Have you ever wondered why some people find it necessary to be nasty, intrusive, or just plain backstabbing? They seem to feel justified in getting into your business. It is like they are afraid of fair competition or something. Well, that is just what happened to me this week. We had grown our FaceBook friends to over 2450 people and had over 1450 people following Pampered Palette page. Out of the blue last Monday, FaceBook turned off my account (disabled it with no reason given). I know some people would not tell that little tidbit but I really do not care nor do I have anything to hide so I will publicly discuss it. I had no idea why they account was disabled when I received their email so I shot an email to the powers to be at FaceBook. You know, it took FaceBook over a week to respond to my message and their response kind of surprised me. As a person and a businessman, I always operate in everything that I do with respect to all individuals. I am not harsh with people (however, do not get on my bad side....lol.), I do not slam people, point fingers or call names. I just try to be rah rah, uplifting, and responsive to encourage existing painters and painters that would like to try painting for the first time to pick up a brush and just paint something. I do not care what they paint, just paint something. So what happened?
Well, FaceBook finally responded yesterday to tell me that they had received a complaint about me concerning what they called harassing behavior (translated, I requested friends too fast or something). So the complaint centered around me requesting people to be friends or fans too fast. Well isn't that a crock? I thought that was the whole purpose of FaceBook to find friends to build your social network. I evidently became too RAH RAH, grew too fast, and my take on the whole subject is that it appears I have ruffled the feathers of some of our competition. I now know that competitors can lodge a complaint, get your account disabled and their is absolutely nothing you can do about it. In fact, FaceBook will not even tell you who complained, what the complaints was or any other information besides a general "your account has been disabled". Oh, they do tell you their decision is FINAL!
So in response to the whole situation, this week we launched the Decorative Arts and Ceramics social network which actually provides us more functionality than FaceBook. In a matter of days we have grown the site to about 135 people with more people joining everyday. So we are on our way to BIG things. The good part about the DAC Artists network is that it is FREE to all artists. I do not care what you paint or what field you are in, all artists are welcome. We can even set up groups for local decorative painting associations so they can post their own information, events, news, etc. Also, each individual that joins can establish their own page to promote their business, post pictures, provide news, or whatever. It is very flexible. And the good part? FaceBook cannot shut it down. As the site grows, I can expand the storage capacity and increase our bandwidth (that part will cost some money but not a lot, which I fund). So I am very pleased with the progress thus far.
As of this morning, we have members in Canada, US, Taiwan, Australia, Argentina, and a few others that are posting their own pictures on their personal/business pages. The system picks up those pictures and runs a slide show on the main DAC page. We have some great art pictures running through the slide show with about 95 pictures randomly being displayed. Now we are working on providing content so that the site becomes, not only informative but educational. In fact, Georgia Dawbon has already posted 3 videos. Way to go Georgia.
Finally, I would like to thank our very supportive friends at CAG (Ceramic Artist Guild) who have supported me as their Ambassador to Decorative Painting/SDP as well as the establishment of the new DAC Artist site 200%. What a great group of people. If you have not visited their website, go over to http://www.ceramicartistguild.com/ and take a look.
As you can see there is never a dull moment in the lives of Pampered Palette or myself. So until the next post, HAPPY PAINTING!!!!!!! And do not get too many friends as the unsocial network FACEBOOK will not like that.......................hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
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