ChrisJWilson
ChrisJWilson
Facebook's had a bad year, but the users are staying. chrisjwilson.me
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ronguest
ronguest

@ChrisJWilson I’m not sure deletion or deactivation are the only measures to be used when thinking about this. I have not done either of those, yet. Our schools’ PTA as well as our HOA make use of Facebook’s private groups to communicate. That’s a pretty sticky feature. But I can easily see there are fewer and fewer posts on my timeline and many people I know who used to post regularly haven’t done so in a very long time. In fact it’s down to only 5 or 6 who still post. So I’m a bit more hopeful.

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petebrown
petebrown

@ronguest I feel like this aspect of Facebook usage (e.g., “I have to be on it because this group I deal with uses it”) is the social media version of seeing the POS system at my local Chinese restaurant that is still running on Windows XP. Everyone knows it's a bad idea and would get rid of it if they could, but can't because of these lingering dependencies.

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ChrisJWilson
ChrisJWilson

@ronguest Very true, It makes me wonder if any possible decline of Facebook will be a long, slow decline.

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smokey
smokey

@ronguest @petebrown @ChrisJWilson It seems like we need a collection of small companies to make (or point groups to existing) solutions to address these small, lingering dependencies (especially ones that involve small, specific groups that don’t need the network effect for getting noticed).

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ronguest
ronguest

@smokey I believe discourse.org could be a good option for some of the closed groups. I’m in one group that moved from FB to that solution and it is working well. But... it required a specialist to set it up which many small orgs/groups wouldn’t have access to. The hosted version is far too expensive for small groups without money/funding. FB groups won because “everybody already has Facebook” and it was free. Not sure what the alternatives really are?

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grayareas
grayareas

@ronguest Yeah, I really wish Discourse could be hosted for mcuh cheaper with them. Their standard plan is $100/month!

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smokey
smokey

@ronguest I’m not familiar with Discourse—nor, for that matter, what schools and whatnot actually use FB groups for: dissemination, discussion, something else?—so I don’t know for sure that there are existing solutions.

For schools, I figured they’re already using some kind of school management software package, so adding a module that provides communication with parents seems like an obvious thing.

For neighborhoods, I thought someone could start a site to host neighborhoods, with features specific to that (whatever they might be) and support it by getting local businesses to advertise their services the old fashioned way, just instead of the Yellow Pages, and some sort of fee structure for certain features.

For other things, there’s something like groups.io, which is from the people originally behind Yahoo Groups (pre-Yahoo); my last active Yahoo Group migrated there this year; it feels like all of the good things of the original with none of the awful Yahoo “additions”…

As I said, I don’t really know the uses and what’s there, just that there seems like there’s room for some companies to develop solutions (that are less costly than $100/month!) for focused/local groups 🤞

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grayareas
grayareas

@smokey If you've been a MAC POWER USERS podcast listener over the years, they recently moved their Facebook group over to a Discourse one on their own website. Checking it out would give you a look at the environment in action.

@rosemaryorchard Could probably speak more to the virtues of, or issues with, the software; she's community manager there. But for smaller groups, or big groups where the members prefer F R E E... Discourse is way too pricy if you go with their own bottom-tier host/support plan.

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rosemaryorchard
rosemaryorchard

@grayareas Discourse can be hosted for $5/month which I think is reasonable for many groups - to guarantee the space won't go away at the very least.

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grayareas
grayareas

@rosemaryorchard I was only looking at Discourse's own plans. I'll dig a little deeper and look at third-party options. Thanks!

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rosemaryorchard
rosemaryorchard

@grayareas I host on Linode on their cheapest plan and it works really well for Automators. The MPU group is larger and more active so costs more, but you can set it up to put uploads on another server which is cheaper for storage!

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grayareas
grayareas

@rosemaryorchard Thanks for the info and encouragement, Rosemary, and for all you’ve done for the Mac Power Users community. I have heard so many good things about Linode; that might work well for my group.

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rosemaryorchard
rosemaryorchard

@grayareas Make sure to keep an eye out for a sponsor code (such as on Upgrade) to get $20 towards your hosting there!

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In reply to
grayareas
grayareas

@rosemaryorchard Will do. 👍🏽 Thanks again.

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