The “Like Me” Experiment

So, it has been two weeks since I started my shameless “Like me on Facebook” campaign. I am sure at least a few of you must be interested in what the results have been. Before I get into the statistics, I think you all need to know some background.

Long long ago, in the days of dial-up internet, I consumed most of my information on the internet through – news websites and search engines. So everyday I would login to the internet and then go to a news website (like Yahoo News, Google News, Times of India, etc). Then as the internet matured, I could subscribe to receive emails from these websites daily in my inbox. These emails were called newsletters and the internet was consumed through the inbox. Then we further matured, and I started using Atom/RSS Feeds. As I started reading more stuff online every single day, it was not possible for me to read it in my inbox (too many mails to go through!), the easier option was to login to a feed reader (Bloglines, Google Reader etc) and then consume the information from there. I have realized that over the last year, I have been mainly consuming all my news and information from the News feed of Facebook and my Twitter timeline. Though I still read news from my feed reader, it seems to me that slowly, we all are shifting towards friend generated news. That means, for my blog to be read, I have to be on Facebook. This meant that I had to make people “Like” my blog so that any updates I publish start appearing on their wall.

Now, why I want you to read my blog is beyond my comprehension. The only plausible explanation I can give is – I am a narcissist and I love it when you read what I write (yeah, it makes me feel as if I am doing something – influencing your thought process, making you laugh, smile, cry or simply – irritated!) Anyway that motivation put aside, now I come back to my experiment.

After cajoling, pleading, calling up and at times bullying people to “Like me” (at least a few of you), I have reached a number of 20. Now that’s an achievement in itself (Thank you for giving in to my pressure!). But alas, Facebook doesn’t give me an independent existence if I don't cross the magic figure of 25. So that is where it ends.

I am dejected, but that doesn’t mean I will stop writing here. You will hear me rant about my sadness for a while, and then I will be back again to my usual silly self. So enjoy!