Some quick notes to get out of the way.

Prepping
The Prep Post button seems to be a crowd pleaser, I've gotten some great feedback on it and I'm working to make it a bit more adaptive for some of the websites out there that don't want to work with it. Gawker media, Washington Post, etc.. BUT it is a PREP tool. It merely auto populates the post fields for you. Please edit your posts properly. If you see garbage characters, remove them. If you see the name of the website you've linked to in the title, remove it. We don't need it, it's tacky. If your quote is incomplete, finish it off or trim it. You know, the little things to ensure that the site doesn't look like it's being run by a bunch of bots... Because that would be silly, and in no way are you the only human on this site, which is really just a facade for some sort of strange social experiment. I don't even know why you keep bringing it up.

Comments
I think I forgot to mention it, but control+enter in most comment boxes should auto submit your comment/message. I added that some time ago and forgot about it. I think?

Subscriptions
We've lost a couple of subscribers in the past couple of months. We're not in dangerous red territory yet, but we're getting there. So don't be surprised if you see me pushing the subscriptions via advertising this coming year. Just a reminder that the subscriptions go back as far as the first iteration of SE when Matt owned it, for a brief time it was implemented by Marck, as well. It's nothing out of the ordinary. In this case, the purpose behind subscriptions as implemented as long as I own the site will be to ensure a level of self sufficiency and stability for the site in the form of a part time admin. Whether it's me or someone that I hire to do the job if one of my projects takes me away from being available. It's my opinion that one of the major downfalls of the previous site was that it was running on autopilot for far too long. As owner of the site, I consider it my responsibility to ensure that never happens again and subscriptions are one of the methods I will be utilizing to do so. If you are already a subscriber, thank you! I probably don't say that enough. Thank you! If you would like to be a subscriber you can learn more here. That's all I'll say about that for now.


SE Facebook Page
Now, the purpose behind this post. I'm thinking of starting up an official Facebook Page for SensibleEndowment.com in order to try and pull in traffic from Facebook. This would be the first step in creating an SE presence among the social networks, followed by twitter, tumblr, reddit, etc... We need traffic. But we need a small amount of traffic until we've grown enough to afford the ability for a dedicated server. A Facebook Page would probably be a slow enough growth in traffic to accomplish that. However, the way Facebook Pages work, if there's not enough interest among SE users, and that have Facebook, there's not really a point to doing it.

How Facebook Pages Work
Once upon a time, Facebook Pages worked very simply. You had people that liked your Page, you posted something, and all the people that liked your Page would see what you posted. This is no longer the case.

One day Facebook realized it could make money by charging Page Owners to "Promote" their posts. Then it realized it could make even more money by cutting back the number of people a Page Post reached, forcing Page Owners to Pay to Promote if they wanted to reach a significant portion of their Page Audience. People kept paying and Facebook kept realizing they could hold Page Audiences hostage over and over until it eventually got to the point that unless you have a group or bots capable of brigading your Pages' Content you will never reach more than a small percentage of your Audience.

So, here's how it works now. Let's say I make a Page Post. Depending on the type of content I post and the number of people that like my Page that Post will only be shown to a small percentage (Typically, it'll be around 2-5%) of the Page's Audience for the first few minutes that Post is live. If the number of people that see that post do not engage with it in a positive way to surpass a certain threshold the Post essentially dies and will not be seen by the rest (95-98%) of the Page's Audience unless they go directly to the Page.

In case you are wondering, yes, if you are a user, Facebook handles your own personal posts in a similar manner.

But! It get's even trickier than that. Because Facebook is it's own ecosystem and they don't want their users leaving their ecosystem, Facebook drastically raises the necessary thresholds to be surpassed for any posts that link to an outside site. So a Page's best bet for Content that will reach a larger audience is essentially text based Status Messages, Images, And Uploaded Videos. Basically anything that creates activity within Facebook without pulling people away from Facebook. So while we can post links directly to SE, they're really not going to go anywhere if we haven't already built up the traffic for the Page.

Keep in mind, this is not mentioning all the personalized algorithms running along in the background as well that are built around all the data Facebook has mined from personal preferences and habits. That's just scary shit and we won't get into that.

The Proposal
So here's what I propose, if there is enough interest among SE users that have facebook accounts and are willing to brigade the Page's content with Likes and Comments and Shares. Then what I will do is create an official Page and then create an interface here on the site (possibly a new category, possibly a new interface) whereby you guys can submit and vote on content (Funny or Sexy Images, Status Messages, Jokes) to be shared on the page. This way SE essentially gets its foot into the door of social traffic using content that the community has approved, ensuring that the people that are reached get a taste of what SE is all about.

Viral Traffic and Us
If the community is up for it, brigading other social networks are basically our only chance to pull in traffic. On average the percentage of people that actually engage with sites they run across are so low, that you have to pull in thousands of users just to get one that sticks. This is something that the old school companies don't get and one of the reasons that internet advertising has gone so virulent and invasive. When Internet advertising first started out it was just banner ads, essentially the equivalent of a roadside billboard, but companies expected them to operate like the impulse buys you find in your grocery store checkout aisle. When they didn't they just kept upping the invasiveness more and more. The fact of the matter is your typical clickthrough rate on an ad is sometime as little as 1%, people who bother engaging with your website after that click is 1% of that, and the people who actually stay, even less than that. That's why when it comes to advertising or viral traffic you have to work in the thousands. Anything less than that and the thresholds necessary for a viral link to stay alive or an ad to pay off won't be met. And since we can't afford advertising, brigading is the most viable option.

So that's about it. I also still have the quiz site excitelike that I'm still trying to get off the ground. I described that site and what I'm trying to do with it here. If anyone has any interest in making quizzes let me know.

Feel free to ask questions or offer constructive criticism in the comments.


And for those wondering what I've been up to the past few months... let's just say I've been busy.

There will be a request for features post in the coming weeks. So keep it in your pants for now ;)