Social networking is now touted as one of the best ways for authors to promote themselves, and perhaps it’s true. If most of us primarily sell books to friends, it makes sense, and sometimes even cents, that the more friends we have, the more books we will sell. So we sign up for MySpace and Goodreads, Twitter and Facebook and start collecting friends like so many stamps. If a thousand friends are good, then two thousand are even better. If two thousand are good, then let’s aim for ten thousand.
While frantically collecting friends, we forget two things. First, social networking is about being social. It does no good to have connections if, to them, we are merely a nameless face, or worse, a faceless name. Too many people use their book cover for an icon, though it seems to me it defeats the purpose. How does one make friends with a book cover? You are, or should be, aiming for long-term relationships. You don’t have to waste your time playing games with your connections, but you can comment on their status updates and photos, you can post interesting links and notes on your profile, you can participate in discussions.
Second, we forget that these online sites, especially Facebook and Goodreads, were set up for real-life friends to interact. They were not set up for promotion.
Goodreads automatically limits your activity, so it’s hard to abuse their system, but Facebook is a different matter. Several of my friends have had their Facebook accounts disabled because of “abusive” behavior, though they were doing what we all do — making connections with strangers. I have become good friends with many of the strangers to whom I sent friend requests, so by limiting myself to people I know would have greatly limited my Facebook experience. Still, Facebook says they aspire to be an environment where people can interact safely with their friends and people they know. Accordingly, they expect accounts to reflect mainly “real-world contacts.” They do not endorse contacting strangers through unsolicited friend requests as such requests may be considered annoying or abusive.
To prevent this type of behavior, Facebook has limits in place that restrict the rate at which you can use certain features on the site. Your account can be disabled if Facebook determines that you were going too fast when sending friend requests despite being warned to slow down, or because your friend requests were being rejected at a high rate. Your account can be disabled if you send too many of the same message, post too often to other people’s profile, or indulge in repetitive, promotional activities.
The problem is that Facebook does not tell you ahead of time what their limits are, so it’s a matter of guessing.
So far, I have survived Facebook. I have over 4, 000 friends. I administer one group and co-administer three others. I send weekly group messages informing people of the featured discussion. I have a fan page. I post daily status updates, feed my blog into my profile page, post links to sites where I am a guest.
So, how did I do it?
Every day, I added ten to fifteen friends — no more. When I reached 2500 friends, I stopped sending requests. The rest of the connections came from my accepting others’ requests. At the beginning, I accepted everyone, but now that I am nearing the limit Facebook allows, I am a bit more careful whom I accept. For example, I won’t accept requests from icon-less people unless I know them personally. (Here is the dichotomy of Facebook. You are allowed 5,000 friends, who are supposed to be people you know personally, but who in the offline world has that many friends and connections?)
Although it’s one of the things marketing coaches recommend, I never thanked people for accepting my friend request. Besides emphasizing that you’re not friends, the comment can trigger a warning from Facebook, especially if you post too many similar comments in one day. You can post almost anything you want on your own profile, but you are constrained by Facebook’s unwritten rules as to what you can post on other people’s profiles.
The best thing I can tell you about surviving Facebook is this: if you get a warning, stop. Do not use Facebook for at least a week. If you don’t heed this advice, and you get another warning within that time, your account will be disabled, and all your work will be wasted.
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Bertram's Blog 
Even Comment Spam Can Sometimes be Tasty
February 4, 2010 — Pat BertramSpammers have discovered one of my more obscure blogs, but some of the spammers got wise — instead of the usual gibberish (which I was going to post here to show you how totally giberishy it is, but decided I’d better not attract their attention) these spammers post quotes, and it works! I don’t delete them. Just goes to show that not everything is all bad, not even comment spam. So, here are a few of the quotes left on the blog, author unknown (at least to me):
I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.
The ‘Net is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about it.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Memory feeds imagination.
To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.
Get pleasure out of life…as much as you can. Nobody ever died from pleasure.
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.
I write because I’m afraid to say some things out loud.
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.