Friday, October 10, 2014

Why I won't share this on Facebook

I have some news that I would normally share with my friends on Facebook but for some reason I'm not going to post this one.  Spoiler Alert: my condo is under contract.  Why won't I share the news?  well for starters it's superstition: I don't want to jinx it.  But the real reason is I've been in a bit of a Dark Mood lately  I'm just having one of my overly sensitive moments where I just cannot reconcile how life should be and how life is.

When I tried to sell my condo in 2010, the Share Button wasn't a thing on Facebook.  You had to cut and paste information.  So it makes sense that many of my friends back then didn't take the 7 seconds necessary to share the link I posted with my condo sale information.   Heck, I'll bet most didn't know how to cut and paste so it might simply have been a technical issue.   A few did figure it out and made the effort though most others simple made annoying statements in the comments like Is it on the market? or Are you working with a realtor?  My favorite was the How Much?  I mean how lazy do you have to be not to click on a link that has the very answer to the question that is on your mind?


One particular friend that knew I really wanted to sell my condo didn't share the post.  all she did was comment "looks great!".  This really hurt.  I didn't expect the majority of my friends to rally but for some reason  I thought she might.  Instead she just made that comment.  Literally in the time it would take to make the comment she could have cut and pasted the link into her status and shared.  But she didn't.

Fast forward to 2014.  I posted a picture of our cat the other night.  Within an hour there were 3 comments and 31 likes.  My link to my re-listed condo?  It took several days to achieve half those numbers but at least this time more friends did hit the share button.

According to Facebook, 20 people shared the link.  The total number is still less than 1% of my Facebook friends and that is after allowing for the random virtual friends and the people I've met once IRL, or the obscure high school, college and former job friends and even the people who created an account but never check in,  and various other buckets.

First off, no one is obligated to do anything for me, especially share my condo link.  I get that.  Second, I realize that the chance of a friend of a friend buying/renting my condo is slim.  The only argument is that you never know which friend of a friend will benefit from another friend of a friend.  Look how Nightingale and I met.

Third, I guess I'm really having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that people will click the like button but not the share button.  Of course you also don't get anything tangible, just the warm fuzzy of helping your friend out.

One of my deep fears is that once the condo is finally sold, some other COW or life snafu, like losing my job, will come along and I won't be able to alleviate the credit card debt I've acquired by using the money I was previously using to cover the condo mortgage when the place wasn't rented out. 

3 comments:

  1. Facebook has a weird log rhythm that only shows your posts to a small percentage of your friends list. The good news is that if people are liking the post, it is more likely to pop up in more of your friends' feed. I agree with you though, no matter how great something is, there are just some people that won't engage ... and that's fine! Because there are plenty of people who will!

    Best wishes on selling your place!

    www.awarriorscry.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good point about the algorithm, Victoria. I'm sure there are lots of posts that I don't see and vice versa. At the same time, it often feels like that Universal Lie that everyone tells: I didn't see that email!

      Delete

Comments Encouraged! And the nice thing about this blog is that I rarely get spam so don't need to moderate the comments.

I've set the comments up to allow anonymous users -- but I'd love it if you "signed" your comments (as some of my readers have done) just so you have an identity of sorts.