May I suggest you become Fanatical?

Tonight I had planned on unleashing the mother of all rants. Aimed squarely at the barrage of "Fan Requests" on Facebook for bands coming my way recently. On an aside, my wife had said that producing such a rant may look hypocritical as I had just recently sent out a number of similar invites to people from the Dave Hughes Music Facebook page (TM).

However, in my defense, I did not merely do a 'select all' send invitation. Oh no, I had a logic diagram! Well, I didn't at the time, I made the image up purely for tonights festivities.

Basically, I went through the list of my friends and colleagues on Facebook and made a rough assessment of if they had shown any kind of positive interest in my music, and then sent them a request. The net result being a targeted audience to the page that they may not have otherwise found. Thus, friends and workmates who have came to see the band a couple of times have the option to mark themselves as 'fan's, those who haven't, or negatively discuss the band and I, are none the wiser and move on with their lives. Conscience cleared.

I hate the whole "You're a friend of mine, therefore you must be a fan of my musical output". Umm, no. I've got plenty of friends who make the most god-awful noise. And of course, there's plenty of people I would consider as friends who can't stand what I do when I hit the record button or get on stage.

The main problem is that too many bands and artists it seems use Facebook in a totally un-targeted fashion. Take for example the events function of Facebook. Is there really any point to creating an Event item for a gig, then inviting absolutely everyone regardless of geography? Do you really think that BBC radio journalist from London is going to make their way up to a pub in Glasgow for a gig on a Tuesday? Probably even less so that school teacher from the Midlands.

The net result of such Select All actions is that you have around ten times the number of folk marked as Declined as are attending, which when advertising the event does not look that enticing. Not too mention the effect of when you finally are putting on an event in London, but said radio Journalist is so used to automatically clicking Decline to any events from your email address.

While I am being very negative on Facebook's ease at which it allows bands to interact with those marked as showing an interest, I think that a well known cliche should be remembered. To paraphrase, "while you can reach so many people with the click of a mouse button, should you?".

Have I just opened myself up for more scrutiny any time my activity feed on facebook contains the words "Dave Hughes has just became a fan of...."?