Flowing

Wow. I didn’t expect to have 1,600 “fans” of the St. Croix River on Facebook when I launched the page a couple weeks ago. I created the page, posted a link on my profile, and invited via Facebook message less than 10 people. Now, the metrics graph showing members is the very image of “exponential.” Just a curve of steadily-increasing steepness. And tons of fan posts of pictures, memories and odes to the river. Good fun.

I did have a morning of worry though, when I went to create a custom username for the page (http://www.facebook.com/StCroixRiver) and suddenly the page was “not found” and it stayed that way for a while. A little research didn’t give me much hope and the response I got from Facebook was unhelpful and noncommittal. It was very frustrating to think that my burgeoning new page was now dead, but suddenly it just started working again after a couple of hours (and after I’d given up hope).

My research did indicate that many others have had this problem, and perhaps using “CamelCase” was to blame. Anyway, if I had known there was any risk, I would have just not created the custom name and I might recommend you don’t do it either until Facebook fixes the bug.