{"id":399,"date":"2008-01-18T16:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgillin.com\/2008\/01\/my-facebook-foul-up.html"},"modified":"2008-01-18T16:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T23:45:00","slug":"my-facebook-foul-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/my-facebook-foul-up\/","title":{"rendered":"My Facebook foul-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take a look at the image below. <\/span>Is this the type of photo you\u2019d want to put beside a serious business inquiry? <\/span>I wouldn’t. <\/span>But I did. <\/p>\n

It was an embarrassing experience, and perhaps my mistake can serve as a lesson for anyone who\u2019s considering using social networks to transact business.<\/p>\n

Last week was the first time I’ve used Facebook to direct a professional inquiry to a group of my friends. <\/span>I was looking for some active Facebook users to profile in a book I\u2019m writing, so it seemed a natural place to find them. I used a third-party application called FunWall, which is made by Slide<\/a>. <\/span>It looked straightforward enough: type the question, post it and then e-mail a notification to a list of your friends.<\/p>\n

So I posted my question and send an invitation to everyone on my friends list, some 225 people. <\/span>A couple of hours later, my wife sent me an instant message questioning the appropriateness of the image on my FunWall. <\/span>“What image?” <\/span>I said. <\/span>I quickly logged on to Facebook and found my question next to the item below. <\/span>There were already a couple of e-mails from friends questioning my good taste. <\/span>I scrambled to delete the original message, which wasn\u2019t all that intuitive, and to post an apology. <\/span>I received a couple of more snickering responses from my associates, but have no idea how many people saw the offensive photo and thought I was serious.<\/p>\n

As far as I can tell, the error occurred when I clicked the button to post my question, I inadvertently clicked the option just below it, which sent a postcard to accompany the question. <\/span>For some unfathomable reason, the default postcard was the image below. I didn’t bother to check the post after I submitted it, and would probably not have even known of my error for hours unless my wife had pointed it out.<\/p>\n

So shame on me for not double-checking my work. <\/span>And shame on Slide for making it so easy for even an experienced user to make such a dumb mistake. If there are lessons, it\u2019s that you should beware of the new breed of third-party apps that Facebook and other sites are accepting. And use that preview feature! You don\u2019t want your best intentions undermined by a stupid user interface.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll just go crawl back in my hole now\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Take a look at the image below. Is this the type of photo you\u2019d want to put beside a serious business inquiry? I wouldn’t. But I did. It was an embarrassing experience, and perhaps my mistake can serve as a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[12,29],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-6r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}