AN EXPERIMENT ON WHO I GET TO SEE FIRST ON FACEBOOK

  Do you have any say on what shows up on your Facebook page?

I've known for years that you can pick out 30 favorite people/pages to "see first". Yet I'm not sure that it accomplished its goal.

One of my friends (FB and real life) a couple of times asked if I got notifications of his posts, because he had a suspicion that Facebook was not posting notifications of his posts, and his political ones in particular.

So I decided to do a little experiment. I selected 30 friends and pages as "See First" (or Favorites). Then, I would at one point go once a day through the first fifteen news updates and see how many of the thirty were among the top 15. The make-up was 12 people and 18 pages (i.e. promoting a band or a news source). 

My goal was to do this for seven days. I decided to stop after six days, because I believe the following conclusions would not have been affected.

So here are the results.

•  Of the 90 posts I saw, 21 were from "See First" sources. Another 18 were ads. This leaves 51 from people who were not on my "See First" list.
• The daily numbers of my 30 "See First" being among the first 15 I viewed were 7 (Monday), 1 (Tuesday), 4 (Wednesday), 5 (Thursday), 4 (Friday), and Zero (Saturday).
• None of those 21 posts were from pages. This is the week of Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and thus there were several posts about it on the Baptist Press and North American Mission Board pages, but none of them showed up on my newsfeed. One of the pages was for a local Christian rock band I'm following; the lead singer is also on my friend's list. You might call this cheating, but after I saw several for the singer, I switched from the band page to her page. 
• The 21 posts were from seven of the twelve friends I included (6 from one, 4 from one, 3 from three, and 1 each from two) . Four out of the five that I lacked posts from didn't post anything this week, so it was understandable. By the way, there are two other friends who were not on my list of 30 that I saw several posts in the top 15.
• Was politics an issue? Three posts had a political theme. Two of the friends I've included lean Libertarian: one of those had one post on my wall, which happened to be non-political, and the other didn't have any posts though he did post some this week (which surprisingly or not was the one who I referred to above, who wondered if his political posts were not being promoted by Facebook). I also included a political cartoonist, and only one of his posts made my top 15.
  
• I will also add that the ads were in character to my regular postings and messages from friends. I told you I didn't get any from a pair of Southern Baptist pages, but several of the ads I got were from another Southern Baptist ministry. 

So what does this mean? Well...

1. Before this experiment, I doubted my friend's political posts were deliberately not shared on his friends' walls. Now, I'm not so sure. No proof, but I did find it interesting to see the lack of political posts, and wonder if I leaned liberal if I'd see more posts.
2. I was always curious that I didn't get a lot of posts from wall pages I followed (e.g. Reformed Thug Life). Now, I conclude that it is that they put the weight on friends, not on pages, which I'm not going to complain about.
3. Facebook doesn't put a priority on those you want to give priority to. Is there priority based on anything other than who posts more? Probably not. 

Now, I can try this again with various variations. I can make the 30 ones that are more active. I may divide those 30 into religious and political. I may include a more liberal friend and see if his posts show up more often than ones who are more conservative.  

 

 Have you noticed any trends that agree or disagree with my observations?

WHEN FICTION READING IS WORK

 For the most part, I enjoyed my reading assignments in High School. But I remember a Room 222 episode when I was in 6th grade where the students wanted to read Catch 22 instead of Silas Marner. 

Plus, I said for the most part. I had a class on Sci-Fi/Literature Of The West in High School. I enjoyed reading the assigned short stories from the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology (and also read the unassigned ones). I struggled more with the two novels from the Western side of the semester. Both of them were deep in themes, and I found the latter pretty depressing.

I am sure being a professional book reviewer would not always be fun. I'd probably be expected to read books that don't interest me or that make my blood pressure boil.

For the most part, being a book influencer is fun. (A book influencer receives free books for the purpose of reading and then posting an unbiased review.) Yes, I put a priority on that novel so I can get the review posted early enough. But the authors that I am regularly an influencer for are ones I'd read if I wasn't doing that job.

But then there's reading for research. Most of the time, one thinks that research takes place in the non-fiction section of the library. 

However, this year I read a trio of Hercule Poirot novels back to back to back. I have seen the David Suchet adaptations of all the Poirot novels (as well as the six by Peter Ustinov and the Murder On The Orient Express adaptions featuring Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh, but those aren't relevant to the topic). As I was thinking about part 2 of a mystery trilogy I'm writing, I realized there were some slight similarities to three of the Poirot stories. So I read the original to see what Agatha Christy did, noting the similarities and differences between what I'm doing and giving me food for thought.

In submitting book proposals, one item is a comparative analysis, where you mention what books are similar to yours and why yours is unique. I struggled with my first novel's proposals because mine is unique in theme. But it leaves me wondering if I should read two books that I never believed was worth my time reading: Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code and Jonathan Cahn's The Harbringer. Personally, I have no interest in either. But will reading them help me get my novel published?

Yes, I did have a different mindset on reading the Poirot trio I mentioned, but more often than not, I enjoy the reading that does more closely resemble work than fiction reading normally is.

Have you ever read fiction where it was to some degree a chore rather than just fun? How has that benefitted you?