In 2009 Facebook launched in Indonesia and with that arrival according to “The Economist” a “vast field of dead blogs were discovered” numbering several thousand as people deserted their blogging platforms and moved to Facebook.
Facebook is a phenomenon and its ease of use and spread has enabled tens of millions of people to have a publishing platform and printing press that allows them to share their thoughts,content and passions with ease.
Facebook’s constant experimentation has brought innovations, such as comment threads, and the ability to mix thoughts, pictures and links in a stream, with the most recent on top, so it provides that ease of use that we all love.
I also received a public Tweet the other day and it said
“Yes! Facebook is killing the blog. My FB page IS my blog.”
This was in response to a recent post titled “Is Facebook Killing the Blog?”
For some strange reason this Tweet and the discovery of the vast field of dead blogs worries me and I want to tell you why you should not just have a Facebook page instead of a blog.
If you are wanting to be taken seriously as a blogger in a niche as opposed to just blurting out your thoughts and photos in a random fashion then using Facebook as your blog is dangerous.
Why?…well here are some reasons.
1. Facebook own your page not you ..think of it as renting or cyber squatting if you don’t comply with their terms and conditions your Facebook page can be terminated with the push of one button. If you have a blog on your own domain and self hosted then you own it and have total control.
2. Facebook is not forever. As with all trends it will fade away (eg AOL) or morph into something else as the Web continues to evolve.
3. On Facebook it is extremely difficult to backup and maintain your content to save for the future
4. Facebook keeps changing its look and feel and features without your consent (Your blog is totally under your control)
5. You cannot optimize your Facebook page for search engines but you can with your blog
6. With Facebook you are constantly at the mercy of what they will allow and don’t allow you to edit or change or customize. You can add almost unlimited customized features to your blog.
These are just some reasons why, if you are wanting to publish online and maintain control over your content now and into the future that your blog should be your primary web presence and your homebase and not a Facebook page.
By all means have a Facebook page to allow you to share your content on social media but remember, you don’t own your Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg does!
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