Silicone Bitch: Should You Throw a Party in the House of Facebook?

You want a crowd on your Facebook page, but how do you manage it when you can't possibly know how your page members treat each other? Photo via Mararie's Flickr.

I've been professionally involved in online communities for over a decade, either as a blogger, moderator, participant, event planner, and so on -- you name it, I've done it. One particular travel community I used to moderate was hugely successful. Currently, I have my hand as an admin in several Facebook pages. I also enjoy Facebook personally, as I am able to find like-minded folks there involved in a few hobbies I love and causes I espouse.

My observation of some bizarre, erratic member behavior in one of these communities has recently given me food for thought.

So social media managers, riddle me this ...

Let's say you host a party for your client in a house called Facebook. It's a really, really big house; there's room for everyone ... no worries, no problem. Pass the canapés and cocktails, we're good to go.

Thousands of people show up to talk about how awesome your client is and chat about stuff that's related to your client.

Everything is flowing smoothly. User-generated content just keeps pouring in. Great!

Occasionally, a few ornery and obnoxious people show up to your party and that's ok. You're the host. You throw them out and the rest of the guests carry on.

But one day, one of your guests decides that it's no longer your client's shindig, but their own. Oh really? Wasn't I managing my client's party? Well no, you weren't.

In the house of Facebook, you can throw a party, but you have no control over what kind of relationships your guests have with each other. Let's say John Doe takes exception to Jane Doe. Maybe John doesn't want to hear what Jane has to say. Maybe John doesn't want Jane to overhear his conversations with others. You can't throw John out for not liking Jane. He has a right to privacy. The house of Facebook is cool like that.

Here's the problem, however:

Jane never really did anything to John. In fact, John doesn't even really know Jane very much at all. And instead of simply ignoring Jane, John goes one step further, by throwing her into the closet -- blocking Jane from his timeline. So she finds herself wondering why she was in the living room enjoying a cocktail with other guests and is now suddenly locked up in a closet with a bunch of other folks, hearing only one-sided conversations. John might as well have put a muzzle on Jane and she wasn't even a troll.

You see, here's the thing. John talks all the time. He holds court in your party that you have thrown in the house of Facebook at your expense. Maybe John has a lot of cool things to say about your client, but your purpose in throwing this party was not to limit conversations, but to expand them. He keeps Jane and lord knows how many others in the dark in what is supposed to be an open, joyous, community-driven, crowd-sourced event.

John is basically sabotaging your party in the house of Facebook. It's disruptive. It censors information from folks who didn't do anything to offend John in the first place.

Yet there's nothing you can do, because John has every right to not like Jane. And so you sit and watch, as an insidious, underhanded cyber bully of sorts takes over your own soirée.

Lesson to be learned: Find a better banquet house for your next party -- a forum platform where you can not only block spammers and trolls, but also where you can supervise the flow of editorial for all guests to see.

Silicone Bitch: Birth Mother Connects with Adopted Son on Facebook

News and notes about the South Florida social media and blogging scene, with a little tech thrown in for good measure. And maybe some other random events, too.

Photo via Caseywest on Flickr.

Today we depart from our usual South Florida focus for a true story about a birth mother, an adopted son and how Facebook facilitated their meeting. Without the social network, the process would have been held back by the very same protocol designed to protect adopted children. Names have been changed to protect identities.

MEET JANE

Jane was your typical teenager, a good student, full of hopes and dreams for the future. But her senior year would turn her life around with challenges most of us never think to face until adulthood.

She fell in love. She got pregnant. Her father had a heart attack. She became a caregiver.

At 18, the girl with hopes and dreams was a single mom high school dropout.

This was South Carolina, 1983. This was before shows like MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, before high schools started accommodating young mothers and their babies, before people spoke as openly as they do today about teenage sex and pregnancy.

Jane’s father eventually succumbed to a second heart attack and passed away. Her mother couldn’t really help and her baby’s father stepped out of the picture, marrying someone else soon after baby boy Shaun was born.

Struggling to stay afloat, unable to provide for her baby, she found herself with no other choice but to give up the child to adoption.

Jane’s ordeal turned out to be blessing for the adoptive parents; they had been trying to conceive for 13 years, so Shaun couldn’t have appeared at a better moment.

Little did they know they’d all be blessed again nearly three decades later.

THE YEARS APART

Jane would eventually move on with her life. She got her GED, graduated from the University of South Carolina and married a wonderful man who already had children.

The thought of Shaun was always in Jane’s heart though she knew little about him. “My child was an abstract thought to me,” Jane said during a phone interview. “I knew his adopted parents were great people, but that’s as close as I got.”

Jane always kept her records up to date with the adoption agency, just in case Shaun ever wanted to find her; however, there was nothing she could do to contact him. Adoption agencies enforce a strict protocol to protect children, even when they’re all grown up.

Reunions don’t always guarantee happy endings. Some adoptees have contacted their birth parents, only to be derided and ostracized in what could only be a painful emotional experience.

But even with the best of intentions, when the parent and child express a mutual desire to meet, it could still takes months, if not longer, to make that happen.

REUNITED ON FACEBOOK

Last year, Shaun turned 26 and experienced some chest pains, which prompted him to unseal his birth records and learn more about his blood family’s medical history.

He always knew he was an adopted child and his parents were very supportive. “I was very lucky. My parents told me: ‘whenever you want to meet your birth parents, we’re right behind you,’ ” Shaun explained over the phone.

Shaun contacted the adoption agency and soon thereafter exchanged some letters with Jane through proxy mailing addresses. The letters were censored; any information revealing potential contact data was blacked out, FBI style.

When it was becoming clear that they were getting along via correspondence and that were was nothing but love and support for Shaun in his desire to get to know his birth mother, Jane made a bold move: she friend requested him on Facebook, bypassing the adoption agency restrictions.

Shaun had mentioned his martial arts instructor in one of his letters. The former had three friends on Facebook with the same name as Shaun’s. Even though Jane had never laid eyes on Shaun, she instantly recognized his Facebook profile photo. He looked a lot like her, but was truly the spitting image of his birth father.

Shaun didn’t hesitate to friend her back.

Within two weeks, they met in person.

“It was very shocking,” Shaun explained, “But at the same time, I also had people who would help me get through it. Jane and I clicked from day one and we instantly jumped into a relationship. We ‘get’ each other.”

Jane’s life changed as well. The mother and son, who live only six hours apart between South Carolina and Virginia, meet regularly.

Jane did get a verbal scolding from the adoption agency, but had she stuck by the rules, their initial face-to-face contact may have dragged out far longer than they were willing to wait.

Jane and Shaun remain active on Facebook, posting on each other’s walls and sharing photos. Facebook keeps them connected socially.

HAPPY ENDING

This story doesn’t just end happily for the reunited mother and son. Even though Jane’s husband lost his own son in 2006, the connection is a blessing. “Shaun’s presence has helped heal his heart,” Jane said. “My husband loves Shaun.”

“I never had any other children,” Jane continued. “But we spend time together now and it has changed my life completely. I’m close to his adoptive parents. They’re wonderful. And he’s my mom’s only grandchild. Let’s just say Shaun had a really good Christmas last year.”