Once upon a time, I had a MySpace page, to which I happily added anyone as a friend. But right around hitting the 1,000 friend mark, I realized my patience for the site’s embedded idiocy — the 1998-style formatting, cheesy graphics, junior high demographics — was finite. I left it sitting fallow,1 even while recognizing it would be another way to promote the DVD release of The Nines.
Peer-pressured into trying Facebook, I added only friends I hung out with in the real world.2 I admire Facebook’s clean design and overall lack of hooliganism. The news feed is ingenious, and the company shows a willingness to borrow from the best (Twitter, Flickr, etc.). Still, I’m a sporadic user; I haven’t become addicted to Scrabulous or any of the real time-sucks.
This morning, I stumbled upon the “fan” architecture for Facebook. It’s a separate kind of page you set up for a person or thing (such a band or a movie), which users can subscribe to without the mutual-approval process of Facebook friendship.
So I’m now contemplating whether to do such a page for The Nines, and possibly myself. I’d welcome any insight from Facebook power-users, because while I see a lot of potential in leveraging the news feeds to build awareness of the movie’s existence, I don’t know if it’s going to be worth my time or others’. The discussion and message board features seem useful, yet are only slightly more advanced than the IMDb equivalents. There may be good Facebook applications to make it a no-brainer.
I don’t know, but I have a hunch some readers will. Thoughts?