Anti-Social Networking

Network By Design
Most of you have probably gleaned from my various posts that I am not a big fan of "social networking" in the mode of MySpace or Facebook, especially not for authors who are trying to sell their books. I was, therefore, fascinated by this article in the Register, and this one on Creative Capital, both based on the same set of numbers, which indicate that the biggies in the social networking arena are growing slowly in the areas in which they are not actively shrinking. From Creative Capital:

Since December 2006, when MySpace engagement peaked at about 234 minutes spent per visitor, time spent on the site has dropped consistently throughout the year. In December, time spent per visitor saw its biggest month-to-month drop, of about 8.5%, to 179 minutes per visitor per month, down from 196 minutes in November. That equates to a 24% year-over-year drop.

Both MySpace and FaceBook are non-targeted networks. That is, people join them for general stuff. Members may self-select into groups based on hobbies, favorite activities, whatever, but the larger "network" is general.

Then there are the targeted networks. Daniel Hatadi created the targeted social network CrimeSpace on the general social networking site Ning. Crimespace is for those who like to read--and write--crime fiction. It has 1233 members, all of whom, presumably, are interested in the kinds of things we Women of Mystery like, too.

Targeted even more specifically are sites like Redroom, where in order to get your page "activated", you have to be a published author. Anyone can sign up for an account, though, so I suppose the "social network" aspect could be for readers as well, though I can't see how it would have a lot of appeal.

Network As Side-Benefit
For myself, I infinitely prefer sites where "social networking" takes place as a by-product. That is, the site is designed for some other purpose. For example, I belong to a number of forums for my day job like the Creative Wire Jewelry forum on Delphi. Long before the age of the "social networking site," there were bulletin board services, and these forums are holdovers from that style of communication. These are social networking at their most basic because they were really designed to be "social," not to help people "network."

You can't put your "author page" on a forum site the way you can on a social network site, but you don't need to. Why not? Because on a forum site, people know you by what you post. They learn who you are slowly. There's no Blatant Self-Promotion allowed, and although we all show our work and buy from each other, that's a side benefit of the forum, not its focus.

I also belong to LibraryThing. LibraryThing allows you to catalog your books online (and call your library from your cell phone in order to see whether you have already read that book you're pretty sure is a re-release....). You can rate books, review them, and--important to me--tag them. You can also subscribe to tag feeds. So whenever someone tags a book in their library as "cozy," my RSS reader lets me know, so I can see whether I've read it, might want to read it, whatever.

LibraryThing does have a section of forums, where people discuss all kinds of things. And you can search for people who have similar libraries to yours, make them your friends, etc. But mostly, it's about the books. The social network aspect is a sideline, so, no, it's not where you could put your author page. (Though if you are an author, you should become a "LibraryThing author" and tag your books so you know that geeks like me, who are getting the feeds, will be sure to know about your books! Since this takes all of two minutes--or five if you have a whole lot of books to pimp promote--you won't have put out a lot of effort for no measurable reward even if it doesn't sell a single book for you.)

And, of course, there's this blog. I didn't start blogging for promotion--I have nothing to promote--but it's certainly social, and we've created, I hope, a network. But a blog isn't a homepage, either. It's not enough for an author just to have a blog, s/he has to have a web page as well.

Home Salty Home
Why might you want to put your author page on a site like CrimeSpace, rather than just creating it out in the middle of the Web on its own? I'm probably the wrong person to ask. The idea is that if you put it up somewhere people are already going, they're more apt to see it. If they're already hanging out looking at author profiles, they'll be more receptive to yours.

Well, okay. That certainly worked for Wendy's, whose startup marketing strategy was to place a Wendy's near every McDonald's on the theory that if people wanted fast food, they wanted fast food.

Unfortunately, as every strip mall in existence illustrates, where there's a Wendy's and a McDonald's, there's also a Burger King, a Taco Bell.... The "noise" can become a bit overwhelming. How do you make yourself heard over the din, especially since most social networking sites strictly limit the alterations you can make on your page? The sites want a uniform look, like a housing development, in order to give visitors a sense of "place". Cruise around Redroom for a while. You may not know the author whose page you find yourself on, but you'll know you haven't left Redroom's site.

For many, many surfers, that sense of place is an important one. The question is, are your readers that kind of surfer? Are readers, in general, different from surfers of other types?

I think they probably are. I'm not at all sure how they differ, but I am pretty sure they do. Even genre-to-genre, I am willing to bet you'd find differences in the Internet habits of readers.

But as I struggle to figure out what to do for my own author page, I am more than willing to be educated--have you found success in formal social networking sites? What did it cost in terms of time, energy, upkeep? What do you like or dislike about your own site? I'd love to be proven wrong about social networking...there's an attractive aspect to the ease with which one can set up a page on those sites.