Just Call Me Frank: Our Endeavour at Being Frank: So, You Wanna Be A Favstar Whore

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

So, You Wanna Be A Favstar Whore

It's been awhile since we dipped our toe in social media commentary/writing. It feels like it anyway.

As many people know we're everywhere on the internet, we like to write, some of us like to be social, many of us like to keep up on new things in the world. Change is good, and we want to be at the front, not lag in the back unaware of what's going on. Also, we have shit loads of time on our hands now that we are not working. It's not because we don't want to work either, we are just in a country where we can't. One day, one day we will be working, when we return to the States. Maybe serving you coffee, or making your food in a cafe kitchen. Maybe we'll be your secretary. You'll never know...

Hahahaha. Fucking crazy.

For now we live to learn about anything the internet has to show/teach us, as well as write.

One of the extensions of social media that gets a lot of flack, in growing numbers, besides blogging, is Favstar.

We can hear you groan. (or ask, what the fuck is Favstar?!)

Favstar is...well, go to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favstar) for a definition. While we dislike Wikipedia, for very basic definitions, explanations and sources, it's a decent site.

Yes, we use Favstar; there are mixed reviews on Twitter about the usage of Favstar.

We are not Favstar whores.

A Favstar whore, as defined by Urban Dictionary is: "[A person] on Twitter who exist only for the purpose of giving and receiving "Favorite" stars and being a "big deal" on Favstar.fm. They believe themselves to be celebrities of sorts but are, in reality, merely members of a Favstar clique devoted to giving and receiving stars. They seldom interact on Twitter at any level aside from starring tweets that may or may not be mildly funny, in a desperate attempt to make it to the lamest page of all: The Favstar Leaderboard. Favstar whores will unfollow you on Twitter if you're not giving them enough stars."...and some of you may be referring to them as Elite...we're still not sure what, or who, the Elite really are though (Who Are The Twitter Elite: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/07/who-are-twitter-eliteand-of-course-we.html)

We believe it is possible for people to be using Favstar for something other than a competition for digital stars and trophies. Meanwhile, if it is a competition, we suck at it. With as many followers as we have, compared to some of the top users...yeah, we suck at it. We're okay with that. We use it for other reasons. I'm not sure any of us really have a competitive bone on our body or mind anyway. Meh, the fun is in the participation on Twitter, the word play, the exchange of thoughts, the people.

Why then, do we use it, if it's not a competition (to us)?

Have you ever tried to scroll through your timeline to find your Tweets from the day, among the RT's and @'s? Have you ever tried to scroll back, say, 8 days? It's nearly impossible, and Twitter won't even let you do it, if you are a highly active user. They even become unsearchable in Google after only a few days(1).

Why then, do we even bother with Favstar then?

So.Many.Reasons.

How else are we supposed to get the gist of our day? It's helped immensely with mapping therapy for our particular "disorder". Since we enjoy being on Twitter, and spend a lot of time there, it's easier than opening up an app on our phone, or document on our laptop, or finding a pen and paper (do those even exist anymore?) to write down our thoughts down.

Twitter (and Favstar) are literally the holding place for thoughts and ideas, and our day.

We are "sort-of writers" (we would never claim the title, however...we simply write.), and we use Favstar to easily find lines of poetry some of us write, which we then copy and paste into Word documents. Sometimes we use our old tweets for reference in our blog entries, and as stated, in Twitter they may be gone after a few days.

We also use old Tweets to create graphic designs (We Get Graphic: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2012/02/we-get-graphic.html) and other things. Without using Favstar we could not have taken Tweets from nearly a year ago and had fun creating graphics for them.

We got the bonus features almost a year ago, mainly because it's a way to hold onto our Tweets longer (sure, we could copy them all to a Word document, but we're hardly all that organized or driven, or compliant) - Favstar actually stores your Tweets longer with bonus features, and makes it so you can scroll back further.

Also, Favstar helps people see that you (we) were entertaining, or had interesting things to share...that at one point or another you were funny...so just wait, it might happen again. (*giggles*)

It doesn't have to be a competition. It really isn't...because what's the prize?!

It took us ages to find information on Favstar in the early days, we'd ask around "What's a ToD?" back when we had very few followers from the Favstar ring, and people would be appreciative to tell us. We were actually told once "Oh, it's nothing you want to know about". So we did what we always do and we used Google, because screw that, we wanted to know, like everything else. Now when we see Tweets asking what it is, we're likely to quip in an @ "It's the 10th circle of Hell", or something similar. It is, if you make it that way.

When we found our page on Favstar, and realized that people were liking much of what we said, we activated it. Eventually we bought bonus features because we thought it would be fun to give people awards (Tweets of the Day/ToD).

There are actually people on Twitter who buy bonus features for that very reason.

While we don't give out the bonus award every day, it's there and we still enjoy Favstar for the reasons we started using it (finding out who we all are), in addition it help us find some pretty unique people, people who entertain us and keep us company. Some of whom use Favstar for very similar reasons as we do, to thank other people for being entertaining.

In the end it never changed the way we used Twitter, or the way we Tweet - that's why we don't get scads of stars from "the big names in the game", because we won't return them just for the sake of returning them; every star/favourite we give is a for tweet we read and liked for our own personal reasons. Sure it's nice to see who reads what we say, but we don't play that circle jerk game or feel obligated to star and RT people just because their avi turned up under one of our Tweets on Favstar, because that's bullshit. If you are writing purely for Favstar, so be it...but people can usually tell.

As usual, this is just our opinion, based on far too much observation of Twitter, and people.

Favstar is what you decide it is, and you can be a Favstar whore if you want, but we'll just continue to be us.

~ The et al

Oh, and why do we RT and thank people publicly for reading/awarding our Tweets? One, to help other people find those who read Tweets, get them exposure, and it's a nice thing to do for other people; Two, we don't have the link to Favstar in our bio, so it lets people see/find our "greatest hits" tweets, because our timeline is usually full of @'s and RT's. Use logic.

(1) 10 Ways To Archive Your Tweets, Sarah Perex, ReadWriteWeb, August 11, 2009 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_ways_to_archive_your_tweets.php

Our other Social Media writing:
2012