Thirteen years ago, after a stumbling start, I joined Facebook with the notion of using it to help promote my then-upcoming novel. As I said at the time, I'm neither social nor do I network, so I didn't really have a desire to deal with the site, but hey, I wanted to sell books, and I reckon the Swords & Sixguns page I set up there helped to a small degree. It also led to me to becoming admin for the Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express page because I simply asked Darren Schroeder if he ever considered setting up a FB version of the Yahoo group he ran (good thing I did, too, 'cause Yahoo Groups is long gone!).
Fast-forward to today: the S&S page has 334 followers and VPE has more than three times as many (the old buzzard has the advantage of name recognition). Considering that I've never bought one ad on FB, I think that's pretty good, but I daresay those numbers may not get any bigger thanks to the algorithm actively working against virtually every page out there (and no, putting money into this won't help, as I've seen enough other, much-bigger pages report that ad buys no longer move the needle). Still, I don't want to lose those numbers, so I keep on keeping on over there, but from what I've been hearing lately, it seems like the general environment at FB might reach a point where many folks abandon the place altogether. In fact, over the last few months, I've seen that a good amount of people have been setting up accounts over at the Twitter-ish site BlueSky.
Now, I've been long resisting the pressure to set up on another social media site, but I've finally decided that having a backup isn't a bad idea. That's actually why I started this blog: years ago, when the future of the DC Message Boards was in question, I set up here and let other Jonah Hex fans know about it in case that place went kablooey...and it eventually did, so good call by me. So yesterday, I set up an account on BlueSky, which will serve as a combo of all three of the FB pages I have: my personal page, my S&S page, and a trimmed-down version of what I do over on VPE (the lack of a Photo section on BlueSky prevents me from doing much of what VPE has become known for). It'll be a different vibe, to be sure, but I plan on keeping things fun, especially since I plan on unleashing the massive meme archive I've accumulated over the years upon the place.
So, if you're on BlueSky, look me up under "Susan Hillwig" and help me build this new venue into something special.
