My Travel Log
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93. Who in the World is Mickey Magoo?
Well, if you never go on Facebook, you probably have never met Mickey. However, there are several ways you'll bump into that name and maybe wonder who in the world that is. As it turns out, a few years back Facebook started getting popular and I was developing websites. Several people had asked me to put a link to their Facebook page on their website. I soon noticed that Facebook shows you different things depending upon if you're a Facebook member, if you're “friends” with the person whose page you're visiting, and maybe some other factors. One of the things I don't like about Facebook is that they don't make it entirely clear about what they're doing to “your” page(s). Anyway, if you're not a member, all you get to see is the very basics, like their name and cover photo. If a member, but not a “friend”, you see more, but not as much as their “friends” do. So, I had to open a Facebook account, but didn't want to use my real name to avoid people trying to “friend” me and not my general email since I expected I'd be seeing a lot of Facebook emails. I set up a fake page with owner listed as Mickey Magoo – not sure you can still open a new page with an alias, since Facebook has gotten a little more security.
So if you see anything with the name Mickey Magoo on it, you'll know it's really me. Things have worked out well – the Facebook page (after about 5 or more years) shows no friends and has no postings. The email I set up has hundreds of messages from Facebook and I assume that number will keep growing.
I recently gave in and decided that my business would benefit from having a Facebook page, so I opened one for Robert Hoffman Consulting, with Mickey as one of the administrators. If you go to that page, you'll notice that most of the postings are from Mickey, since he (I) is an administrator. I'm also adding a short message there pointing to this Blog entry, to explain to Mickey's visitors about who he is. I'm not sure it's possible to get to the Magoo account, except accidentally, but you never know – Facebook has many unadvertised “features”, so maybe it is possible.
Two of the many things I don't like about Facebook are: (1) the page showing differently when you've not made any changes, and (2) there doesn't appear to be any kind of Help manual (not one that I've seen), so you just have to guess or ask a friend when trying something new.
On 1, things of course get changed when others post on your page. I don't really understand this aspect yet, but it seems stupid that anyone can come along and add whatever to your page. Other than that, the pages seem to change with graphics moving around randomly, so you can never find something a second time due to it being moved.
On 2, I guess I'll get over this soon enough. And don't say, use the Forum – it's full of totally useless chatter and finding an answer to a specific question is impossible. I never have understood how to use Forums, like how do I go beck and check my question. Seems like as soon as I input something it disappears. And, I've never figured out how to know if someone has answered me.
But these are just two of the many things I dislike about Facebook. Look through the Blog index and you'll find a couple more. One of these days, I'll write a more complete entry on the subject, as I've found many aggravating things about Facebook since writing the entries that are there now. To keep this from getting too long, I'll stop here – you now know who Mickey is and that was the original intent of this entry.
