Klingons
on Facebook
by Sqo'tty
On a recent trip to Oregon to visit family and friends, and to attend
OryCon, I had a chat with my eldest nephew about Facebook. After
returning to the frozen hinterlands of the upper Midwest, I found that
if I wanted to see pictures from the recent production of “A Klingon
Christmas Karol”, I would have to become a Facebook member. Okay, what
the heck.
Facebook, for those who are not in the know, is a social networking
environment. There are many of these around the net, including Myspace,
classmates.com, and tribe.net, just to name a few. I am going
to focus on Facebook in this article. Maybe in the future I’ll tackle
some of the others.
Social networks are designed to keep networks of friends up to date on
each in a quick and easy fashion. Facebook has numerous ways of doing
this, including messaging, “walls”, groups, and forums. And there are a
lot of groups and forums.
A “wall” is used as a fast and easy means to leave a quick update on
what you are up to. Groups also have a “wall” feature. People can then
leave comments on these “wall” messages that are also visible to anyone
who can receive these “wall” messages.
There is an events calendar feature that can be used to post
information about what’s coming up in the future, like conventions,
group events (like those paintball battles that the IKV Bayou Serpent
is famous for). This makes for a handy tool to keep members up to date
on what events are coming up.
Groups can be set up in several different ways, from completely public,
private, or hidden. Public means anyone can join and see what’s in the
group. Private is invitation only; and only group members can see
content (photos, messages, etc.) but anyone can see the group profile;
hidden means only members can see it and it is not revealed by
searching.
The Facebook photo albums are also a very cool tool in that it includes
a feature to identify people in the picture, although I think they have
to be Facebook members to be able to have this feature work. A good
example of this is on the Comedia Beauregard’s photo album from “A
Klingon Christmas Karol.” I find this to be a cool feature as a person
loading up a photo, especially one with lots of people in it, can, with
a few clicks of the mouse, set tags to identify “who’s who” on a
picture by moving the mouse over the photo ... these tags are otherwise
not visible.
These are just some of the tools Facebook includes. You can also upload
videos as well, although I have not tested that out as of this writing.
Currently there is a small but growing KAG presence on Facebook. There
is a main KAG group as well as a couple of quadrants and a couple of
ships.
Facebook is a good way to help keep people informed and may prove to be
a useful recruitment tool for people already on Facebook. It should not
be used to replace websites, or yahoo groups and other list servers for
general ship/quadrant/fleet communications, but it may make a good
supplement for promoting your ship (or other KAG entity) to the better
glory of the Klingon Empire and find new members.
- Lt. Cmdr. Sqo’tty
sutai-MacKlingon
E-Corps Commander
[email protected]
