As you may all know, one of my many quests in life is to achieve a modest amount of fame in a niche that I may not necessarily even really consider myself a part of. Almost 55 friend requests from some awesome Vietnamese citizens later, and I think I’m just about there. Let me explain.
A week or two ago, I made a post on here showcasing what I did with the new Facebook layout (http://www.yeahhedid.com/?p=511). Well, apparently, Mashable.com (the main source of news for all things social media) found this post through a comment I left on their article on 10 creative ways the new Facebook layout was being utilized, and put me in the follow-up “More Creative Uses of the New Facebook Profile.” Look here: http://mashable.com/2010/12/24/more-new-facebook-profiles-pics/#64153-Luke-Kingma
I think this is pretty cool! And I was so excited. Then, something else happened. I woke up today, like I have every other day of my life so far, and decided to check Facebook. To my surprise… I found 40 Facebook friend requests… all from Vietnamese citizens! Since things like this have happened before in other venues, I assumed it had something to do with a computer virus or somebody trying to get me to forward my bank account information to them so they could wire me millions of dollars that they stole from their government (seriously, this has happened before).
Not so! A bunch of them sent me Facebook messages introducing themselves and asking me to be friends, and told me that I had become famous in Vietnam (their words, not mine!) Apparently, the post on Mashable was seen by a news site in Vietnam, who picked up the story and did their own version of it… Here: http://kenh14.vn/c52/20101226011141299/xem-them-10-trang-ca-nhan-doc-cua-dan-choi-facebook.chn
Scroll down a little bit, and there I am! Here’s the picture and caption right here:
The translation? “Christmas tree decorations, a beautiful thing you will notice if visiting Luke Kingma’s profile.” Nice! What a great plug.
But that’s not the end of the story. Apparently (according to Facebook chats and messages), everyone in Vietnam wants me to teach them how to do this. I never miss an opportunity to do business, so I began immediately making plans to move to Vietnam and start a Facebook profile school. I don’t have the details right now, but I’m hoping it will be open for business by Summer 2011. Folks who pre-register will receive a signed picture of myself updating my Facebook profile picture!
Seriously though, that’s a pretty cool story. I welcome my new Vietnamese friends with open arms! There’s nothing better than networking with international people. Here I’ve been trying so hard to increase readership of my blog in the States while completely ignoring the burgeoning Luke Kingma market in Vietnam the whole time! The friend requests haven’t stopped coming in yet!
It’s time to go global. I’ve always wanted to, after all!