By Jay D. Prince
Perhaps it’s just me, but Facebook is something that just hasn’t piqued my interest. I mean, why do people want to sit at a keyboard posting the mundane details of their lives on a website for everyone to see? I was under the impression that it was really a generational thing—you know, something that our kids are into. My 12-year-old daughter summed it up for me recently when I asked her why she doesn’t just pick up the phone and call her friends instead of posting things on her Facebook page or texting them. She said, very matter of factly: “Dad, cell phones aren’t for talking.”
Oh boy. Seems I was really out of touch. But back to the whole Facebook thing. One of the challenges we face at the magazine is coming up with photos of people who we didn’t have the luxury of shooting ourselves. A couple of months ago, I was in a bind trying to get some kids in a picture from the High School Nationals identified. I emailed as many people as I could think of and U.S. SQUASH was contacting people too.
With about an hour to go before we had to submit our files to our printer, I asked my Director of Operations about how Facebook works. Could we search for someone and send them a message? He, of course, said, “Absolutely” (I had a couple of names of people in the photo but didn’t know who they were). So he did a quick search, I dictated a message, and within five minutes I not only got a reply from the person but was able to email him the photo and get everyone identified. Amazing.
So this summer, I gave my daughter a project for a few days in my office to create a Facebook page for Squash Magazine. I figured it would take some time, but no, it was up and running in about an hour. While I still haven’t really got it all figured out, it is now active and getting new fans daily.
Which brings me to the point of all of this. My hope is that you all will help us populate the Squash Magazine Facebook page with whatever you have in mind. I’ve had a couple of people submit photos to an album; a couple more who have posted video clips; and a few who have posted suggestions—precisely what I’m hoping the page will do for the magazine.
We invite you to send us suggestions for the magazine through the page. If you have story ideas, by all means please let us know. Particularly at the local level, we don’t really have eyes and ears at all of the clubs in the country (or around the world for that matter), but you certainly do. Some of the most interesting things we’ve done over the years have been born through ideas sent to us by readers.
In addition, for those of you who are Facebook experts, please let us know if you have ideas for how best to utilize our Facebook page. Needless to say, I’m still a rookie at this and have no problem at all with people who are more familiar letting me know what more we can be doing.
The technological advances we’ve all been experiencing over the past decade never cease to amaze me. Being able to text people virtually anywhere in the world has been incredible. And being able to connect with people through Facebook (and I’m sure there are other services) is, well, mind-boggling. Five years ago it would never have occured to me that I might be able to “interview” somebody through an instant messaging service, but I’ve done that more than once since launching our Facebook page. Seems with our always-connected cell phones, our connections to each other are now 24/7.
I have no idea what’s on the horizon, but with the video capabilities of cell phones these days, I suspect we’ll be taking the “staying connected” thing a step further with mobile video chats. Perhaps then my daughter will change her tune and view the cell phone as something used to talk to people—but only because she’ll be able to see the person too. Amazing stuff.
