Facebook is the worst aspect of the internet since Al Gore invented it. I thoroughly dislike the site because of its conformity, restrictions and unintelligible set of instructions to do anything beyond a basic profile. Heck AOL groups was better than that 15 years ago, and I have been desperately waiting for GOOGLE to come up with a Facebook killer. But I suspect I missed the lancha.
I now have 1500 Facebook "friends". The local mayor has 4400. That makes Catemaco Noticias the second most popular destination for anything related to Catemaco on the Facebook internet. I accumulated maybe a quarter of these "friends" by fishing for Catemaco residents or natives. But from there it snowballed with "friend" applications pouring in.
Until a few months ago it was very difficult to list Catemaco as a place of origin or residence, that's why the following figures are suspect. Of my 1500 "friends" about 275 list Catemaco as their hometown, another 275+/- list Catemaco as their residence. Obviously there is an overlap, and I estimate that perhaps a maximum of 500 have anything to do with Catemaco. And in true Facebook stupidity the 99 or more percent Spanish speakers whose home or residence is Catemaco, get to read about their town on a Wikipedia English version.
Curiously the mayor's 4400 friends show about the same distribution. And that is noteworthy because it demonstrates the reinforcement that his page gets from the political effort that his PRI party is making to dominate the political aspect of Facebook in preparation for the next Mexican presidential election.
Most of my "friends" seem to have the IQ of one of the monkeys on the islands of Catemaco, and I spend considerable time clicking on the little X next to their names to have them disappear from my Facebook "news wall", so that I don`t have to read their drivel. But surprisingly there are many with informed commentary and some gorgeous photos. And I actually dug up some old pals and made a handful of new acquantainces.
My objective is for my 1500 "friends" to read my drivel, not the other way around. And that has been successful. Sites that I have linked to on www.catemaco.info have shown considerable increase in readership.
My Facebook sites:
Catemaco Noticias - original, locked, discontinued
Catemaco Agenda - new, open (successor to Don Gringo Notas because it allows comments that I can gleefully delete if they come from river rats.)
Catemaco Tourism - reserved for the nice things of Catemaco
Catemaco Tourism - reserved for the nice things of Catemaco
And yes I have a personal Facebook page, but that is so locked and private, that even I have a hard time entering it.
