Why do people use Facebook again?

For the record, I am neither social, nor do I network.  Due to this, I've avoided signing up for Facebook, as I've never seen a point to it.  When you're gearing up to self-publish a book, however, reaching hundreds of people with the click of a mouse suddenly becomes appealing.  So I signed up...and here my troubles began.

Now, all I knew about Facebook beforehand was that 1) this is where you go to play Farmville, and 2) my husband likes to check in at least once a day to see if anybody's commented on his status.  It took me a minute or so of poking around to even sign in, the reason being that it gives you a choice of what sort of page you want: a public one or a more business-oriented one, which they recommend for professionals and other high-profile types.  Stupid me, I said "business", thinking that it would suit my needs better (i.e. I wouldn't get Farmville requests).  Well, seems there's a pertinent Facebook feature that's lacking in the business area, namely the ability to interact with everyone else on Facebook.  Yep, you choose "business", and they stick you in a corner with no way to "like" or "friend" anyone.  You're just kinda there, hoping people will find you.  Now, you can send out email requests to people you know, but only if you have their emails already, not by clicking their Facebook profiles...which kinda runs counter-intuitive to the whole idea of Facebook, I think.

I scratched my head over this dilemma for a good long while, thinking that I was simply overlooking the right button, then I broke down and asked my husband what I was doing wrong.  He did a good amount of head-scratching of his own before we got the idea to look at the Facebook pages of a few celebrities that he follows (read: folks who would most likely be operating under the "business" portion) and see how they compared to the joe-average page.  Well, whaddya know, all of 'em apparently use the same public version as everyone else, 'cause they've got "friends" and "likes" all over the place!  Matter of fact, I'm not sure if anyone --aside from myself -- has ever set up a "business" page on Facebook.

Realizing that I'd definitely chosen the wrong option, I decided to delete my account and start over.  This took five minutes of searching just to figure out how to do it.  Once that was over, I went to the main page and tried to sign in again so I could set up a "normal" account.  I was soon denied access because it said I already had an account under that name, even though I just deleted it.  Five more minutes of searching turned up this lil' nugget of info: when you "delete" an account, you merely "deactivate" it -- the second you go back to Facebook under your usual email address, it turns back on, whether you like it or not.  Now, if you want to really delete your old account, you go to another section, select "permanent deletion", then sit on your butt for 14 days in order to convince Facebook that you're truly sincere in your desire to not have that account.  Whether or not this actually works remains to be seen.  If it does, and I manage to set up a normal, public account without breaking my computer, I'll let you guys know so you can look me up, whereupon we'll go about with the modern-day rituals of "liking" and "friending" and such.

But no Farmville requests.  You planted that damn corn yourself, so you can go shuck it.

UPDATE: I found away around the 14-day wait, so I'm now a Facebooker or whatever you call it.  Just type "Susan Hillwig" into the Facebook search and I should pop right up.  Not too fancy right now, but I'll work on it.

New fanfic: Shades of Gray #11

Okay, I'm trying to get on a regular schedule with this, so I hope a four-month wait for the latest installment of Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray isn't too terribly long.  It has only been four months, right?  I cant keep track of the days anymore.

In other news, I've decided to skip the Kickstarter funding for my book.  After crunching the numbers, we'd end up spending almost as much on the incentives as it would take just to fund the project ourselves.  So we've moved on to setting up the business portion of this venture whilst fellow DC2er Matt Erkhart works on the cover art (just got a sample today...whooee, this thing's gonna knock your eyes outta their sockets!).  If I'm lucky, I'll be able do a few more Jonah Hex history installments when I take some time off in a few weeks (at the very least, I'll make sure one's ready to go for his "birthday" in November), presuming that I'm not spending every free moment formatting the manuscript or doing something else that doesn't sound like fun.