So here you are this morning, you've either just starting into that morning cup of joe, or you're waiting for it finish brewing. Either way, the first thing you're doing—after deleting the 5-10 worthless emails from Amazon, et al.—is stopping by TCB. Now, if you're still waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, my apologies because the Facebook Connect prompt probably was too much.
So what is it? Well, it's either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. Now, if the world already knows that your a baseball geek and you read, comment, and post content at TCB, it's a good thing. Why? Because it allows you to better promote the site you know, love, and are a valued community member of by either sharing your wit, genius, and/or polarized emotional reaction to something related to the Astros to your Facebook friends. Also, it allows for TCB to do some of that growing stuff, which is always so important to a group denizens, like yourselves, and your overlords, us. community like ours.
On the other hand, if you're like me, your closest friends are well aware of the fact that you devote an entirely inordinate amount of time to writing, thinking, and engaging about all things Astro, but you try to minimize your exposure. The people I work with don't know that I'm a editor here. Nor did the people I went to school with, for the most part. My reasons for this are personal, but can be basically summed to a desire to not be constantly hounded/jeered about Astros related news. Admittedly, I don't even use Facebook all that often any more. Thus, I wasn't overly thrilled, from a personal standpoint, with the new Facebook Connect function.
Then I took an hour or so to look at all the features and think about their intended consequences. After my mulling, I was well pleased. Here's what this does for all of us:
- Allows for one less barrier to entry into the world of SBN. If you have a Facebook account, you can register an account at TCB and jump into the fray of comments/posting with minimal effort.
- Allows for all of our insight, passion, and humor about our beloved hometown nine to gain a wider audience. For better or worse, you can flood, if you so chose, your friends new feeds with posts and fan shots—both yours and ours. Wider audiences mean smarter/more engaged fans. That leads to people seeing through the b/s of organizational veneers and fallacious, common place assumptions about both the game of baseball and the Houston Astros.
- Greater exposure will also foster diversity of opinions. We live in a country that prizes the market place of ideas and TCB should be no different. Fresh voices/view points are hopefully a direct result of this endeavor.
- Facebook Connect is also sure to earn you the respect and admiration of all when the realize how insanely knowledgeable you are about the Astros. Everyone loves street cred.