We've recently set up a facebook group for us and I'm posting to to discuss what we plan to use it for, address some concerns that have cropped up, and gather everyone's thoughts.
First off, is facebook a threat to the blog?
I think this is a valid concern, but one we can put to rest if we all make a conscious decision. Most of the uses I see for the facebook page are mutually exclusive to those of the blog. I'm going to outline them below.In order to keep the blog strong, maybe we could all ask ourselves before posting, would this work as a blog post, and if so, then post it here, and if not, post it to facebook?
Second, do we all have to participate on facebook?
I think it would be great if we could get all members on facebook so at least there is a little picture of you on the Op-For roster. But I don't think it should become one more thing that we have to constantly check. I'm imagining most of the stuff I will be posting to the facebook page is stuff you could safely ignore if you weren't interested.
Third, why facebook in the first place?
The reason for facebook is it offers a great way to do some things I wanted to do, but had no other good way to to do. I was on the phone with CR and wanted to trade some workbench pics back and forth and email just wasn't cutting it. I was considering Twitter but I had just joined facebook and a quick investigation showed facebook was really ideal for this kind of back and forth.
With the facebook wall, you don't have to save up something worthy of a blog post. The picture management is a million times faster and better than the painfully clunky blogger or yahoo! mail. Having the chat there in facebook is also convenient.
For instance, if I have just taken some castings of dungeon walls out of the oven and I know CR or someone might be interested, the blog is not a good place to share my progress. The conversation might not even make any sense out of context. And then if I want to follow up on that two hours later after some assembly work or something, I can't go back and add content to my blogger post, I'm stuck with having to make a whole new post. Eventually, I might want to make a writeup of the whole project and that would make an ideal topic for the blog, but until then I want to share NOW. And did I mention the picture management of blogger makes me want to cry, especially with my lousy connection speed?
Also, a lot goes on in the weekly games that doesn't wind up on the blog, and as I'm participating from a distance facebook looks like it can better keep me in the loop.
Another thing I've noticed is that it's hard to get a conversation going in using blogger comments. After about 5 comments, the conversation dies out. Facebook seems like a great way of carrying on more lengthy conversations, like, say planning of a convention game or an all day event.
Which brings me to another advantage, that Facebook has what seems like a great way to manage events. I managed last year's Necroday event with a service/site called Crush3r, which worked well, and I think I may continue to use it in addition to a facebook event page, but having a facebook event page seems to bring everything one step closer together. We can leave simple messages on the facebook wall like, "Painting up my Eschers this week" or "can't game until August, too much else going on."
The facebook page so far
So far four of us have joined the facebook group and already I get a great sense of it. There's a list of members with office titles, a wall to post whatever content you want, a fast and easy picture management where we can comment on pics, and a way to link to facebook events.
So those are my thoughts on it. Let's discuss it in the comments! What do you think, pro or con?
