Facebook, your parents are now on it, and maybe even your grandparents too! Proving to have staying power, Facebook towers over the demise, and eroding of previous contender Myspace. Facebook has many interactive features, and various functions we can all take advantage of. As design sites, we have all slowly migrated over to having our own Facebook fan pages, and this can prove to be very successful in driving Facebook ‘friends’ over to your site.

My Favorite Design Blog Fan Pages

These great design sites can be found on Facebook, head over and become a fan today!

MyInkBlog on Facebook (350 Fans)

AdmixWeb (80 Fans)

AdmixWeb is an amazing web design, and development blog, owned and operated, by Teylor Feliz and Holly Lamarche.

AREA1 (33 Fans)

AREA 1 is a blog related to graphic/web design, blogging tutorials, & articles.

Colorburned (2,869 Fans)

Colorburned is a design blog featuring the best in design news, resources, and tutorials from around the web.

Coroflot (7,028 Fans)

Coroflot is a creative network for designers of all stripes. Upload your portfolio of work, and allow great employers, and observers to be able to see your skills!

Design Juices 36 Fans

Design Juices has its own facebook page. I encourage you to pass on the page to all of your friends, so we can grow in our presence online. The Facebook page is the place to go for all the updates regarding Design Juices, and is an open forum for any thoughts, and feelings you have regarding the blog.

Design Your Way (37 Fans)

Design Your Way is a great place to submit links relating to design, and offers great design articles on a range of topics.

DeviantART (216,917 Fans)

DeviantART aims to provide a place for any artist, both emerging and professional talents, to exhibit, and discuss works of art. With over 12 million registered members, and 100 million submissions, DeviantART is the world’s largest art community.

Fudge Graphics (1000 Fans)

Whether you’re looking for high quality freebies, inspiration, or design related news; Fudge Graphics has it.

Graphic River (616 Fans)

At Graphic River you can buy and sell, royalty free, layered Adobe Photoshop Files, Vector Graphics, Icon Sets, and Add-ons for Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator.

Inspired Magazine (1,966 Fans)

Inspired Magazine is a daily inspiration source for web designers, illustrators, Twitter addicts, and other creative humans.

Inspiring Pixel (272 Fans)

Inspiring Pixel is an online inspiration repository for designers. The website features creative, and inspiring designs from Web, Graphic, and the UI design industry from professionals. This enables viewers to understand their work, and create similar designs themselves.

Lady Umbrella (3,374 Fans)

Lady Umbrella is a designer ladies t-shirt company based in Ireland. The company was established in 2008, with the dream of creating stunning t-shirts with the heroine, Lady Umbrella, in a variety of scenarios, and with a host of friends. Lady Umbrella has successfully run various giveaways, and competitions, in coorelation with improving their facebook profile. This has rapidly increased their fan base.

MacApp Storm (1,079 Fans)

MacApp Storm is a great site dedicated to Mac application news, reviews, competitions, and tips.

Naldz Graphics (257 Fans)

Naldz Graphics is a Design Blog for designers, and design lovers. They showcase the best tutorials, freebies, inspirations, and other useful, and informative resources to help, and give love to the design community.

Psd Tuts+ (3,331 Fans)

Psd Tutsplus is a blog/Photoshop site, made to house, and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around.

Smashing Magazine (11,797 Fans)

Smashing Magazine delivers useful, and innovative information to Web designers, and developers. Their aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends, and fresh techniques in design, and Web development.

The Web Blend (133 Fans)

The Web Blend is a community for designers, developers, and tech junkies that keeps you current with a summary of the latest in web related news and trends.

Visual Swirl (80 Fans)

Visual Swirl is a creative design blog from the mind of Chris Thurman, dishing out tasty snacks for the creative mind.

Promoting your Facebook Page

Well, now that you have your Facebook page up and running, you want people to visit it?

• Use the great Facebook badge, and place it on your site. This is done with a simple piece of code provided by Facebook themselves, it simply fits inside your sidebar (or wherever you wish to place it.) This allows users to see your latest posted updates, and become a fan right away.
• Run a competition/giveaway through your site/Facebook page, and encourage users to become a fan in order to enter the giveaway. Simple ideas like this (with the right prize) often bring you hundreds of new readers and fans. (you can encourage them to follow your blog in various social network sites.)
• Syncing your twitter feed to your Facebook page is only a click away.
• Post up your new articles on your Facebook page, allowing you to receive additional traffic.
• Promote Facebook button at the bottom of your posts.
• Be interactive on the page, but don’t over-run users with updates, typically a one or two posts per day is necessary.
• Encourage your community of readers to comment on Facebook posts, and respond, encouraging conversation.

A Little Background

For those of you out there who are not familiar with Ping.fm, don’t feel bad. I had only heard about them, but was never sure of what they were, nor was I interested enough to actually find out what they were all about. It wasn’t until their recent buyout that I discovered what kind of service Ping.fm offers the online community. With a single status update, your info will be shared across 50 different social media networks, including Twitter, Facebook, etc…

The Discussion

If this is the first time you have heard of Ping.fm, some of you just got an excited rush of goose bumps running across the surface of your flesh, and others just felt a sort of nervous sinking feeling in their stomachs. Or at least I am hoping there are others with the pit in their belly like I felt when I first read that. Because while some may be thinking of the huge personal advantage this affords them in their quest to spread the word about them or their work, you see, the pit party on this side of the fence sees this a little bit differently.

For those of us who think that social media should be about interacting with the people who populate your various circles sharing in the numerous streams you send out, this kind of sharing limits the senders ability to actually interact with others. It all becomes a one sided burst of information, not communication. And if these different social media networks were started to introduce new ways to communicate with each other, then these kinds of services are actually going against the idea that established these lines of communication. By decreasing the senders actual connectivity and accesibility from their readers.

So I landed on the side of services like Ping.fm being detrimental to the health and value of the networks that are fed via this kind of app. Currently, Ping.fm has in the neighborhood of half a million users with a couple hundred thousand shares sent out a day. But how effective are these bulk wrapped info-bursts? Is there appeal in this service beyond self-serving ends, with their spam-like infiltration into the numerous data streams it feeds? Or is it less about the community and the interaction between the sender and reader, and just about the information?

Either way, in those instances, be it just about the info or yourself, it is no longer about connecting and growing the community. Which in turn, means that half a million users are already using the social media networks as more of a web based advertising format, so they are being degraded from the communicative role they were initiated to fulfill. With this new wave of public accesibility and awareness of these kinds of services, what does that mean for the future of the social media networks?

Will they be reduced to nothing more than an underaccessed forum for advertising, or will people realize the negative impact of this trend and resist it, maintaining that element of socializing that gives the social media networks’ title relevance? Or will it have a more positive effect on the spread of information, while removing the interactiveness that once drew many of us to these waters? Or will it have no effect whatsoever? I believe if more people see these kinds of shares as beneficial and begin to care less about interacting, then they will have a negative impact on social media and its effectiveness.

What is your two cents?

Now it is your turn to use the comments section below to share your thoughts and ideas on this topic, and the overall impact we are likely to see as a result of this acquisition. Do you feel like we are heading for any of the futures put forth above, or do you believe in an unoffered outcome? Whatever the thoughts kicking around in your head, please share them so that they may be discussed below as well.