Facebook, Social Media and Trinidad and Tobago

October 19, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

Facebook is a very popular social networking tool in Trinidad and Tobago - in fact, it's the most viewed website from Trinidad and Tobago. It's a great way to keep in touch with friends - I use it myself. I have nothing against it. But, people, it's not the Internet.

Yesterday, one of my acquaintances on Facebook posted a link to some pictures of another one of their acquaintances that showed the living conditions of the Chinese workers who protested last week because of poor living conditions, amongst other things. The photos were good, though I must admit that I've seen people living under worse conditions within Trinidad and Tobago. Even so, I can't share these images with you because they're on Facebook - not where they could be visible by everyone.

Like a broken record/scratched CD, I once again pointed out that the images would be better off on a photo sharing site like Flickr (I'm partial to Flickr because I've been using it for years. There are others!). And the response I got was, "He doesn't know how to upload them to Flickr. Do you want to upload them?"

I bit back my first and second responses because Flickr's sole purpose is for people to upload pictures. I'm supposed to be an old man compared to the generation coming up: I'm supposed to be the one complaining that I don't know how to do things. What's wrong with you children? Get with it!

Registering a free account on Flickr couldn't be easier; uploading the images can be (arguably) easier than dealing with Facebook's uploading of images. What it boils down to is that (1) he didn't know better and (2) he was uncomfortable with a website which is remarkably simpler than Facebook. I can do nothing about the second but I can address the first.

First, let's talk about Facebook.

The Walled Gardens

Facebook is what we call a 'walled garden'. To Trinbagonians, the concept is similar to that of a gated community. Within the confines, things are well defined and so forth - Facebook has tried to address this in the past and will probably continue to do so, but the fact is that if you post information on your profile... only your friends can see it.  If your privacy settings are as loose as my fifth girlfriend, their friends can see it to. But to spread it around is slow - if it is spread.

Broken down for the youths out there: Facebook is a fete where you have to drive around all day to chase down an invite. The Internet is an all inclusive. Facebook, despite what you may think, is not the Internet.

Photo Sharing

Using a photo sharing site like Flickr exposes your images to the general public. And if  you really want to, you can post links to those pictures on Facebook - achieving the same goals as showing your friends the images - while allowing others to view the pictures. There's even an application on Facebook which adds a tab to your profile where your recently uploaded pictures can be seen.

So, if you want to share the pictures of living conditions of Chinese Workers, you upload your images to Flickr to your account (create one if you don't have one... did I really need to write that?) and then post links to the pictures on your profile.

Two things happen now: Your friends see the pictures, and other people see the pictures. You can tag the pictures on Flickr, you can't on Facebook - and that means that search engines will find your pictures. Wouldn't it be really cool if some of your pictures showed up in a Google Search? Of course it is, I know - and all I've done differently is... exactly what I'm telling everyone to do. Is it hard? No. Will it hurt? No.

So why aren't you doing it already?

There is a bonus, too - if your images are seen by someone who wants to use them, they may contact you and pay for a license to use them. And if you use a Creative Commons copyright license, as I mentioned in this post, people may use your images in non-commercial ways so that it's more likely to be seen by someone who wants to pay you to use it. 

So - your pictures are more easily shared on Flickr and sites like it, you have a chance of making money and...  you're posting your images in a walled garden? In what warped version of reality does that make sense?

Video Sharing

I don't know as much about video sharing because I haven't done it that much - but YouTube is the most popular site for it. The accounts are free - just register. Upload the video. Then people can share it across a broader range of media, not just walled gardens.

In Closing

If you don't think your images or video are good enough to share with the general public, by all means - keep posting them in the walled gardens. But if you think that they are good or that they should be spread so more people know about a topic, you shouldn't be posting them in a walled garden like Facebook.

In fact, if you have a good photo under a Creative Commons license that applies to something written about on KnowTnT.com... you may get your photo used. ;-)

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