Archive for May, 2010

Really Facebook? Really?!

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

*Begin Rant*

Ok so it’s 11:07pm on a Wednesday night and I am kind of POed right now. Some of you may know that I spend an unhealthy amount of a large amount of productive time on Facebook and have really grown to love it for my business and for my private life. But then came the changes…

  • The several different revamps of the Home page. (Really, we need an extra sidebar and for you to hide all of the information and links I use on a regular basis? Nothing like fixing something that’s not broken.)
  • The addition of the News feed and the Most Recient feed. (Really? You think you know what I want to look at better than I do? Maybe Facebook has psychic robot dogs that can just tell what I absolutely need to see; and in that case I need one of those robot dogs.)
  • The sneaky changing of the “privacy” policy. (I had no idea advertisers were so interested in people’s high school photos or the mobile uploads from last nights bar crawl. Interesting…)
  • “Liking” instead of “Fanning” a page. (I have no witty remarks. This is just dumb.)

All of these are unsettling but I was able to look past it because I loved Facebook.

  • I love catching up with old friends and finding new friends.
  • I like being able to post pictures and videos for said friends to comment on.
  • I love the fact that I have the option of being a virtual farmer or a mob boss from the comfort of my own home. (I have done neither of those things.)

Today Facebook may gone too far…

I discovered (via Twitter) a forum post that states that Fan Pages no longer have the option of directing new visitors to a custom landing tab.

*Insert verbal diarrhea here*

Here’s the post:

Seriously?! 10k fans?! I was excited when I hit the 100 mark and got my vanity URL! I’m not saying I suck or anything but I’m not vain enough to think that I am going to acquire 10,000 anytime soon! (This is were you start the letter writing campaign to get me the 10k fans. Hint Hint Nudge Nudge)

This is a stab in the back to all the small business owners on Facebook who have spent time and money to create custom FBML tabs for their visitors. I offer this service to my clients because it’s a great way to really show a new visitor what yout Facebook Fan page is all about and what they can expect if they Fan Like your page.

This has really put a bee in my bonnet.
(Here’s where you envision me very angry about, first of all wearing a bonnet, and second of all finding a bee inside said bonnet.)

I bet MySpace is just loving this… :)

*End of Rant*

*Update: (5/20) Facebook seems to have noticed a few unhappy customers and has changed the landing options back to the way they were. You’re landing tabs should work now. Your welcome. ;)

Sure I’m happy about this but I can’t help but to envision their thought process…

Hey! Maybe we change something huge on our platform and then see if anyone gets upset! Then when they’re all ready to leave we say, “Awww, baby we were just playin. Come on back now and give Facebook some suger!”

Selective Memory

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Found via Etsy by BroadwayInspired

When I thought about the topic of Memory, I immediately thought of the movie Momento. This movie in a nutshell, Leonard is troubled with extreme short term memory loss after the murder of his wife. He remembers his life by taking polaroids of important people and things in his life and by getting tattoos of his most important thoughts. The movie is filmed in reverse, where the first scene is actually the last fame of the movie and we unravel the mystery throughout the movie.

I love this movie for several reasons but the one I’d like to share is the idea that our memories make us who we are and that what we remember really affects what we become in the future. If you only remember the bad times and the hurtful times and the angry times then that is what you are going to become.

Don’t allow yourself to have selective memory.

Bad stuff happens to everyone and we have all been let down at one point or another in our lives but to give up writing because of a few back reviews or to stop trying to grow your business because you didn’t get the client you wanted is not the way to move forward.

Choose to remember the good times.

Remember the way it felt when you stepped out onto the stage and everyone cheered for you! Remember the first time your daughter smiled at you! Remember the first dollar you made in your own business!

Keep a good mix of the good and bad memories because both will remind you to be the best person you can be and to remember those times that you were the best and how great that felt.

This post is a part of Momalom’s Five for Ten series!

Vampire Hunting

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Art by artzink found via Etsy

Hmmmm, happiness… such an interesting topic for me. I go through waves of happiness every so often but most of the time I’m just working really hard to stay sane!

Things that get in the way of us being happy:

Long work hours, either because someone else thinks we need to or we make ourselves think we need to.

The weather affects us more than we like to let on. It’s cloudy and dreary, I’m cloudy and dreary. (I do love thunderstorms though…weird.)

The biggest one is our Vampires. Ok I know what your thinking but these ones aren’t glittery or look anything like Brad Pitt. My friend and coach Michelle Ward has a great blog post on how to she realized she needed to kill her Vampires! I totally think I still have a few wandering aimlessly in my head sucking the life out of my happy thoughts!

“You can’t run a successful business, be a good mom AND have a clean house!”

“No one is going to read your blog posts so why even bother writing them!”

“You don’t deserve to be happy.”

So, what’s the solution. Well that’s up to you! Figure out what your Vampires are telling you and then decided not to listen to them. Yup, it’s that easy.

Ok so maybe not EASY but that’s what needs to happen. You can also get help by telling your girlfriends what your Vampires are saying and then watching them laugh at how wrong your Vampire is and then telling you how awesome you are while you all drink margaritas!

Enjoy this Vampire hunting song. It’s a bit R rated but what else would you expect from a Vampire hunting song?! Go kill those Vampires and write that novel, paint that painting and finish that other project that you know will make you happy!

This post is a part of Momalom’s Five for Ten series!

Courage the Cowardly Hobbit

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Samwise Gamgee was the real hero of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I’m just going to throw that our there.

Don’t believe me?

Sam is the hero because he just wanted a normal life but because he loved his friend so much he was willing to give up a normal life to help Frodo with his quest. J.R.R. Tolkien even said that he considered Sam the “chief hero” of his saga.

That is courageous in my book. Sam went up against monsters and pure evil and had several chances to turn back and run away but he didn’t; he stayed with Frodo until the end. He didn’t go into it thinking “Hey I’ll go throw this ring in Mount Doom and save the world then maybe we’ll go have a pint down at the pub. No biggie.” Ummm, no. He basically was scared 99.9% of the time; but he stayed and he finished anyway.

Courage isn’t something that we are born with, it’s something we earn and discover about ourselves.

I don’t think you can just wake up one day and go “I think I’ll start being courageous today!” It takes something extraordinary in ourselves to realize that we are scared to do that big project that needs done – and then we do it anyway.

Just because you don’t fight monsters or save the world on a normal basis doesn’t mean your not courageous.

Courage means:

An artist who puts their work up for other people to love or criticize.

A mom who quits her job to stay at home to be with her daughter.

A woman who leaves the corporate world to start up her own business.

An author who sends out query letters again and again even after getting those nasty rejection letters.

How are you courageous?

This post is a part of Momalom’s Five for Ten series!