Some long overdue social media housekeeping matters. Ribbonfarm now has a facebook page, dedicated Twitter feed and (this last is a rerun news item) a pretty active “Ribbonfarm Hopper” blog on Posterous containing raw material that eventually percolates into my original pieces here. Hook into any or all of these channels. Some details for those who are interested and/or want to know why connecting might be worthwhile.
After a year of urging by well-wishers, I overcame laziness and created a ribbonfarm Facebook page. So if you are a regular reader and are curious about other readers (other closet sociopaths where you work?), check it out and become a fan. And use the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link on the left sidebar to recommend the page and blog to anyone you think might like Ribbonfarm.
I don’t like the word ‘fan’ but oh well. I hadn’t really thought about what this would achieve, but now I can see the primary value for me is in getting to know more readers a bit more personally, so I can profile you psychographically and figure out exactly what sorts of mugs, mousepads and t-shirts I can sell. For you guys, I assume the value is in connecting with other readers over staple ribbonfarm themes like how to be a sociopath/misanthrope and destroy the world, geek out over infrastructure or design, etc. If there is more to Facebook pages that I haven’t thought of, do educate me.
Also, please don’t be offended if I don’t accept personal friend requests if I don’t know you personally. I do interact with “real” personal friends and family through Facebook, so I try to keep that private (in fact that was one big reason I decided to make a facebook page for ribbonfarm, so people could kinda connect without me having to put my whole life into an insecure too-public fishbowl). I do connect with very regular and long-standing commenters though. That’s all I have by way of a policy.
Many of you follow me on Twitter at the @vgr account. Presumably many of you would rather pass on my bantering with friends, random comments to people I work with, etc. Those of you who know/like me personally, but don’t care for my writing (yes, those people exist), presumably don’t like the blog-related stuff there. Incredibly, I hadn’t checked before now if the @ribbonfarm handle was available. It was. A testament to my capacity for obscurity in picking names.
So: if you want all blog updates both from ribbonfarm.com and on-theme articles that I tweet out, follow @ribbonfarm. If you want a peek into my incredibly interesting personal life, feel free to follow @vgr, but don’t expect riveting entertainment. I will continue to retweet a sampling of @ribbonfarm stuff on @vgr of course, but the full stream of original and repackaged entertainment will move to the former.
I will also be accepting contributions for @ribbonfarm (will be posted to the ribbonfarm posterous with an (via @yourhandle) attribution). Tweet those to either account. Only criterion: should be interesting in a ribbonfarmesque way. I have idle thoughts of developing the feed into a true firehose of interesting content (a la kottke.org) with your help and contributions.
My compact follow-back policy. I will be following back anyone who contributes something for @ribbonfarm. On @vgr, I follow people I know personally and/or have interesting virtual conversations with.
Ribbonfarm Hopper on Posterous
I started the Ribbonfarm Hopper posterous (for those who came in late: a ridiculously easy to use quick-blogging service) a couple of months back and I can safely say it has been a huge blessing. A bunch of you are already following that feed, but if not, check out and subscribe to the Ribbonfarm Posterous. The tagline is “Double take finds, reblogs, pictures, videos, non-sequitur microthoughts, incubations.”
All the Posterous content will be streamed into the Facebook page once I figure out how, and onto @ribbonfarm, but presumably some of you prefer good, old-fashioned RSS.
And for those of you who have asked for Open Social, Facebook Connect, Disqus, etc. etc., bear with me. I am only one guy (really 0.1 guy, given the time I can devote to this), and it takes me some effort to stop procrastinating and turn away from the fun writing stuff to do some of this site improvement stuff.
About Venkatesh Rao
