It has finally happened. Streamhead now has a Facebook page. The idea has been growing on me for a few months now, but yesterday I reached some kind of threshold and just got on with it. Very fashionably late.
Why now you wonder? And how did it work out? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Although I just saw
The Social Network, that was fairly unrelated to my decision. Attending Devoxx and watching a bunch of my friends, I noticed how many people carry Facebook with them. It’s their source of news and where they spend their time. It’s a good place for a site to be if you want to be discovered instead of searched for.
I tried publishing the Streamhead posts to my own personal page, but there was a huge mismatch between the content I usually like to share there and my blogs content. So after a few posts, I turned this off.
This is exactly why I created a page. It allows me to aggregate all Streamhead’s posts and related news without disturbing my friends who are probably not interested in the latest Java features.
Creating the Streamhead page itself was a little more complicated than I expected. First of all, I was unable to find a “create page” button. I’m not sure if it exists somewhere, but eventually I found a link in the help center.
The help center was a very useful resource. It’s pretty well-organized and contains answers to most questions you might have. It was a pity that some answers were outdated. For instance, I was unable to import my blog via the Notes application. Maybe I missed something, but the instructions seemed to deal with a previous version of the Facebook interface.
Setting up the page itself was a breeze. Although I really have no idea why Facebook is so scared of lists. The only way to go back to your page is via the search box. I don’t understand why I can’t just get a list of pages I administer.
Other nice things I’m experimenting with:
- The Facebook widget is now on the right side of the blog. Although it looks pretty good, I personally think it’s way too large, but I’m going to wait and see for a bit how people interact with it.
- I’m still experimenting with the Mailchimp application. I couldn’t have done it without their tutorial because it isn’t very straightforward. Next, I still need to change the signup form to something more sexy. But it’s a start.
I will be tweaking the page, so click on that “like” button now to keep up-to-date. I will also actively maintain the page and post something extra from time to time, so I can get a good idea if a Facebook page is worth the effort.