hal tweets ·11:28 AM
Ghostbuster zines from the Canzine Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge are now online! http://t.co/RoAMEQTU
2008,
18:24 GMT
Bits and Pieces: Hal's Upcoming Weekend, More on Facebook Advertising, playlist for Hal's 10
Posted by: Hal
End of the week bits and pieces…..
1) I’ve been really tired lately. And hungry. I think I’m getting ready to hibernate. W. is going to be away this weekend. It’s just me and the kid. I hope she takes long naps…
2) Michael, reader of the blog, sent me an article in response to my musings about Facebook ads. The article talks about Facebook’s approach to advertising and why they’re using these small low paying ads instead of massive blockbuster advertising.
From the piece:
“Mr. Rose argued that Facebook isn’t so much about explaining products as showing people which of their friends endorse them. He pointed to a campaign by Procter & Gamble that allowed Facebook users to give each other Tide vintage T-shirts (actually tiny pictures of a t-shirt).
“Tide wants to create a positive affiliation with their brand in your mind,” Mr. Rose said. “Are they more likely to do that with an ad that says ‘Hey, we’re better”? Or are you more likely to have a positive feeling if one of your friends sends you a virtual gift that is a Tide vintage T-shirt?”
Again, it’s this whole question of using people’s lifestyle inclinations as a way in. Of course that can backfire: do people who wear vintage Tide t-shirts really have an affiliation with Procter and Gamble products?
Anyway, so far the FB ads for Indie Writers DeathMatch that I’m running have had an average of about 26,000 impressions a day, with about 36 actual click throughs to the FB page for the contest. I’ve capped the amount we want to pay at $10 a day and plan to run the ad for 10 days. So in the end it’ll cost $100 for 360 click throughs. Now since it costs $20 to enter the contest (you get a subscription too) at the end of the day I only need 5 of those 360 to actually enter the contest to make it worth it. The question, of course, is whether or not we’ll get those five people through this.
3) Back to my weekend. In addition to W. being away leaving me as sole parental unit in charge – watch out kid, there’s a new sheriff in town – I’m going to be on a panel at a conference on Sunday. The conference is called Culture Congress and the panel I’m going to be on is Technology of Contact. 11:45 – 1:15 at the Lakeside Terrace, Harbourfront Centre, downtown Toronto. also on the panel are: Jacob Zimmer, Michel Lefebvre, and Peter Flemming. It’s free if anyone wants to check it or the other events out.
4) Finally, I’ve created a CD mix of Canadian tunes to send to my 1000th Facebook friend, the free thinking, home schooling blues playing Texan Marie Angell. There are 13 songs on it. Here’s the lineup: 1) “When She Appeared” – Aaron Booth 2) The Commute – The “Barmitzvah Brothers 3) Slow Recovery – Beans 4) In Her Dream – Bob Wiseman 5) Almost Crimes (live version) – Broken Social Scene 6) Pamphleteer – The Weakerthans 7) In State – Kathleen Edwards 8) I Will Not Sing a Hateful Song – Constantines 9) Almost Summer – Jason Collett 10) I’m a Mountain – Sarah Harmer 11) 38 Years Old – The Tragically Hip 12) Blackheart – Cuff The Duke 13) The Dead Flag Blues (all 16:28 of it) – godspeed you! black emperor. I’m excited for Marie to experience this cross Canada panorama of weirdness!
2008,
15:19 GMT
Facebook Obsession and Indie Writers Deathmatch
Posted by: Hal
Okay it’s time to admit that I’m currently obsessed with Facebook. I’m spending way too much time on good old FB. What am I doing on there? Nothing of consequence whatsoever. Adding then deleting applications. Looking at random people’s pictures. Answering my FB messages. (A young woman today sent me a message through FB saying that she just wrote a 2 hour exam based on my article about my failed FB party.) I’m also chatting using that annoying pop up chat thing. I’ll chat with anyone! I’m a chat slut! It’s got to stop, but will it?
In order to justify my obsession with FB, I decided to try out their advertising feature so I could pretend I was doing business. I created an ad for Broken Pencil Magazine’s short story contest Indie Writers Deathmatch. It was actually quite interesting. You can target by age, country, education and interests. The ad is currently aimed at Canadians ages 16-45 who indicate writing and creative writing as interests or hobbies on their profile. I created the ad last night and so far today there’s been 12,029 impressions, and 11 clicks. I’ve spent $3.77 of BP’s money for those 11 clicks, an average of 31 cents a click. (I’ve capped it at $10 a day.)
As a advertiser, I like how targeted I can get. And as a consumer I think it’s also valuable – you’re a creative writer, so you get an ad for a creative writing contest. At the same time, there are drawbacks both practical and philisophical. On the practical side, clicking the ad takes you to the Facebook group. You then have to go from there to the actual contest page in order to find out all the details and enter your short story. So that’s one extra step which is a drawback (unlike, say, a Google Ad which would take you directly to the page you want people to go to). I have no way of knowing, ultimately, how many people actually go from the FB group to the Broken Pencil Death Match page.
More abstractly, this kind of advertising simply enhances what we already know but often chose to ignore: that the stuff we put up there to tell our FB friends about our lives can be used by just about anyone as marketing fodder. Even your social decisions – for instance if you say you are “attending” the Deathmatch – could be incorporated into the ad. (The ad is designed to have a headline above it that says “Hal Niedzviecki is attending the Indie Deathmatch”.) So all this integrates your social life into commercial life and makes me slightly queasy, slightly fascinated, and, as someone who’s trying to reach a very particular cohort of potential creative writers, slightly fascinated. If anything else comes to mind about this, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I really need to write a blog post about something other than FB. Get out of the house. Do something with my life.
Hal.
ps – and do consider entering the Deathmatch. It’s a really fun contest and a great opportunity for an emerging writer. I’ll be one of the initial judges to see what stories go on to get voted on. If you’re not a short story writer, please pass the link on to someone who is!
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2008,
19:56 GMT
Report on My 1000th Friend
Posted by: Hal
Last week I added my 1000th friend to Facebook, a move tinged with equal amounts of irony, optimism, skepticism and pragmatism. But let’s save that for another time. Right now, I want to report on my conversation with my new friend.
As you may recall, I promised to get in touch with my 1000th friend and take him or her out to lunch. Alas, my 1000th friend turned out to live in Baytown, Texas, not far from Houston. So instead I called up Marie Angell and we got to know each other over the phone. And instead of buying her lunch, I’m going to send her a tailor made gift package.
I really enjoyed talking to Marie and getting to know her. We had much more in common than I might have imagined, given the random circumstances of our acquaintance. A bit on those random circumstances: Marie became my friend after reading an article I wrote about a failed Facebook party. She looked me up on FB and sent me a message and added me. I asked her: “Did you think I would write you back when you messaged me?” “No,” she admitted. “So why did you bother?” “I’m a ham,” she told me. “I like to express my opinions.” I like her already!
Marie is a parent. She’s got a 16 year old daughter and an 11 year old son, as well as a grown up 22 year old stepson who plays drums in her band. Marie home schools the kids, so the first present I’m going to include is for the kids – a copy of my book for teens, The Big Book of Pop Culture: A How-To Guide for Young Artists. I asked Marie about home schooling and she told me she basically practiced “child led learning”. They don’t have a fixed schedule or tests, though she says she’s making sure that they learn “the basics.”
Next we talked about Marie’s band. Check out The Snake Charmers here. It’s a blues band and it’s a family affair since her husband is the bassist and her stepson is the drummer. There’s also a guitarist they met through Meetup.com. Marie is the singer, keyboardist and wrote all the band’s songs for their upcoming release, which she hopes will be ready in December. I’m planning on buying a copy for sure. I asked Marie how the rest of the band felt about her being the only lyricist and she told me that, “My husband has an engineering background and our guitar player Larry is a chemist so he’s not a word guy either. Eric our drummer is a word guy but his words are psychedelic 60s lyrics that make no sense. So somebody has to put the words there.”
I think, though, that Marie’s being too modest. She is, after all, a published writer. Another point of connection between us is that she writes short short stories also known as flash fiction. She says it’s a hobby and that once she won $20 and another time she got her hands on a $10 Amazon gift certificate. She sent me two of her stories and I think they’re pretty good — they showcase her keen sense of humour and her charmingly understated irony. I’ll include one at the end of this post.
Finally, I asked Marie about the US election. She didn’t vote for Obama because she always votes Libertarian. I looked it up and saw that their candidate for president got 56,398 votes. I asked her how she felt voting Libertarian in a state that always goes Republican. “I’m so accustomed to always losing,” she told me, “I don’t think about it anymore.” Love it! I’m also an optimistic pessimist with a stubborn streak.
Anyway, I was really surprised by how much we had to talk about and how well we got along. Marie is just a really cool person. For all the skepticism I have about FB and social networks, the one fundamental fact is that they bring you in contact with people you would otherwise never have had the chance to meet. We ended our talk agreeing that we were both Internet addicts, and promising to keep in touch. She said that if I ever make it to Houston she’ll buy me lunch, but as far as I’m concerned, I still owe her. In the meantime, since she likes flash fiction I’m going to send her my book of short stories (which is mostly short shorts). Since she’s into music I’m going to make her a mix CD of my favourite Canadian bands and performers. And since she’s a libertarian with an alternative streak, I’m also going to include the last 5 issues of my magazine Broken Pencil, the guide to zines and independent culture. Enjoy all that stuff Marie and thanks for being my 1000th friend!
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2008,
13:15 GMT
My 1000th Friend!
Posted by: Hal
Okay, just added 50 or so new friends. I kept a careful tally as I made my way up to 1000. I didn’t want to misscount. It wasn’t the guy from Bangladesh or the girl from China writing a thesis on Facebook. It was almost my high school friend’s mom (sorry marjorie..you were 2 away). It wasn’t woody allen (or the person claiming to be woody allen) who added me as a friend this morning. (I am not making that up. How could you make that up?) The winner of the Hal’s 1000th Friend Contest is…drum roll…
MARIE ANGELL from Houston, Texas.
Good going Marie!
I’ve messaged Marie and am anxiously waiting to hear back from her. Since she’s in Texas and I’m in Toronto, I think I’ll send her flowers. Then we can chat online and I’ll find out all about her and if she’s okay to have me post what I find online, I’ll certainly do so. For now, all I can tell you is that she is a musician in a band and she seems like a pretty cool, fun person. Check out her band The Snake Charmers.
Thanks for being my 1000th Facebook pal Marie!
Hal.
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2008,
14:58 GMT
Who Will Be Hal's 1000th Friend?
Posted by: Hal
So, okay, here’s the deal. Since my article in the New York Times Magazine came out about my failed Facebook Friends party, I’ve received hundreds of messages and friend requests. People have commiserated with me, shared their own tales of failed social events, and told me their philosophy of Facebook Friend adding/deleting/refusing. They’ve promised that if I’m ever in San Antonio or Palo Alto or Sudbury, they’ll buy me a beer. They are kind and, since most of them liked my piece, they seem smart too.
I still believe in the value of making “friends” online through Facebook or other social networks. Obviously I’m now far more skeptical of the possibility that one might take some of those virtual online friendships (which are more like connections, acquaintances, handshakes) and turn them into ongoing real life friendship. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop using Facebook or stop accepting friend requests from people I don’t personally know.
So, with all that said, I’m on the cusp of having 1,000 friends. I am, to be precise, now at 959 friends. And I have 53 friend requests. This means that somewhere amidst all those friend requests is my 1000th friend. Who will it be? Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to take my 1000th friend out to lunch. (If they are anywhere near Toronto, that is…if they’re somewhere else I’ll send them flowers and we’ll do a virtual lunch.) I’m going to find out all about them. I’m going to report back to you about my 1000th Facebook friend. Who are they? Will they have lunch with me? Will they want to be my “real” friend?
Sometime tonight or tomorrow I’ll be going through those 53 friend requests and adding them. I accept all comers so I won’t be picking and choosing…it will be a totally random in-order-of-friend-request process by which I arrive at friend one thousand.
Stay tuned…
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The Bloggist
Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...
Ghostbuster zines from the Canzine Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge are now online! http://t.co/RoAMEQTU
EXPOZINE 2011, Montreal’s 10th Annual Small Press, Comic and Zine Fair—http://t.co/3ISW3Ovx http://t.co/FlLfB6hk
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