12 lessions I learned from my crazy, Christmas, facebook idea

The day before yesterday, I got this wacky idea. It’s Christmas time. I want to spread the joy. What if I wrote on the wall’s of all my friends on facebook. What if I wished every one a merry Christmas… individually, not just with a status update?

I wanted to make that happen. So last night around 1:00 am, I began. I currently have 323 friends on facebook, so I knew it would take some time. It took longer than I assumed in the beginning, but along the way I learned some valuable lessons about people, interacting, and caring.

1. Re-seeing friends I don’t often connect with is important.

This was the first thing I noticed. I have many friends on facebook who I never connect with. They’re there, and at some point I might have connected with them more often, but lately I hadn’t. It’s a good reminder to go through and visit each of them. Also, it gives a real feel for the social landscape (cool word, huh?). I’d rather keep up with my friends than the news.

2. Those who give get.

Interesting thing about facebook – it works like real life. The more someone connects with others, the more others connect with that someone. The friends I connect with often on facebook are the friends who update most, especially those who comment on my stuff the most.

3. Facebook needs to speed up loading time.

It could have saved me a lot of effort. Right now, everyone who’s using facebook is going to continue using facebook even if it doesn’t speed up. That’s the power of being the monopoly. But… but it’s also the curse. Facebook could get too big to care, and when that happens, enter #2: soon no one will care about facebook in return.

4. It starts to get difficult to care about that many people.

It’s easy for me to sit on the side, watching A-listers interact with a huge amount of people, and say everyone needs to interact more. When it gets down to it, even with the power of facebook and the Internet at work, caring is still difficult, particularly when the numbers get upped. That’s why caring will always matter.

5.Remember: every, single one on the other side is a person.

Following closely from #4, it’s easy to forget what this is all about. It’s easy to get into automatic mode and forget that I’m dealing with real people on the other side. It’s easy to forget this around #122… or #211. And it’s easy to start thinking of people as numbers (like I just demonstrated). Stay focused, or caring quickly will become just another grind.

6. For some reason, I started having this odd fear that I’d write, “marry Christmas” instead of, “merry Christmas.”

Little off topic, but it’s true. As far as I know, I didn’t make this mistake. I have in the past, though, so perhaps that’s why I doubted myself. (I corrected my problem as you’ll see in #10, but if I messed yours up, let me know. I’ll make it up to you.)

7. Doing it in the middle of the night helped.

I didn’t plan for this. If I had planned, I probably wouldn’t have done it in the middle of the night (tiredness sets in quickly). But thankfully nighttime helped because not many people were on. That meant I wasn’t getting many replies back while I was doing it, which meant I could focus easier.

8. I once caught myself writing, “Mrs. Haley,” when I should have been writing, “Mr. Haley.”

Oops. Not cool. I actually posted this one but caught it quick enough to deleat it seconds later. Be extra careful about the details when caring. Details matter, which reminds me…

9. Names matter.

Dale Carnegie said a person’s name is to that person the most beautiful word in any language. I’ve tried to do something about that statement. Somehow including the name makes the message so much more personal. I haven’t heard back from anyone about it (and probably won’t), but I think including the name ups the impact at least by a power of two. It would for me.

10. Automation is good for the process.

Of course, this is a balance. If you automate too much, you end up looking like a machine, which ruins caring. But in the areas that only relate only to the process and not the result, take some effort up front to streamline them. It’ll pay off in the long-run. For example, I used my friend list and the “Back” button to navigate quicker than mouse movements, and I starting just copying and pasting whenever I needed the phrase, “Merry Christmas.”

11. Getting boring is a sin – shake things up.

Back from automating, doing something unusual goes a long way, I think. Instead of just writing, “Merry Christmas, [insert person’s name],” over and over again, I tried to throw in a brief note on some of the messages. Maybe relating to that person’s status, maybe saying we should hang out more – something, anything to break up the somewhat boring, “Merry Christmas.”

12. Facebook is too easy and this is too important to pass up.

I need to do stuff like this way, way more. It takes a couple seconds, but it could totally rock someone’s life. Does that sound too ambitious? I think it does sound ambitious, but I don’t think it’s far from the truth. I don’t know that many of my friends who’ve done anything similar to me. That’s not a complaint. I’m just saying that the people who do this will stand out as people who care… even just a little more than everyone else. I for one need all the help I can get in showing that I care.

So that’s what I learned. I didn’t finish last night, so I guess you can guess what I’ll be doing this Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas!

Serving Suggestions:

(1) Do you dare? Try it out. Spend a couple hours commenting on all your friends’ walls on facebook.

(2) Let me know how it goes. What’s the response like? Did you learn anything? Also, have you done anything like this in the past? How’d it go?