Why not use Facebook?

*** Heavily Redacted Post! ***

I think from the perspective of catching the eye of prospective new IF players & makers that not using Facebook is missing a trick. That’s all!

Over and out!

AMS.

Uh, what exactly precipitated this rant? I think it says more about you than the community…

As in personally? Personally, I have a Facebook account, several “pages,” and a few groups.

That being said, Facebook “groups” are not message boards. Everything is a giant pile-o-posts and a mess. For actual discussion and community, BBS works best.

Also, “social media” is a broadly defined category (having worked in social media marketing, I well know) and places like this are also “social media.”

There are plenty of people on the forum who think of themselves as enjoying IF but don’t think of themselves as promoters of IF. They vote in comps, maybe they even post reviews on their blog or on IFDB, but they don’t normally spend time reaching out to IF newbies and inviting them to participate.

If anyone is interested in promoting IF, well, sure, you might as well do it where lots of people congregate, like Facebook. If you’re opposed to Facebook for ethical reasons, that will probably be an impediment to your IF advocacy. But I don’t think there are very many people like that here. Most folks just don’t do advocacy, and those who do advocacy are, in fact, already on Facebook.

And even those who do do advocacy on social media, do it as social media: distributed, socially, personally. Most won’t be shown to others unless you’re already in their network. Some will not even be visible.

There is no one IF community and there is no one way to promote IF.

Aside from the points other folks have made, I’m not sure that this is an argument for using Facebook–on a quick search, the average age of a Facebook user appears to be 40. Maybe people who want to promote IF to young people on social media should be joining Instagram?

Gotta snapchat your IF lets plays!

Yes - apologies. On reading it back it was a total and utter rant! I think I just had so much to say that it just blurted out! Facebook can be such a great tool for making people aware of whatever it is that you want to make them aware of; I just think you’re missing out is all.

I have now massively edited my original post.

No worries, I’m sure we’ve all made silly rants before.

Like yourself I have a fair number of groups and some pages. My experience of it however is completely the opposite of what you describe and I do challenge the sentiment that it’s a mess. Our ZIL group is the perfect example. In it we have example code, *.zil and *.zip file formats, links to wider sources and very well mannered discussions. We also have 60 members with a good percentage being very active, and we’ve been able to introduce and bring in people who are coders, text adventure writers and others who wouldn’t previously have considered it but it’s caught their interest. I can state categorically that I haven’t had the same success within this Forum (feel free to search for my many posts as evidence) and I would argue most other forums would yield the same results. The discussions we have in the group are great, there are no “comedians” or “trolls”, it’s proving a good success.

Best

Magnus.

All fair points. No disagreement from my side!

:slight_smile:

That’s my sentiment too, that would though mean including Facebook whereas i’m not sure that it is. I may be wrong.

Very possibly. I’m going on my observation that Facebook tends to be eschewed completely and my own positive experiences. Other social media streams may very well be even more successful.

A question - if you’ve got a thriving community on Facebook, why would you want to risk splintering it by trying to funnel people over here?

I’ve seen many forum communities try a “Let’s get this discussion going on XYZ platform!” push only to experience the inertia of members who go “But here is where all the discussion is…” and there’s a natural reluctance to start cold.

EDIT: Sorry written before coffee…same concept reversed. Why would you want to send people to FB from here?

I personally don’t want my FB community knowing what I write.

Facebook groups are a mess in that there’s no hierarchical structure of posts.

It could be your way of wording things in posts here that results in fewer responses or just the subject matter.

There are 6,000+ users here, about 30 online as I write this response. This is a very active board, given the size of the IF community in general. No one here is going to abandon the BBS. Saying it’s “the past” is kind of the same line of thinking that people who say “text adventures are the past.”

You might have got better responses with “Why not also use Facebook?”

That being said, there is this on Facebook, with 75 members. No idea who runs it though: facebook.com/Interactive-Fi … 328617926/

I do post links to my game in progress to my Facebook profile and pages. /shrug

I’m just suggesting that you can probably bring in more people by using Facebook in addition to your existing efforts.

Again … I’m suggesting that ADDITIONAL players and potential writers might be found by promoting through FB in ADDITION to what is already being done. No “instead” or “abandon”. You’re right on the post title, it should have been “why not also use” instead of the anger-inducing “why don’t you”; that’s on me for writing it at night when I should have been in bed!

You know what, I’ve asked the question, I’m done now. You will be missing some people but then again you can’t catch everyone right, and you’re obviously happy so all good.

Let’s move on…

Magnus…what is preventing you from promoting relevant discussions here on FB however you like?

I don’t think that there’s ever been a concerted “marketing campaign” for this forum. We’re not trying to advertise. We don’t make money. People find their way here by word of mouth and that’s worked so far. Many people who are on FB wouldn’t know what to do in a plain message-board forum.

Would a jump of 1000 new members increase the value of discussion here?

Ok I’ll bite … But this really is my last reply otherwise we’re going over old territory and/or going off on a tangent.

In answer to your questions…

  1. I do push IF on Facebook.
  2. That’s great, if you’re happy then all good.
  3. Who knows. But 1000 more people playing and maybe considering writing IF would be fantastic in my humble opinion. I got the impression from watching videos of interviews and events that putting IF in front of more people was something you felt worthwhile; it looks like I’ve misinterpreted that so my bad.

Someone is bound to reply, it’s human nature, but I’m done guys. Thanks for the debate! :slight_smile: