Second Life Bloggers, Want More Pageviews? Put a Facebook "Like" Widget on Your Second Life Blog Posts! (UPDATED)

New World Notes' pageviews have increased by about 25% recently, and no, not just because of this post. They started substantially increasing a few weeks ago when I began adding a Facebook "Like" button to selected posts. I was skeptical it would make much difference, but even when a post is Liked by a handful of readers, it translates into hundreds of extra pageviews. Why? Because the way Facebook works. When you "Like" something, by default, all your (say) 500 friends see the link that you Liked in their notification stream. And if even just 5 of them click that link, and Like it too, all of their thousands of friends see that Liked link too, and then they're more likely to Like it. And so on. The controversy around Second Life content on Facebook aside for a moment, I can personally affirm it works, certainly in this context.

If you want to try it on your own blog, go here to get the Facebook Like widget. And if you'd like to, I'd like it if you, like, Liked this post about Liking posts too.

UPDATE, 12:20PM: Some readers seem skeptical adding a Like button boosts pageviews, so I've added a screencap of NWN pageviews since adding Likes after the break:

This is a typical screengrab for my pageviews today. At any given time, about a fourth of the pageview referrers are coming from Facebook:

Comments

[Laetizia 'Tish' Coronet]

Did I just read an explanation of how Facebook works? Not written for my 75 year old mother?

Now where's that facepalm gesture...

[Ann Otoole InSL]

if facebook will pay then me i'll consider it.

[Tonoplay Friends]

Facebook don't pay for you have a like button on your page. The fact is that is a help for bring traffic to your blog.
People who have facebook account, will press your like button, and your page will appear in her facebook, for every friend knows what she likes in internet. Your link goes to their page and their friends can open this link and come to your site.
Facebook is the most important social network in the world. It's the biggest. All the world is there. There are exception as I see. hahah

[Tonoplay Friends]

Example, if you have FUN PAGE in facebook, you do a post on your blog that is connected to your fun page, people LIKE this button, automatically they will receive in their timeline your next posts.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I'm with Ann on this one. I will contribute content and value to Facebook when I'm properly compensated for my work by Facebook.

TANSTAAFL.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Remember, everyone, that Hamlet consults for a company that uses Facebook for game logins, thereby deriving indirect financial benefit from Facebook's success and he knows it.

Promote Facebook, maybe get more consulting gigs with companies wanting to use Facebook?

[WTF srsly?]

lol no offense but the people posting that facebook should pay them....

Who are you? Justin Beiber?

Dude facebook does not care about you that much.
Be realistic and please restrain your ego.

[Foneco Zuzu]

What is facebook?
Seriously, i can only blog or surf at work, cause at home im in Sl all time, and my comapny firewall does not allow facebook (as well as second life direct links).
So why any thinks facebook is good???
Not me that work for more then 10h a day and only have 3 to spare at home, and those to Sl all!

[Ciaran Laval]

@ WTF Srsly I don't think you quite understand how Facebook works.

I'm not a fan of the Facebook like button, I don't like how it works in terms of trying to gather information whilst people haven't clicked it, so for that reason alone I wouldn't implement it but yeah, it could well get more views on blogs.

[WTF srsly?]

I quite do understand the way facebook works...
I am just astounded that some peoples egos could get all... pft make them pay me

I was being sarcastic.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sarcastic

[Psion]

Hmmm ... no thank you. Facebook has already demonstrated more than enough times that it has precious little regard for its customer's rights and privacy.

Facebook will never see anything from me except as satire, and any social needs that can't be fulfilled by blogging, Buzz, Twitter, Second Life, and the like will be met with Diaspora*

https://joindiaspora.com/

[Hamlet Au]

CronoCloud, I also make revenue from Google AdSense. Do you think that's why I recommend people use Google as their search engine, too? Every significant Internet company -- quite literally, just about every single one -- has a Facebook promotion and integration strategy.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Facebook is a platform that profits from the publication of content without paying for it. This has enabled it to become the world's largest repository of vapid, self-indulgent pablum.

To be sure, the entire Internet has an insatiable appetite for content. It also has a visceral aversion to paying for it.

I can and do generate content for free -- for people and sites that I like. For sites I'm indifferent to, well, let's hammer out my royalties and advance first, thanks.

And if the sites don't like it, they can put up some video of a cat playing a piano. Awww, isn't that PRECIOUS?

[Hamlet Au]

Actually, Facebook is one of the main places where YouTube videos are now viewed. (I.E. cats!) For a long time, Google resisted allowing FB users to embed YouTube videos in Facebook, but they finally acquiesced. There were too many users at stake for Google to ignore Facebook. Yes, Google.

[GoSpeed Racer]

"Facebook is a platform that profits from the publication of content without paying for it. This has enabled it to become the world's largest repository of vapid, self-indulgent pablum."

Replace Facebook with Second Life for a laugh.

[Ciaran Laval]

@WTF srsly It's not egos, it's where would Facebook be if people didn't feed it, that's what people are getting at.

[WTF srsly?]

@Ciaran How dare they use something that works so well? Silly silly people. Down with the system!

XD

[Ciaran Laval]

@ WTF srsly, are you deliberately missing the point? Do you really know how Facebook works? Here's a clue, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

[WTF srsly?]

Unless you win a coupon for a free pizza

[Ezra]

Pageviews are one thing, a view funneled into something of value is another. For you I'd guess that'd be increased ad clicks, book sales, RSS subscriptions, news tips, so on and so forth.

How much is the Like button is helping you in an actual meaningful metric?

[Tateru Nino]

Hamlet's right that it results in more eyeballs, I added a Like button to my blog and comic - but what *really* made a difference was adding appropriate open-graph to each page as well.

So, yes. I'm no fan of Facebook, but it *does* have this effect - though that effect is likely to become a bit blunted if a lot of SL bloggers were to start using it.

[Tateru Nino]

Oh, I'll point out that a portion of the increased traffic is actually Facebook itself scanning for open-graph data, and not an actual human reader.

Who the heck has five *hundred* friends, anyway? How would you even keep up close relations with that many people?

[Alisha]

I don't know. Every time you mention facebook, you don't get my pageview for weeks...

[Pathfinder]

If you are using a service and not paying a dime for it, you're not a customer. You're part of the product.

[Tateru Nino]

@Pathfinder I could not have said that better, though I have certainly tried on a number of occasions.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Hamlet, you use AdSense, but you probably make more money via the Facebook related consulting gig.

Also you don't incessantly insist that SL should integrate Orkut with SL, or Google Wave with SL, or switch their Notification system to Gmail, or use Google Chat for the IM system, or integrate Google Calendar with events, or use Google Chrome for the SL's internal browser, or make the map be like Google Earth, or integrate and build in Picasa into SL, turn SL groups into Google Groups, integrate Blogger into SL..etc.

However, you just can't seem to stop talking about Facebook. which is utterly inferior to Google's array of products/features. Orkut was just ahead of it's time...and hey! It's popular with Brazilians, just like SL. :-) As I've said before, you're a sucker for buzzwords and marketroid speak living out there in the tech journalist bubble and you've drunk the facebook kool-aid, just as you did with Blue Mars.

You also need to spend more time in-world and talk with people who aren't oldbies like we who post here, or other tech journalists, tech pundits, founders of new startups who used to be LL employees, etc.

[Hamlet Au]

"you probably make more money via the Facebook related consulting gig"

So you're implying that I'm advocating Facebook for financial reasons? Even though I don't work for Facebook, make no money directly from Facebook, and as I said, pretty much every Internet company -- including Linden Lab and Google -- has a Facebook integration and marketing plan? Very interesting theory.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

It's a "hypothesis" not a "theory.

People do things in RL if they know they'll receive indirect benefit from it all the time Hamlet, we know this.

Sure a lot of companies have a facebook page..but that is NOT the same as the "integration" you've been promoting, akin to using facebook for logins and authentication and replacing in-world communication tools with Facebook.

If I wanted to learn more about second life and what goes on within it...I would go here first:

http://www.secondlife.com

not here:

http://www.facebook.com/secondlife

Or about IBM Watson, I wouldn't go here:

http://www.facebook.com/ibmwatson

I'd go directly to the source at IBM own's Watson website.

A company that has a good site of it's own doesn't need facebook, it's redundant, it adds no real use or value other than allowing the masses to "like" you. that's all they can do that they can't do at their own website.

But lets get back somewhat to the topic at hand. Bloggers What do SL bloggers do? They write and take pictures. So wouldn't integrating Blogger and Picasa tools with SL make much more sense than Facebook? Heck, Wordpress and Flickr integration would make more sense than Facebook.

Actual SL users don't use Facebook to communicate with each other, they use the in-world tools and Plurk, Twitter, Gmail, Google Chat, Google Calendar and Blogs.

Facebook is superficial networking...SL's in-world socializing is MUCH more in-depth. Do you communicate as much or as in depth with your Facebook friends as you do your SL contacts or groups? There are groups in SL that basically have continuous group chat almost 24/7. I've got group chat logs megabytes in size. My own personal input into local chat is also megabytes in size.

Facebook is twitter with pictures and addictive games, that's it.

http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/why-virtual-worlds-like-second-life-have-more-value-then-twitter-facebook

[ColeMarie Soleil]

I would not say that actual SL users do not use Facebook to communicate with each other. I know many creators, players, artists and casual gamers even who like to use Facebook as their main way of keeping updated in general with the users they are interested in following.

It is a one stop place where they can easily see what is newsiest if they wish, or check out what their friends have been up to in and out of the web. It is a place also where it is easy to spread and share information. It is easy to see what people are sharing and why. It is a very simple way to easily keep updated without having to wade through a bunch of one or two line lazy pings from plurk or twitter where you have a bunch of non decript links that you have to guess if you are going to be interested in or not. It is interesting how much more you can learn in general about the people you wish to easily and on your own time.

SL group chats is a matter of the group you are involved in and the rules involved. Many in world group chats do not even allow for group members to even start chats.

Which SL groups have continous group chats? Id be interested in a list. I appreciate your point of view but I would say that it is incorrect.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Fashion Emergency, and Independent State of Caledon are pretty active day and night, though they do have their quiet times. Fashion Consolidated Cafe and Steampunks of New Babbage are also very active.

I suspect some of the Roleplay, breedable pet, and Freebie groups are even more active.

[Hamlet Au]

"People do things in RL if they know they'll receive indirect benefit from it all the time Hamlet, we know this."

Maybe so, Ms. Creeggan, but it's not civil to make such an assertion without evidence, nor without even considering in good faith the reasons I actually gave, nor without even fully reading what I actually wrote. You're free to air such assertions on other blogs that have different standards of civility, however.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Hamlet, is it possible you happened to start publishing articles that garnered more interest just after adding the like buttons?

I should allow myself to become assimilated by the borg, do ad sense, fb buttons, etc. write articles that piss people off, and profit instead of commenting on blogs and forums.

[A.M. Oderngrl]

Wow! So that explains why it takes remarkably longer to just scroll thru the front page of NWN without even opening any of the stories, as I watch the Facebook "Like" counts update for each story? NWN never used to crash on opening before. Thanks for the explanation.

[Hamlet Au]

Hi AM, what kind of browser are you using? I notice my blog having slow load issues on occasion (but well before the FB buttons.)

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Well it was slow tonight (an hour ago) but that was obviously due to the usual monday early oh dark thirty internet techs doing stuff taking down swaths of the internet and slowing stuff down. Or evil people from various places (Iran/China) running cyberwar "activities". Or, like around here, it is raining so the roadrunner equipment is wet because the thatched roof over the routers is in disrepair.

Hard to say what causes slowdowns when your page has code dependencies all over the internet. You can look at the browser status as it is loading to see what is taking a long time.