Tasha Harrison

Facebook have decided to take over the world. They watched Google do it and now they want a piece. They also watched Twitter rise from nothing and they want to reclaim their dominance.  If you are a Facebook user I’m sure you’ve noticed how many things have changed over the past year. It feels like everytime you get the hang of where everything is you have to learn it all over again.

Constantly Changing

In the more recent change I couldn’t find the pages I am a fan of. I could find groups and events, but I was having to search for each page separately. Eventually I found a list in my actual profile, under Info. How could Facebook have forgotten to make it easy for users to find pages?

Pages are essentially the way that Facebook could separate an ordinary user’s profile from a business or celebrity profile. This was great for businesses, because they now had much of the functionality of a group, but with their own profile. People became a ‘fan’, which enabled them to show their appreciation for a brand, while at the same time feeling like they belonged to the page.

I Don’t Want to Just ‘Like’ My Favourite Brands

In the most recent changes you no longer ‘Become a Fan’ of a page, but you ‘Like’ the page. Just as you ‘Like’ it when someone posts a picture of a cat standing on its hind legs. The sense of belonging is lost. Functionality is the same, syntax has ruined the effect.

These changes have made Facebook Pages, potentially a lot less effective. It makes it more difficult to give the impression of forming a longterm relationship with a brand. A user will still see updates in their news items, but I think they will be less inclined to contribute to the page, adding comments, photos and even video. ‘Like’ is a kind of take or leave it word, it has lost the emotion of ‘Fan’, it has ruined Facebook Pages.

Further reading:
Facebook Limits Fan Pages and Introduces Community Pages
Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?

Just like with Titles, search engines use your URL to identify what your site is about. It is, therefore, extremely important that your keywords are included in the URL.

Using the example keyphrase ‘memory stick’, below is an example of how a site is listed on the first page on Google. Note the repetition of keywords and how Google highlights them in the URL.

This is how the page is optimised:

Note how the keyphrase ‘Memory Stick’ is repeated not only in Title and URL, but also in the main page title, called the H1 tag.

Royal Shakespeare Company Perform Romeo and Juliet on Twitter

The play started on Saturday, has a cast of six and will take place over the next five weeks. Being the first project of its kind, this is a tremendously exciting foray into social media for theatre.

The play is shaping up to be more of a soap opera as we are given an insight into each of the characters. We watch Juliet and her sister, Jess_Nurse, chat to each other about their dead mother, Juliet decrying, “It annoys me that i dont know as much about mum as you do I wish i could have got to know her better “.

We see Tybalt’s anger and hatred of the Montague’s, “Before I go just one more happy thought for the day – MONTAGUE SCUM!”

They’ve introduced a new character, Jago, who has his own Tumblr page. A classmate of Juliet, I suspect that he will become our chorus/commentator as events unfold.

We’ve also had a tour of Juliet’s bedroom, via a Youtube video:

As I’ve watched this unravel over the last couple of days I’m not sure that Shakepeare was the best choice for the first Twitter play. I was initially excited by the concept, but by taking such a well known story I’m more intrigued by how they’re going to do it, rather than what is going to happen. I already know the characters and they are all acting as expected.

There is also no detection of Shakespeare at all and out of all his plays, Romeo and Juliet is by far the most widely interpreted into other mediums.

Bring on the first play written just for Twitter!

You can follow the play via this Twitter list:
http://twitter.com/tashaharrison/r-and-j

A couple of other sources on the play:
Romeo and Juliet get Twitter Treatment
The Royal Shakespeare Company performs Romeo and Juliet via Twitter