“Going dark” on Facebook

I’ve been very Facebook-oriented since the website’s inception. The service, after all, has always catered to me.

Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004, in Cambridge, Mass. by a group of Harvard University students, most notably Internet entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg.

In September 2004, I began my freshman year of college at the University of Rhode Island. Facebook at the time was only available to students with an “.edu” email address, so anyone found on the website was presumably young, in college, and looking to connect with others like them.

The networking website has since evolved greatly. It’s open to nearly anyone who wants to sign up for it, has specially designed pages for businesses, musicians and places, and even offers advertising opportunities.

As Facebook changed, so did my personal life and thus my Facebook account.

As of late, I found I wasn’t enjoying what my “friends” were sharing--it was a barrage of  wedding ideas, baby pictures, political rants and the like. I was habitually logging on multiple times a day to find out things about people I haven’t physically seen or spoken to in years, it finally dawned on me that Facebook no longer caters to me, personally.

The only problem is with deactivating my personal Facebook account, I’ve lost access to the National Jeweler Facebook page.

Our publication’s Facebook page has grown in the past three years. We went from 4,279 fans in 2011 to 9,614 fans today, close to our goal of 10,000. People like, comment and share jewelry images and National Jeweler stories we post, and interact with other Facebook users and the National Jeweler team.

Thankfully, my fellow editors have been picking up the slack in my recent Facebook absence while I figure out how to regain access to our website’s page without having a personal account (business accounts on Facebook must be linked to personal accounts.)

What I believe I need to do is create a “shell,” or essentially blank, profile that I can just use to link to National Jeweler--a mission for later today. While I may have lost interest in the musings of my “friends” I still want--and need--to be active on the National Jeweler Facebook page. The platform has proved to be conducive in connecting and conversing with our audience, the jewelry industry as a whole and people who just love fine jewelry.

It’s important for business owners,