An overnight away and unplugged from the social media world has left us unglued. We've lost our 65,000 Fans.
We were fretful enough being untethered from the Internet during our hiking trip in the Green Mountains (we're celebrating Earth Day by only doing green* things for a week), and in serious Twitter and Facebook withdrawal. No dings to alert us to new followers, no constant page refreshing to fill us with pride as the cascade of comments to a status posting rolled in. Yes, we were jonesing big time for our people before catastrophe struck.
Once home and reconnected, we were met with a banner announcement on our Facebook page. "Introducing the Like button," it read. From now on there would be no 'Fan' button, instead there would be a 'Like' button. At first we thought-- we can adapt, we can deal with change, fan button, like button, whatever... As long as it brings the bitches home, we're happy.
On closer inspection, confusion and calamity. One night away and Facebook has turned our Fans into 'Others'.
Our Fan (or is it Like?) page now reads:
Who are these 'Others'? The villains from Lost? (Wait, are they villains?) Aliens? Fans of Sarah Palin on the Discovery network? Who knows?
Could it be that Facebook, the company built around community, inclusiveness, and interconnectivity is having a crisis of the philosophical soul? Has some 24 year old been reading Hegel, Derrida, de Beauvoir, Sartre? Of all the possible choices to identify fans of our book and blog, why would a social network site be calling them 'others'?
Facebook, please return our Fans to our all-inclusive, big, happy, bitch'y family.
*In celebration of Earth Day, Grasshoppers are our official cocktail this week.
Read more from Rosalyn Hoffman at Bitches on a Budget
Join the 65,000 Fan/Others on Facebook.
Follow Rosalyn Hoffman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BitchesonBudget
I'm all of a sudden not allowed to join more groups/ they tell me I have too many. Never happened before
Lots of apps are charging more real money to buy things......