the most functional of the bunch and with two separate things leading those on the community to my website, it was high time to decide on which to use. The Fan Page won out and we informed all of the supporters on the Group page to come join us over there on the revitalized and re-energized Fan Page. To make sure we had no duplication, every user was removed from the Group and it was marked as private and accessible only by invite. I could not fully delete it for some reason. The Fan Page supporters are growing day after day and we think that its a good thing. We use it to tie together a number of different website initiatives via its presence and that let’s me keep it interesting to a large grouping of Metal fans. Those who “Like” the page are encouraged to invite their own friends to do the same and the more is truly the merrier in this media world in which we wander. We also welcome the supporting fans comments to the posted activities but stress that if they are related to an actual blog posting, that they leave said comments on the original blog posting as that has a greater impact on the viewpoints I have put out there for the readers of the site.
To see the PiercingMetal Facebook Page just click the logo above and if you want to learn more about the company you can read their Wikipedia entry HERE.
UPDATE 5/1/2011: I wanted to toss some additional information into the Official Fan Page on Facebook for PiercingMetal even though this kind of stuff had been taking place since last Fall. For many months venues such as B.B. King Blues Club and even the Canal Room have periodically given me Guest List privileges to offer my site’s fans and we use this via the Facebook page exclusively. These premiums are available to any “Likers” of the page and all they need to do is chime in under the proper posting. We decide from the list of interested folks or choose names from a hat. Its that simple and while this could end at any time, it seems to be doing good for both sides of the music fence.
