Social information processing

Which Facebooker Are You Dealing With?

NO! This is not one of those quizzes you always come across on your news feed.This is the truth, the whole truth and er, just the truth!

I’ve been on Facebook for 4 years now and have witnessed a sack-load of changes made in the layout, the different services etc. One thing that has not changed,however, is the people.

Open Letter to "DAILY NEWS" newspaper

How the hell do you take someone’s personal facebook status, with comments from his friends to publish on your newspaper and call the ethics behind it “debatable”.  I have always questioned the standard of journalism in The Gambia, but this is way below anything I ever imagined our newspapers of being capable of.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a facebook status on my PERSONAL WALL questioning the 4G promotion being done by one of our GSM providers. IT WAS NOT MEANT FOR PUBLICATION! I write and I publish. I help manage one of the most vibrant literary websites currently available (if not the only one) to Gambians and if I wanted publication on the topic, I would have gone ahead and done it MYSELF.  I write essays for Balafong.com and sometimes copy for publication on the Standard Newspaper and would have used that avenue if I wanted my PERSONAL views which were to be shared with my FRIENDS only, to be seen by the entire Gambian populace.

My Balafong First

I did not allow my frustrations to get me down last night when the internet started playing games an hour into the Launch of balafong.com. It was for me a time to be happy; for hardwork, dedication,love and more. I spent an extra thirty minutes in the comfort of my bedroom thinking of the road that had brought us here.

All of this still feels strange to me. For years now, facebook has been my literary world. On Zuckerberg's supposed creation, i have blogged, bugged and hugged with little or know sign of relenting. There have been times when i have feared my constant status updates and notes have annoyed quite a few but I always tried to make people understand that facebook was for me a tool; to communicate, to express myself and most importantly, to network with like-minded people.

balafong.com is a testimony of my faith and a fruit of such networking. I tried not to get overly emotional last night but i must say, there is definitely some truth in fate.

The Launch

We launched balafong last night, and it was quite an amazing experience. My body still feels sore from all the work this weekend, as if I spent the whole weekend playing pose yu ndawe (yes, for all you people who believe otherwise: sitting behind a computer for hours configuring a server is an exhausting occupation, and nowhere near as easy as it looks :)).

Whatever hard work it took though it was worth it: I just woke up and reached for my phone, and there were 30 posts waiting, about everything from fashion to poetry, and a dozen comments from different people. When I started working on the site my driving vision was one of waking every morning, and over my cup of coffee getting access to the latest and best Gambian writing online, as well as being able to participate in a conversation about thsi writing. So to see this vision become reality now is very heartening - I imagine this is what a parent feels like when their child does good in an exam at school.