Face Book and blogs

I know many people who use Face Book every day. They use it because it is there and this social medium is extremely user friendly. No need to be a computer expert to use FB. Any one owning a smart phone can access Face Book and talk to their [friends] instantly irrespective of where they are located in the world.

When I retired 2002 in New Zealand, my daughter introduced me to FB. It did not attract me at all because what is the point of [talking] to complete strangers on the other side of the world? After a few weeks she introduced me to blogging. Blogs I like because I like to rant. It allows me to do this with no interruptions at all. My own soap box in a corner of Hyde Park and my audience is world wide. Then I did something very meaningful. I wrote down my own family history for my grand children to discover one day on the web. Can you imagine their surprise when they discover my blogs one day in the future.



After that I started blogs for each one of my various hobbies: golfing, yachting, volunteering. I was blogging for more than 10 years and got very good at it. Google platform for blogs is called Blogger. There are others like Word Press, Multiply, Google+, LikedIn, etc. Each of them has its advantages and will suit certain individual requirements. I picked Blogger because it is completely free of charge. All that is required is a Gmail address and each account is allowed to have 100 blogs. I have one main blog on which I do most of my blogging. When the posts became too long I transfer them to a new blog. Now I have more than 75 blogs and still adding new ones as I go.

One day I returned to my old Face Book account to have a look see. I like the [discussion] threads on FB. The comments work almost instantly. It is possible to post a comment below each of my posts on Blogger but spammers have ruined that. I installed a filter to keep spammers out but it also discouraged comments from readers. My reply is also delayed because I need to [approve] each comment before it appears under each post.

The answer for me is of course, do both. I blogged on FB ever since. I began to learn more about Face Book groups and discovered that I was too hasty when I dismissed it in 2002. Readers like the new format where I used photos to illustrate all my posts and my comments.

The other thing is FB groups. I formed a group and put all my relatives, ex-school mates, ex-colleagues and friends. Since then FB has come alive for me. I even have a group where there are only 5 members, my immediate family where we can post any thing private like baby photos and our holiday plans. This is the [correct] way to use FB. The wall is too public; don't use it to tell the burglars when to come to your house with a truck!