Facebook follies......

OK.

Before I start, I should declare my standpoint on FB right up front.

I don't like it.

There are many, many things I don't like, way too many to list, but just to give a flavour of the things I don't like it.....

• It's all pervasive
• It's mostly inane (thought pot and kettle come to mind here, especially since Small Dog has her own FB page, so who am I to judge?)
• It knows way too much about all of its users by possibly nefarious means
• It's way too rigid in the way it operates

I could go on.  And on.  And on. But that would be boring.

So, here's the thing.

When I first set up my FB page I set it up with Tower House Dolls as my username, fully intending to use it purely for business purposes.  Those of you who know me on FB will be thinking..... "Hang on a minute, the name on your page is Sandra Morris, not Tower House Dolls.  You have a separate business PAGE called Tower House Dolls."

And you'd be right.  But I have learned that there is a subtle distinction between your username and your FB timeline page name.   Initially I knew nothing about 'pages' and naively thought that I'd stick to purely business stuff.  Much as I do here *cough*.

Of course that didn't happen.  Over time, people I actually KNOW became FB friends.  Long lost cousins and ex-boyfriends tracked me down.  People I know but didn't even like sent friend requests.  And of course, over time, the minutiae of daily life crept in, like a miasma.

So, I created a separate Tower House Dolls business page with the intention of separating out my not-so-private life from my business life.  Brilliant idea or what?!

Apparently not.  

I now effectively have two THD pages, due to my username and business page name being the same.  Confusing isn't it?  I'm confused as hell and I KNOW what I'm trying to do.

"But why don't you just change your username" I hear the more FB savvy readers say.
Excellent idea, which had occurred to me, but when I tried to do it I found I couldn't.  Apparently you can only ever change your FB username ONCE.  Then it's game over.
I honestly can't remember changing it before, but I must have done.  Probably from Sandra Morris to Tower House Dolls back in the mists of time.  How clever was that?

So now I'm stuck on the horns of a dilemma, between a rock and hard place, in a quandary.
Do I simply delete my FB page and start again from scratch (quelle horreur!) losing all that sparkling, witty repartee, and photos of Small Dog looking gorjus, or do I soldier on with things as they are.

One solution is to individually contact all of my miniatures 'friends' (over 700 of them!) and direct them to my business page, before 'unfriending' them from my Sandra Morris page.
Another is to corral all the people with whom I want to have silly conversations, into a group and select certain posts to be available only to them.  

Both of these solutions are time consuming and fraught with problems.  Plus I don't know if people who aren't FB 'friends' would be able to see my business page.  Trying to get answers from FB is impossible.  You can't contact them direct and their FAQ/Help pages don't address the specific issue I have, apart from stating categorically that usernames can only be changed ONCE.

Seriously, if anyone knows how to change a FB username more than once I will be forever in your debt.