Facebook is personal. Or at least, it used to be, maybe it's changed for you whippersnappers these days, but mostly, you connect to people on Facebook because you: -want to be friends; -are trying to flirt/hook up with them; -pretend to be friends; -are related or otherwise socially tied to a person in a way that you feel like you should accept their invitation when it comes.

LinkedIn is business, but as I mention later on I think it's best at what it does for industry businesses or, to put it differently, "jobs where people will hire recruiters to help them find staff." I don't think LinkedIn is as appropriate a forum for artistic stuff, but I haven't tried very hard at it and I may be wrong. I have a LinkedIn profile for my day-to-day work, I don't have one for writing.

I think in part because of the privacy controls and the walls Facebook has put up against casual, non-friends viewing your Facebook (with good reason), Facebook isn't friendly to the casual web-wanderer. Moreover Facebook promotes low-quality, low-effort content as it pushes for daily users providing daily updates. If you write, like me, "Notes" are in a weird place and nobody much uses them any more, but they're probably the best spot for writing...Except mostly they get used as personal blogs.

There is an option of a Facebook page but again, for some reason, Facebook just doesn't strike me as a good option for casual web-wanderers. If I'm trying to find more information about a business and all I can find is their Facebook page, my thought is generally: "Oh. They can't afford to have a real website." I don't always find the information I need on Facebook (for some reason, businesses don't put down their hours anywhere. or a restaurant won't have their menu) which I think is in part due to bad management of the website and also the capabilities of Facebook. The lit journal I work for has a Facebook page and I think it's good at getting people to see content as it goes up but I'm not going to get many new views or users from it. Maybe Facebook is for people who already know and are interested in you/your product/output?

Anyway this is a great discussion as I'm trying to grapple with whether or not I need a website for writing. It would provide a place for a digital resume; I've been published a couple places now and I could provide actual links to these websites, for one. I don't really want another blog though because I've already got the Kenning blog and it is a fair bit of work as it is. But if people read one of my poems and google me, I figure having my own personal website come up at the top of that search could only benefit me.

humanodon, you write and have a writing website. How's it work out for you? Pros, cons?

P.S. thanks lil! i didn't get a notification for your shout-out (weird) but this is a great thread to come up as we really were just discussing it.